Presenter’s week

A little while ago I shared a peek behind the curtain about how we (and me personally) kept on top of our workload as presenters, presentation trainers, a small business and, well, frankly… just people!

Now, at this point I had intended to give you a screenshot of my diary for this week but looking at it, there’s waayyyyy too much personal information visible even on a simple screenshot. And that’s deliberate in a way, because it means all I have to do is open my diary find information out – I don’t need to click through to anything. For example, this afternoon’s entry doesn’t just say “Video Training” – it says “Video Training for XXX”. By having the name of the client in the name of the event – and sometimes even the location, I can keep a much tighter eye on where I’m supposed to be and when.

The other thing you’d see from a screenshot is the name of my personal trainer because my gym appointments don’t just say “Gym”. Oh no. They say either “Gym – Anne” or “Gym – solo” so that I know at an immediate glance what’s what. (Yes, I’ve change the trainer’s name! ;) )

You’d also notice that this afternoon’s event is in purple because it’s a delivery and this morning’s gym (yes, I was being shouted at by “Anne” before eight o’clock this morning) was in red, because it’s personal. Administration work is in grey. Again, that’s more information at just a glance.

I don’t know about your Calendar app, but mine allows me to include travel time in my appointments too, so I can’t accidentally book myself meetings too close together. Trust me, this is an absolute Godsend!

Coming back to the grey things – the administration, background and research stuff – that’s in the diary for a reason: because if I don’t put it in the diary it’s less likely to get done or forgotten about. So my diary for today looks something like you can see. Notice that there are bits of white – my policy is to use these to go straight to my ‘jobs list’, which is where I put all those small, irritating little things that need to get done but which aren’t big enough to justify a calendar entry of their own.

These little jobs are captured on my iPhone and stored either directly on it or on Evernote which has the advantage of syncing to other places, too, incase the job involves anyone else.

On a personal note, you see the gym? That’s important. I don’t feel at all guilty about it cutting into a traditional working day. Partially because that’s because I’ll work in the evenings if necessary, but also because I consider being physically fit to be absolutely critical to my performance both on stage as a speaker and as a trainer. And I’m not alone in that: I don’t know any professional speakers who don’t make a point of looking after themselves carefully.

So that’s us/me… nothing magic about it, just a bit of common sense and the discipline to stick to the system we’ve developed. All I need now is not to need sleep ;)