Hey Friends! Happy 2021. I just posted a new video on my YouTube Channel that’s all about goal setting for fulfillment. Click above to watch. And if you’re serious about making 2021 your happiest and healthiest year yet, sign up below for my 21 day Goal Setting Challenge! It’s complete with a 1 hour goal setting workshop, printable workout plan AND 30 on-demand workout videos led by me and other GRIT instructors that you can do from the comfort of your home.
This year I set a goal to read at least 1 book per month and I’m so excited about my 12 book, boss babe reading plan!
I spent a ton of time selecting a solid combo of personal growth, fun fiction and girl power inspiration and tried to align them with the seasons and how I usually feel at certain points in the year.
Sooooo….any ladies looking to join me on the 2019 reading journey can check out my 12 picks below! I think I’ll call this “Brit’s Book Club” and now officially be on my journey of becoming Oprah 🙂 Enjoy!
January – Girl Wash Your Face, Rachel Hollis
February – The Secret, Rhonda Byrne
March – Activate Your Brain, Scott Halford
April – Becoming, Michelle Obama
May – Visioneering, Andy Standley
June – What To Ask The Person in The Mirror, Robert Kaplan
July – Nine Women One Dress, Janel Rosen
August – How the Might Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, Jim Collins
September – GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth
October – Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind, Joyce Meyer
Hey friends! As I mentioned in my last post, I’m making a personal commitment to post at least 1x per week in 2017. Man….I tell you what….it’s harder than I thought. I know I have to set aside designated “blogging time” to reestablish the discipline and rigor I once had around writing. That’s why I love the quote above so much…it’s so true! If I don’t plan, I’m essentially “planning” to not achieve my goal.
As small business owner, efficient time management is critical for survival because I have limited resources and am consistently forced to do more with less. So I thought “Time Management” would be the perfect topic for this blog post. Now I’m not the most detailed nor the most talented person, but when comes to getting sh*t done, I don’t mind tooting my own horn. People ask me all of the time, “How do you do it?” And the short answer is, I’m NOT a perfectionist. I prioritize the most critical tasks required to achieve my BIG goals. And I plan everything! I actually have some strategy around how I plan my week and how I think about each day as an input into the greater whole. I also operate under the core belief that DONE is always better thanks PERFECT, thus I’m not a perfectionist.
Below is my personal 5 step approach for strategizing and managing my time. Now, most people probably have a day planner and they just pencil in everything that pops up on their “to-do” list. Not my style. I create strategy for my entire week and then slot my activities into my “ideal outline.” Let’s dive a little deeper…
Brit’s Weekly Time Strategy for 2017
STEP 1: CREATE AN OUTLINE OF YOUR ENTIRE WEEK BY FIRST BLOCKING OUT THE NON-NEGOTIABLE TIME
As you can see above, I think about my week as a whole, and set aside designated time to work on the things most critical for achieving my BIG life goals. In doing so, I essentially have a “template” for my day planner and give myself structure so that I’m in control of my time, and random stuff that pops up can’t control me!
Obviously, I have to be physically present at work at certain times, so I block this time in green. For me this is when I’m physically teaching classes. So step 1 for you, think about your entire week and block out the time that is totally non-negotiable for your livelihood (i.e. weekly work and family commitments)
STEP 2: EVALUATE YOUR PERSONAL GOALS AND BLOCK TIME TO WORK ON THEM
Then I review my list of goals for the year and think about what specific actions are required to make them come to life. For example, I want to continue to grow my business and innovate new services for our clients. So, I have to block a few hours on my weekly calendar for “Standardization” and “Innovation.” During these time blocks I document our business processes, develop training manuals, create new class formats and work on strategic brand partnerships. Notice that nobody is “making” me do these things, but I have to make a personal commitment to myself to work on these things. Otherwise, 6 months will pass and I realize that I’ve made no progress.
Me with my 2017 goals in hand!
Another example is time for my relationships. On my 2017 goals, I stated that I want to continuously strengthen my relationships with my friends, family and myself. So I block out time on my weekly template to hang out with besties, to catch up with family and to just be alone and read, work on my personal development and quite simply enjoy my own company.
