.jpg)
Effortlessly Productive
Welcome to Effortlessly Productive with Annie Veblen McCarty, where we dive into the art and science of mastering your time and boosting your productivity without the burnout.
Join Annie as she explores practical tips, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you streamline your tasks, prioritize effectively, and get more done with less stress.
Whether you're juggling work, family time, or just trying to find more time for what matters most, our conversations will empower you to work smarter, not harder.
Tune in and discover how to make productivity not just a goal, but a way of life!
Effortlessly Productive
How To Manage Your Time to Be More Productive
Productivity doesn't have to come with burnout. As entrepreneurs, we've all experienced the frustration of having a perfect calendar system but still feeling like we never make meaningful progress. The missing piece? Understanding how our nervous system and creative process actually work within the time we've scheduled.
I'm sharing my game-changing approach to workflow management that has transformed both my productivity and stress levels. Instead of scattering similar tasks throughout the week, I organize my days thematically: Mondays for setting intentions and content creation, Tuesdays and Thursdays for calls and client work, Wednesdays for CFO work in my husband's business, and Fridays for completing projects started earlier in the week. This system provides the substantial uninterrupted time our brains need to reach creative flow state—something impossible to achieve when constantly switching between different types of tasks.
For creative entrepreneurs, coaches, and intuitive business owners, this approach is particularly powerful. When our calendars are fragmented with meetings sprinkled throughout each day, we're left with small pockets of time that don't allow for substantive work on important projects. By grouping similar activities and protecting large chunks of focus time, we can honor how our creative process actually works. This method isn't one-size-fits-all—I share how to adapt it based on your unique brain wiring and nervous system needs. Some people thrive with hyper-focus while others need more variety, and both approaches can work within this framework.
What's one change you could make to your workflow this week that would honor how your brain actually works? Try implementing a theme day approach and experience the difference complete workflow cycles can make to your productivity and peace of mind.
Coaches, healers, and creatives—how much money are you leaving on the table?
Coach OS is the world’s leading all-in-one software that automates your business, scales your income, and replaces all your other software for a fraction of the cost!
Grab your free trial now, at https://coachossoftware.com/
Hey, this is Annie Veblen-McCarty and I'm gonna teach you how to be effortlessly productive. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I got sick and tired of experts preaching what business and life should look like and what I should be doing as a leader and to turn a profit, only to find myself wasting time, burned out, feeling inauthentic and still not making any money. On this show, we are ditching the shoulds. I'm giving you permission to do business differently. As a certified master coach, I believe that everything you need to have success and build the life and business of your dreams is already living on the inside. I'm going to empower you to lean into what you do best, help you see your path forward clearly and give you the strategy and action steps along the way to become effortlessly productive. Let's dive in. Welcome to today's episode of Effortlessly Productive. Today, we are going to be diving into something people ask me about all the time, which is how to manage your time in order to be more productive. Now, I am definitely not a time management expert. This is not something that I teach a ton. However, I have a process. I guess you could say. The reason I wanted to do an episode on this is because this totally fits into what I teach about systems and I will say everybody's brain works differently. Everybody's body feels things differently. What works for one person might not work for the other, and so this is giving you, first of all, permission to take bits and pieces of what works for other people and develop something that works for you. It has taken me years and years and years of experimenting and, honestly, as I go through different seasons of life and different seasons of business, different things work for me at different times. So I just wanted to have a little discussion about this today and share what has been working really well for me recently, and there is some science behind this and some nervous system stuff behind this. So I'm really excited to dive into chat with you.
Speaker 1:We're not going to dive into like time blocking or like any of the other techniques. Personally, I do use time blocking, but that's not so much what we're focusing on today. We are going to be focusing on how we organize those blocks of time that we do have to get our work done, how we organize our workflow in order to be more productive within the time that we have, because there are tons of people out there teaching how to time block, what planner, what calendar to use, like all of that stuff, and that, to me, is important. But it's also once you have that set up we can have the most time blocked, beautiful, perfectly organized schedule and system and things planned out to the nth degree. But unless we know what to do within that time in order to be the most productive that we can be, it does not really matter how much of that other planning we're doing right Makes sense. It also is not really taking into effect of how our body feels, how our nervous system feels within the time structure that we have created. So if we have this system that we have created with our time and that is creating a lot of stress, a lot of burnout, a lot of feelings of like panic, of just feeling very scattered, lot of feelings of like panic, of just feeling very scattered, that can totally dysregulate our nervous system, send us into fight or flight mode or even freeze mode, even worse, which is kind of headed into that burnout or definitely straight up in the burnout, and that is not going to serve us. So what we want to start to think about is how we feel within the time that we have, how our body feels, how our body is reacting, how much chaos do we feel is going on? Are we jumping from one thing to another, to another, to another? If we are doing that, for some people that's where they thrive, right, and this is why this is not like a cookie cutter approach, like everybody needs to do it this way. We can kind of take the approach of we have this time that we're going to work and every single day, within that time that we have, we're doing the same tasks. Maybe you're creating content for social media, maybe you are reaching out to your current clients or new potential clients, maybe you are working on finding people to book calls with, maybe you are promoting a program that you have coming up. So there's like all these things that we're doing. Within that time. We might have our client sessions, we might have calls that we're doing for a program that we're in the middle of teaching. So we have all these things and for some people, having shorter blocks of time and jumping from thing to thing to thing and doing those things every single day is where their brain thrives.
