The Art of Letting Go: Productivity Through Prioritisation

Bringing some easy tactics to help tighten your wasted time and get more into your week.

1. Set Realistic Expectations: Understand the limits of what can be achieved within a given time frame to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
2. Time Blocking and Task Blocking: Utilise dedicated days for specific tasks (e.g., Marketing Mondays) to streamline focus and efficiency.
3. Use Voice Notes for Content Creation: Leverage voice-to-text for authentic communication that captures your true tone and ideas efficiently.
4. Work Offline: Minimise distractions by setting designated times to work without internet interruptions, ensuring focused productivity.
5. Adapt Work Hours to Personal Life: Customise your work schedule to align with your O W N most productive times and personal commitments for optimal efficiency.
6. Invest in Systems and Processes: Regularly review and improve your business operations to enhance client experience and operational efficiency.

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Transcript

0:12

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleandra Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. So much going on in the Oleander and Finch world at the moment. I just wanted to take a minute before this episode to remind you that the framework is on sale or taking new students, a new student intake from this Friday to celebrate International Women's Day. So come and see me if that's something that you're interested in or if you want more information before then and if not a big preemptive welcome to all of our new students for this weekend. Today's podcast episode is going to be a little bit smaller, I hope. Last week was an epic 40 minutes, but my goodness, thank you so much for the support. You guys loved that. I think it got triple the usual downloads especially at this one week mark. Over 1500 people have listened. I've gotten a lot of feedback. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you haven't listened and you want to anticipate any clients upcoming issues or learn how to break up with one that you've already got, I did have some DMs as well, where I actually coached some people through some sticky situations. If you're finding that it's helpful, but you still don't feel confident, come and chat to me, would love to talk. You can find me at oleander underscore and underscore binch. But again, keeping this nice and short today because I have a launch of the framework on Friday to celebrate International Women's Day, we're taking in a new intake of students and my husband has gone to camp as a high school teacher, outdoor ed is one of his classes, and so he's taken a group of teenagers. On a camp, please don't come to my house and murder me now that I put that out in public, but that leaves me with the three kids. So I thought, actually, when I was getting organized for this week and pulling together what can I do to make this less of a strain on me now that I'm not in this sort of partnership on a daily basis? And I'm doing it solo for a week. What sort of things do I need to put in place? And what sort of strategies should I approach this week? Differently. And they all related to business as well. And so I thought, okay I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs out there who are also moms and productivity is really important to us from a business perspective. So it was a good catalyst to talk about that today. The first thing I would mention is I like to set realistic expectations of what's possible. There is no point plotting my calendar full of things only to make myself feel bad because I can't fold the washing or I feel like the grout's dirty and I don't have anyone coming to do that. Realistically, I can't juggle this many glass bowls and keep them all in the air and neither can you I've had to let standards go a little bit in some areas or maybe that just looks okay Former me before kids would have blocked that all into one day and instead I'm going to create micro tasks and do one task a day over seven days. it all gets done this week. Just thinking about it a little bit differently and being kind to myself because the more you achieve the more your morale boosts and you get a bit of mojo going and if you aren't realistically able to achieve any of the things that you set out. You've just wasted productivity and time by writing a list in the first place. That brings me to my next tip, which is around time blocking and task blocking. I find it really helpful. I have marketing Mondays, for example, and on Mondays I'll go in and I do a lot of my marketing planning. I do an hour on a Sunday night and I finish up with 30 minutes on a Monday and on the Monday it's just for creating assets from the plan that I made on Sunday night and for plotting it out and scheduling it into the content. calendar, checking everything is done and that it's all ready to go, whether I am online or not. So I go in, I tidy up, I make sure the content is looking really good for a minimum seven days, sometimes 14. However I'm feeling, some Mondays, amazing. I'm on a roll, might as well do 21. Others it's oh, I'll just get the next five days in check and it'll be a bit of a rolling plan and I'll come back to it on Thursday and tidy up the last little part of the week. That's okay So this will include things like deciding or making sure that I've got content ready to go for my Friday framework email that