I can go on and on, but I think you get the point. Step 2 – evaluate your goals and dedicate time each week to work on them in bite size chunks.
STEP 3: PLAN TO PLAN
Weird, I know. But the reality is, I allocate time in my weekly calendar to plan the next week! That’s right…I plan to plan. So for me, on Sunday evenings I plan all of the choreography and playlists for my fitness classes the upcoming week, I plan my meals and my personal workouts. I also plan “free time” which allows me to handle random events in a structured, efficient way.
STEP 4: FILL OUT YOUR DAY PLANNER WITH SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES ALIGNED WITH YOUR OVERALL WEEKLY TIME STRATEGY
This part is fun. During my “planning time” each week I physically update my planner for the week ahead. As you can see above, my day planner aligns with my overall weekly strategy. I force myself to work on the things only during their designated time slots. This prevents me from getting distracted and makes my life easier because each day I simply wake up and follow the plan for the day.
STEP 5: TREASURE YOUR TIME
You owe it to yourself to achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams, and the only way to make that possible is to spend time working on your goals every single week. That means when people or outside commitments try throw something on your schedule, tell them that that you can get to it during your “free time” not during the time you’ve designated for working on your goals, your full-time job or other critical activities.
Well, that wraps it up. My 5 step time management approach for slaying your goals. Do you have any additional tips for making every minute count? If so, I’d love to hear them! Have a wonderful week and I’ll be back with more life and business hacks next week. xoxo, Brit
Hey Friends – happy 2016! First off, my sincere apologies for the sporadic blog posting. We have been crazy busy at GRIT Fitness with a rush of new members who are ready to get fit and feel fabulous in 2016. I’m not one for excuses, so I’ll just say “my bad” and start doing better. Most posts coming – I promise!
To kick off the New Year, my team and I met for an inspirational brainstorming and goal setting session. We chatted about things that were going well at GRIT and things that we can do better. We also spent time articulating our vision of an “amazing fitness experience” and then set some team and personal goals around that vision.
Fortunately, I had a great boss back in my consulting days who taught me about setting SMART Goals:Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time Bound. What are your goals for 2016? I encourage you to also set smart goals – they are more effective for driving to results!
As a small business owner and new entrepreneur I value this quality time with my team. Sure, I see these ladies everyday as sweat and smile during our classes at GRIT, but the most important thing I’ve learned during my first year as an entrepreneur is that my business success is 100% dependent on the engagement and performance of my team. Without my team – I have nothing! #realtalk
As a self-proclaimed “independent woman” this was a tough pill for me to swallow because a part of me prides myself on developing the concept for GRIT Fitness on my own and getting it up and running by leveraging my skills and experience. But as we continue to grow, there are SO MANY things that I simply can’t do by myself and SO MANY things that I just don’t know. I have to develop and empower my team to be leaders in their own right, take risks and to share their gifts with others.
While I absolutely LOVE group fitness and feel so blessed to wake up every day and pursue my passion, I get so much more joy from serving my team and creating a foundation for us all to pursue our passions together. I’ve learned that “it’s great to do what you love, but even greater with the great team.” Teamwork really does make the dream work. xoxo,Brit
Maria, GRIT Body Sculpt & HIIT instructor, showing off her mug
Hello friends! Happy Monday! I’m intrigued by SELF Magazine’s 21 Day Time Makeover Program, so I jumped on the bandwagon and I want to share my experience with you guys. The program requires you to take a short quiz to the find the right time makeover program for your personality type. As expected, one of the recommendations for my Type A personality is to “chill the eff out.” As a result, I decided to get more serious about my personal goal to allocate one day per week to just “chill.” Yep, that’s right, I’m making time to do absolutely nothing.
My recent transition from corporate America to opening my own fitness studio had been SO exciting a but a bit exhausting. Now I teach up to 13 classes per week and when I’m not teaching I’m doing marketing, training instructors, selling memberships, installing water fountains, cleaning toilets…the list goes on and on. Here’s a few pics from the studio that we took over the past few days…
Thursday night’s hip hop class was a huge hit! My little sister, Kortani AKA Tootie, is a fierce dance instructor!