Speaker 1:I know my son has ADHD. He either will hyper-f focus, where maybe a larger chunk of time with one activity would be more ideal for him or his brain will jump and jump and jump and he has a hard time staying focused on any one thing for too long. So days he is feeling that way and I'm definitely not like an ADHD expert. I am not like this is how you have to do it If you've been diagnosed with ADHD. I'm just sharing like a personal anecdote of what I see with him works really well.
Speaker 1:So there are certain days for him that helping him manage his school workflow I will set it up where I'm like okay, he is hyper-focused on math. We are just going to blow through as many of his math workbook pages as we possibly can because his brain is in it. He's in a place right now where he can just get a ton done. He could literally go for one or two hours if he wanted to. So with that it's looking more day-to-day Like how am I feeling today? Am I feeling like I can really focus in? Am I feeling like I'm going to be a little bit more scattered and jump from thing to thing?
Speaker 1:He also has other days where that attention span is just not there. He's having a really hard time getting into that hyper focus and so setting it up so that there are shorter tasks, so like he's going to spend 10 minutes doing one thing, 10 minutes doing the next, 10 minutes doing the next, get up, take a wiggle break, run around, go play sports outside, like whatever it is, so he's going from thing to thing to thing very quickly. So you may find that you have days, even once you have a schedule and a plan and a structure set up. Within this time that you have, you may find that you may need to take some adjustments here. However, I'm going to share a little bit about what has worked really well for me, and the reason I want to dive into this is because, for people who are more creative, people who lean into their intuition in their work a lot so maybe more spiritual entrepreneurs for people who are coaches, people who are creating programs, I often find and I have found for myself that jumping from thing to thing to thing is not giving us a large enough time block to really make any meaningful headway.
Speaker 1:And what I often see is I will have calls whether it's calls that I am teaching or calls that like if I'm a part of a mastermind or part of a program I will have calls scattered all throughout my week, here and there. I'm allowing clients to just book their one-on-one appointments whenever, whatever day, whatever time slot works for them, and what ends up happening is I will maybe have like an hour in the morning and then I have a call, and then I have 30 minutes and I have another call, and then I have an hour and a half and I have another call. Or I have like a little bit of time and then call, call, call, call, call and all of a sudden, after four or five calls, my energy is done and I can do busy work, I can sort my emails, but if there was anything that I wanted to create or a program that I'm working on or a launch I'm working on, my brain is just done and I'm not going to make a ton of meaningful headway. So what I have found for me and again the reason I'm sharing this is I found this for a lot of other coaches and creatives and spiritual entrepreneurs as well Each day kind of has a theme and I'm going to share with you my themes. I want you to take this and make it your own, because maybe for you, whatever is happening in your life and in your world on Monday.
Speaker 1:It does not make sense to do what I do on my Monday, but maybe we can just shuffle the days around. So I look at Monday like my set myself up for success for the weekday. So I start my day off doing kind of a little bit of a review right, a little bit of reflection what happened last week, what went well, what do I want to do differently this week I get some of the like nitty gritty things out of the way. Like for my husband's business, I do payroll that has to go in every Monday. So I have a couple little short tasks that I just they're very important and I get them out of the way right right away.
Speaker 1:If I've not planned my week out and looked at my schedule which I usually have the week before but sometimes I have not I will do that and then I use the rest of my Monday to think about what is it that I want to create for the week? What is my messaging that I am putting out there in my content on social media, in email marketing? What is an identity shift that I want to help my clients have this week? What is it that I want to focus on what part of helping people am I going to focus on and how can I build that into my content, into everything that I do this week? I also do a lot of content creation on Monday and get things set up for the rest of the week. So that piece of it is kind of out of my brain and I don't have to go back.