goes out to my subscription list because that content is always different to what's on social media. It's making sure that I have spent 20 minutes creating multiple pins to repurpose specific and searchable topics that are relevant to my ideal client and then schedule them out over the next. Two, three weeks to go live on Pinterest. I love scheduling for Pinterest cause you don't have to be there when it goes live on like Instagram to reply to comments or see if it's gotten any traction. So some of that happens and I'm like, Oh, that's right. I'm about almost out of my scheduled stuff. What else just, yeah, so it covers all sorts of multiple different platforms from podcast, email, Instagram. And if I'm honest, I don't give Facebook a lot of love. A lot of what I do on Facebook is just carbon copied over from Instagram. Same with threads. Sorry guys, I've chosen the places I want to be present in 2024. And that's another part of productivity. There's no point me doing the things that I don't think will drive the same result. And then I'm not really not part of my plan. Okay, so the next sort of productivity hack, if you will relates directly to that planning. So I am a huge fan of voice notes, or voice to text, I should say, in my Apple Notes. You will see me, if you live in my town, walking around, walking the kids to school, walking the dog, and I am always talking into my phone. There's a few reasons that I do it, because I find that when I talk, I get to collect a large piece of text and create an email from that. And when I've spoken, it is 100 percent my tone of voice because it is literally my voice. And so I find the outcomes always much better. Like I can tidy it up. I can throw it into AI if I want. I can ask it for a bit more structure, but it keeps my content from the heart and authentically me because it's all of my verbalized ideas and spoken word. So sometimes I'll obviously tidy it up from a grammar or spelling perspective from whatever came out of my voice to text, but it doesn't need as much editing at all and all of the key ideas are there. Sometimes I put the text into AI and I ask it to generate a task list or an accompanying worksheet or something that I can give more value to my email subscribers. So I do play around with it, but it's all come from me walking the dog and just chatting into the phone about the sorts of things that I want to help small businesses with for this Friday's framework. My next tiny tip would be to work offline. So yes, I'm time blocking or task blocking. Say, Oh, When I say task blocking, I mentioned Marketing Monday, but I have Finance Fridays. I have specific days of the week where I will do podcast interviews and calls or Zoom calls, I should say, video calls. So that is a day where I know I might want to put on some mascara, I might want to wear a pair of earrings and a nice shirt because I'm going to be on. Screen all the time, talking and engaging with other people face to face. Then I have a set certain day of the week where I would do all my alignment calls for the framework, which students are applying for this round. What are their businesses like? Where are they at? Those are mostly phone calls. And so I want to make sure they're obviously on a day where my kids aren't here and the neighbor's dogs aren't barking and I can concentrate fully and I lean into my own. Motivation. I want to say motivation levels, but I mean like I know if I'm a morning person or a night person, and so I'd be like, okay, I'm going to do alignment calls every Thursday morning between 10 a. m. and 1115 and those will be the times where I'll take those 15 minute calls and have a chat about whether or not you're a good fit for the course. And I know that's coming up and that happens to also be my morning person. Face or zoom day. And so if I booked the calls in the morning, and then I'm on zoom all afternoon, I think phone calls. This is just something I always believe. If you're smiling on the other end of the phone, people can hear that in your voice. If you feel good, you've got a bit of makeup on, whatever makes you feel good. If you feel, organized and well put together. You're going to come across as organized as well put together. So I'm not going to be booking these alignment calls at like bed and bath time for my three children, for example, because that's completely hectic and that just wouldn't make sense. Yeah, back to working offline, definitely working offline. Airplane mode is live. I just have to, when I am time blocking, be like this next hour and a half, this task should take me about an hour and a half to just update this big part of the resource library. But I want to be doing that when no one can. Quickly, email me. I have heard this. I don't, I can't. credit the original person for this because I'm not sure who said it but around the idea of like email is other people's to do list like when an email comes through it's their top priorities and it jumps to your top of your list because you just saw the email and it has a call to action like can you get back to me on this and blah blah blah this is how we create busy Lifestyles and busy businesses that don't actually have good profit margins and they're not moving the needle towards growth or doing anything else. They're just flapping around doing other people's email requests and bit of this, bit of that, dripping over there. And this is why time blocking, task blocking is really important for me. But also that I work offline