Here’s a little video clip of the choreography our clients learned in their first hip hop class. Not bad huh?
I as so excited that my friend Anna recently moved to Dallas from Boston. We met while she was in high school in Ithaca, NY. I volunteered as a youth leader at Bethel Grove Bible Church while I was in college at Cornell and she was in our youth group. Now she’s all grown up, living in Dallas and engaged! Small world 🙂
My amazing friends have continued to send me pretty flowers and gifts – so blessed to have a strong support network!
While I had a crazy busy grand opening week at the studio, I did however, devote my entire Sunday to just chill (we don’t have Sunday classes at GRIT Fitness yet). Contrary to popular belief, it was actually a lot harder than I thought…
I started the day by making my coffee and watching a church service online. It took so much power to not turn on my laptop, but I succeeded. I then sat on my couch for a bit and folded some clothes until lunch time. My friend Dan and I enjoyed a fun Sunday brunch at Henderson Tap House and caught up over several mimosas – that was a great decision 🙂
When evening rolled around, I couldn’t help myself so I started analyzing the customer feedback surveys from our first week of classes and outlined enhancements we are going to make at GRIT Fitness this week. I only spent a couple of hours on this, so I’m still proud of myself as I spent the rest of the day just chillin’ (wink wink). I hope to do better next Sunday – will keep you posted! xoxo, Brit
Couldn’t help myself, finished the day doing just a little bit of work…I’ll do better next Sunday
If you had a Time Makeover, what would you make time for?
Hey friends! Happy Monday! I hope you had a good weekend. Mine was pretty decent. I did my usual routine of teaching indoor cycling at Beyond Pedaling on Saturday and teaching Turbo Kick at 24 Hour Fitness on Sunday. I also went to a beautiful wedding on Saturday evening for one of my college friends from Cornell. As a pleasant surprise, I ran into one of Turbo Kick students at the wedding! She happens to be a friend of the bride – small world! We had a blast, danced our booties off and ate a lot of wedding cake. Good times had by all. Unlike last weekend, I didn’t do any shopping this weekend (tear), but I did get some much-needed time at home to rest and rejuvenate. Did you do anything fun this weekend?
Yesterday my cousin, Juliette (AKA my “sister” because we spent every waking moment together as kids), sent me this hilarious video of her daughter, Violet, doing “post-dinner burpees.” Violet is almost 2 years old. Violet’s got GRIT. Juliette and her husband, Todd, are cheering Violet on as a she has blast doing the exercise that most of us dread. Check out the video below for a little Monday morning chuckle. Mom and dad are still working on her burpee form, but if that’s not raw talent I don’t know what is, haha. You can get awesome recipes, words of wisdom and humorous reflections on Juliette’s blog, A Life Less Tragic.
So… this week I’m personally going through a MAJOR life transition, which I’ll elaborate on next week once it fully registers. In the meanwhile, I’m focusing on some positive weekly goals to help me stay emotionally stable, productive and healthy. I wrote down these goals in my day planner and after looking them over, I figured it’d be a good idea to share on today’s post. If these goals help me (potentially), maybe they can help you too…
In case you’ve never tried Lemon/Cucumber water, you can get the details here – it is naturally detoxifying and tasty!
I hope you have a wonderful week and strive to achieve these gritty weekly goals for yourself.
Often we set intentions to fix things that we think are “wrong” with ourselves (i.e. “I’m fat so I wanna lose weight” or “I don’t like my job so I want a new one”). However, I’m big believer in the Power of Positive Thinking. This means our intentions should focus on what motivates us, not on what frustrates us. In doing so we generate natural energy and positive thinking to support our desired outcome. “We are authentically inspired by [our] goals [and] empowered to make them happen.” (Source: Oprah.com)
As you start the week answer the question, “What Motivates You?” Use your response to set your intention for the week – I can’t wait to hear your success stories!