Speaker 1:I think about also the big projects, those needle mover activities that I want to work on and focus on that week. If you go back to it was one of my very first episodes. I talked about needle movers and how important those have been in my business and what they are I will focus on. Okay, here are going to be the needle movers for the week. Here's what I want to create. If I am launching something, maybe I need to build a page where people can register and sign up for whatever program it is that I'm launching. I start to break it down into pieces. So Monday is my like set myself up for success.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of my content creation. I do a lot of planning of what my focus is going to be on the week and I do a lot of just looking at what are the things that are going to move the needle forward in my business, that I can either knock out on Monday and get started or what for each day do I need to get done or want to get done. Then usually Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days where I am taking calls. I am either on calls, teaching calls, doing one-on-ones with clients. If I have to book an appointment, like a doctor's appointment or something for my kids, I am making sure I slot that in on Tuesdays and Thursdays because those are my days that are going to be a little bit less like huge work chunks of like let me have some creative time, and it's going to be more taking care of all of these calls If I can. If it looks like I might not have a lot of appointments or calls that week, I will actually block off a huge chunk, and this usually for me ends up happening on Thursday, where I will be like OK, nobody has booked calls Thursday morning or Thursday afternoon. I am actually going to block that whole chunk out to focus on some of these projects, that thing that I'm starting on Monday. I'm going to make sure that I have a good like three to five hour chunk one of those other days of the week, either Tuesday or Thursday, so that I can make some more meaningful headway For me and for so many people that I've worked with.
Speaker 1:Once you get your head into that creative process, it tends to flow. So we want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success and giving ourselves the opportunity to do a deep dive, to let those creative downloads happen, to be able to get really into something and not have that creative flow or that system building flow, whatever it is that you're focusing on, not have that broken up. I personally, when I am making a program, I do like to teach it live and then take those recordings. But I know other people who like to record modules ahead of time and then that becomes the program. So think about, like, if you are going to teach all of those modules and record all of those modules, it might not go very well if you're recording one and getting interrupted and recording another and getting interrupted. Sometimes, when we can get our thought process focused in on it, things flow and flow and flow.
Speaker 1:Wednesday I tend to go into my husband's business and do all of the CFO work for that business, so for me I actually have a day of the week. It does sometimes shift around a little bit and this is why we're doing our planning on Monday for me, why that's important. But I usually have a day of the week where I am 100% focused on that CFO work so that that is done. So then we come to Friday and for me done so, then we come to Friday, and for me, friday. I use as my wrap up the week day so I have a standing call first thing Friday morning. Once that is over, I will sometimes book some calls Friday if my availability was really low for the beginning part of the week.
Speaker 1:However, I try to keep my entire rest of my Friday totally open because whatever I started on Monday, as long again as this was like a manageable thing to be able to finish in a week, whatever piece I decided to start on Monday, I want to have that wrapped up on Friday. So I make sure that I have a really big chunk of time. Again, it is completely empty that I can take all those loose ends from the week, whatever project I dove into, and I can actually wrap things up, click the done button, click it finished, because then I know, going into my weekend, all of those kind of leaks, all of that bandwidth, that where our brain just keeps processing on things. All of that is wrapped up. My brain is not going to be going crazy over the weekend while I'm trying to do things with the kids or my husband or my family or anything else, and it can just be focused on Friday, wrapped up on Friday and done, and that way, when I roll into a new week, I can start my Monday saying okay, now, what am I going to create this week? Where is my focus going to be this week? And the rest of those days, I give permission for it to be a little bit more. I'm going to say chaotic, but it's more just that. That's when calls are happening, that's when one-on-ones are happening, that's when I'm teaching, that's when all these other things are going on. And then I'm kind of slotting little things again, like email and messages and all of that fun stuff like here and there around all of it.
Speaker 1:For me, this way of organizing my time has actually helped me be so much more productive. So take this concept. Like I said, this may or may not work exactly for you, and that is okay. Give yourself permission to take this Maybe of what I said you're like that is not for me, that doesn't serve me. But maybe there was one little piece of that that you can kind of grab onto and you're like this is going to be a gem that is going to change everything. Take that one thing and run with it.
Speaker 1:Or if you were like I just feel like it's always chaos all over the place, I have calls all over the place Like I literally I hear this all the time I literally feel like I never get anything done.
Speaker 1:The reason we feel like we literally never get anything done, even when we do have chunks of time set aside for our business, is because what we are doing in that time, the way that time is organized, the activities we're doing that time, are not setting us up to feel like we can ever start and finish anything. It is that broken up thing where our brain literally can't ever get into that creative flow, and so when we can start to chunk things a little bit bigger and have certain days that are set aside for certain things, for a lot of us that can be a huge game changer. So I hope this helps. If you took one little piece out of today, or maybe the whole thing, I would love to hear in the comments how you are going to shift the way that you look at your workflow and look at your productivity and how this is going to help serve you in your business. Thank you for tuning in today and I can't wait to catch you on the next episode of Effortlessly Productive. Have a beautiful rest of your day.