and I give it a time frame. So I'll be like, yep, 90 minutes, I'm going to completely refilm this area of the process hub or the document library or the email library, and it'll all get done in these 90 minutes. I know I'm on airplane mode. I'm not going to be interrupted by somebody else's agenda, an email, or, a crisis in our internal chat that we have with the framework. I don't know if you guys know, because I have had feedback before, that people when they enter into the course don't realize how present I am inside of that community and group chat. So if the girls are asking questions. I always leave time for them to help each other, but then I will always weigh in on anything that's going on in that chat. And there's a lot going on all of the time, but that doesn't have to be the second that someone shares something, a question, that doesn't have to come from me at all. Everything can wait 90 minutes and everything can work to your agenda what you are doing for your business and then the rest will get done within a 24 hour period is a perfectly normal time to get feedback and support from your mentor. So if you haven't practiced this one before just even start tiny even start with the next thing that you want to achieve that's in your calendar you're thinking I really wanted to just Sort out, delete all my emails, for example, tidy up my inbox, pop your thing on airplane mode, pop on some lo fi music or folk, or whatever you like in the background that won't draw your attention, and then just see if you feel as though it was easier to concentrate and to stay on task. Okay, this tip is really important to me, and that is not to try to fit a mould or do what works for others just do what works for you. Make your own productivity hacks. If you work best at night, great. Put the kids to bed, block out a few hours, and work at night. Take those hours back tomorrow morning after school drop off when you're crazy and do a load of washing and hang that out, pay yourself back. It's like a time debt. So sometimes it's just not convenient for me to work like others do in that eight hour period, but I'm like, okay. I would like to be able to stop at three o'clock and walk the dog and go and pick up the kids and walk them home and hear about their day, get them snacks, get them settled, spend that time with them between three and five thirty. And then I need to get them into bath and dinner and routine and those with kids will get what I'm saying is like meh. But then we do get to a point around the seven o'clock mark where I'm like, okay, I'm free again. So I didn't work between three and seven, but I do want to get that amount of work done. Do I want to do, Three nights a week, I work from, 8 till 10, put in an extra 2 hours, but then, I start late when I need to start late. I've got appointments to take my son to tomorrow. Just pay it back later. Don't be so hard on yourself. Make it really fluid. I'm designing my own success. This is my business, my rules, my way. Sometimes it doesn't look like what you expect from me, but I don't report to anyone. So as long as I'm not Missing meetings or missing deadlines and whatnot, it can look different on how you get to that outcome. So it's still the same deadline, but I've just worked in a really flexible way. And the brand value for me of flexibility for my family and freedom looks exactly like that. The ability to say, I'm going to pop that, pick it up at this time, pay it back here. But just being really clear about what that looks like and not trying to fit into that mold. I don't work nine to five. I don't feel sorry about that. Okay, and the last one for me, because it is a little quick. Episode is to invest in bettering your systems and processes. And I know you probably hear me talk about this all the time, like systems, processes, documentation, making sure the client experience is amazing. The investment doesn't have to be financial. Obviously you can purchase something like the framework. It's 199 a month, and then you get all of those ready made systems and processes, and you brand them as your own, and you amend them and apply them in any way you feel that you want to in your business. But not everybody is ready for that. Not everybody can invest that and not everybody wants to be in a group mentorship or do that. That's why private coaching exists, for example, or it's just not right for everyone. And that's totally fine. When I say investment in bettering assistance and processes, I don't necessarily mean financial. Sometimes it's about investing time and effort into making them the best customer experience that you possibly can. Is this the cleanest way of doing things? Is there a part of this process that doesn't really benefit me or my client? Could I strike a line through it? And we don't do that thing anymore. When was the last time you visited it? Are you constantly revising, revisiting and bettering and evolving the systems that you have in place. When was the last time you looked at what's out there in terms of free trials for subscriptions or applications? I'm never one who wants to grow your subscription list because I get in, especially in the area of interior design. I look at my subscriptions always try to clean them up a little bit on Fridays. Finance Fridays when I'm time blocking financials and I'm doing cash flow reports and I look at the P& L, I'm always eyeballing the subscriptions because it's the first place that I feel really grows without, if I'm