Fitness Management

Many fitness business professional's find themselves at a point of "not enough time to get everything done." So how can we best manage our time to be successful?

Let's first find a realistic starting point. It doesn't make sense to start lists, fill in planners, set priorities and other nonsense without first digging out some fundamental information. Here are a few time management tips for fitness business success:

#1 'BRAIN DUMP'

First, start off by doing a "brain-dump." Take some time to write down everything you do on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. You'll need to do two: one professional and one personal. You may even want to get some help from your business colleagues, spouse or a close friend. This is a key "foundational" step that should be done or the plan will fail.

#2 ORGANIZE IN DETAIL

Once your brain dump is done, break the lists further down into categories such as, stuff to delegate, stuff that you can do in just a few minutes, and bigger 'project' stuff.

As a fitness business owner, you can't possibly try to do everything yourself. If you have key people in place, such as administrative support, look at what you can delegate to them.

Next, you should be down to bigger 'project' items -- project work here is anything that is two or more steps or has other people involved.

#3 PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Now you can determine how to handle some of the 'bigger' project stuff. You'll need to take some time to analyze each of these tasks/projects to determine what comes first. What is the most important 'project' you can work on? Think about what contribution completion of this task will bring to your fitness business and how time sensitive is it? What is the next action step?

Now comes the most important part of all. YOU MUST BLOCK PROJECT TIME ON YOUR CALENDAR. In order to effectively manage projects you should work on them the same time every day. If a project is one that requires creativity, then schedule time when you are at your best. If the project is one of "boiler plate" type work then schedule it when all you want to do is "grind" away at something. The main thing is that you block the time every day. Make 'project' time a daily habit.

#4 TIME FRAMES

There are five time frames generally accepted as the most usable; Annual, Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly and Daily.

Deciding where to put your action items should be fairly easy as for the most part they are self explanatory. For example, annual items are birthdays, tax due day, vacation time.

You'll find that after awhile things will "flow" down to the weekly and daily items, which will be the most used time frames. Each month you will start your new/updated weekly list with a review of the upcoming month's activities. The weekly items are normally easy to prioritize as they are either 'blocked time' for projects or very highly visible action items. The daily list is an accumulation of the week's priorities by day as well as any additional action items from other lists. Just be careful when creating the daily list as it can get out of control with too much stuff.

Always ask yourself two questions: what is the most important thing I should be working on right now and when I complete the action item will it contribute to the overall welfare of the organization?

By breaking down your tasks and project work in this way, you'll see your time in a different light. It will help reduce stress and help you to identify the really important stuff out there, so you can plan properly for fitness business success!

About the Author:
He has over 30 years of sales, management, and leadership experience with 4 Fortune 500 companies. He is currently a sales, business optimization, leadership coach for fitness professionals. For more tips for business success go to www.fitnessmarketingmuscle.com/category/fitness-business/

Labels: fitness center management, fitness club management, fitness management, fitness management jobs, fitness weight management, health fitness management