not keeping an eye on it, I'm like, Oh, did I sign up for that? Am I paying for that now? For your systems, maybe you did all of that in the very beginning or first iteration of your business and you haven't revisited it lately. So I would suggest to you, there's usually a place if you Make investment in getting better and faster and more efficient and good looking processes and systems. What you're actually investing in is productivity. You're investing in efficiency and you're investing in being able to take on more and more clients because you value what it looks like in the back end of your business. Enough that you can support those clients in a really sustainable way and in a way where they rave about the experience with you. And oh, God, it looks so good. And it was just a little click of a button and all the shopping list came and it was all visual. That's the thing that I have in my client project database that we teach in a framework. But. It's super impressive and I'm proud of it and I worked hard. I designed it myself. I made it for my clients when I was running my design business, which still runs. So my clients that I work with on a reduced capacity, they get the same documents that I teach in the framework because if it's good enough for me, it's definitely good enough for you and vice versa. I wouldn't give you something that was just that I wouldn't use myself in my own business. I think if you can schedule in every week, okay. Almost look at yourself as a third party audit and review your own business. Is there a better way to do this? Who am I hired to do this? Should we really be paying, is the accountant working at the highest level for the profitability of my business? When was the last time I met with them? So it's like constantly reviewing what your choices are and whether there's a better one out there, because what happens. In my experience is we tend to set and forget, we set up our businesses and we go no, that's fine. I did that at the very beginning and that's fine. Okay. But when is your registration due to be paid for your business registration or like when you set up your original process flow or customer journey and you decided that was going to happen. You didn't have any customers. Probably you were just making up what you think should happen or what you would like to do with your imaginary journey. Now you have actual clients or you, when you are in the no longer imaginary future and you've got clients, that is really important that you go back all the time and invest in tightening and getting those systems and processes really perfect that mirror what your clients actually need because sometimes your business has even changed when you first set up everything you thought you were going to be purely finishes and fixtures. And now you've gone into a lot of full service design, or you've been doing a lot of exterior color consultations. So actually, if you'd taken 10 minutes, you could have created a really beautiful pack for delivering exterior that's templated that you can consistently be like yep. Everyone gets the same and it looks gorgeous. Anyway, I will leave you on that. If I can help you in any way, if the framework can help you in any way, DM me, come and talk to me. See me after class, all of those things, but no, absolutely do come and chat if there's ever anything that I can do to support your interior design business. Two exciting things coming up at the end of this week. Please join me on Thursday. I'm chatting to Crystal Bailey, who is just a powerhouse in the design space from DIY to helping women step out of the shadows and really engage. Engage with their life and create their dream life and their dream business and their dream homes. And I just know you're going to love the chat that I had with her on Thursday. And on Friday, it's International Women's Day. I am hosting an event in the city, which is for small business owners, just to connect with each other and have those conversations, because we all deserve to step away and out of the office to celebrate that day. So if you are listening to this in time and you would like to join us in the city of Melbourne, it's a very relaxed, long lunch, lots of chats, lots of support and mutual friendships. So drop into my DMs to let me know. And on that very same day, an International Women's Day, we are inviting some new Frameworkers in, which I love love. I know lots of you have been looking at the framework or thinking about it and what your life could look like and how different it could be in just 10 weeks, let alone with 12 months of my support and the support of the community. It is definitely something I felt that the start of the year has been a little bit slow in full disclosure. And I think that's just because. A lot of the people I work with have kids, and the kids are, starting school, getting back on track, but we're all in it now, and Q1 is gone. Bye, bye, baby. We are, everything we planned, did you achieve it? Do you need to review Q2, or you do need to review Q2, but do you have the right plans in place, and do you have the right support in place? If you can't answer that with a definitive heck yes, drop into my DMs at oleander underscore and underscore fint. Anytime, let's chat, but Friday is the day where we will be inviting some new students in and I cannot wait to meet them and get to help them with their businesses going forward. Okay, chat to you then. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.