When people think about the person who follows a plan, they often envision a neurotic person who rigidly adheres to a schedule with no room for fun. These people exist, but planning can also be a way to simplify your life, reduce anxiety, and make more time for fun.
Among fitness professionals, working long hours is very common. Some fitness professionals might wake to start their client communications or morning PT sessions before sunrise, and they won't see the other side of the laptop or
gym until after dark. However, what you will often find is that only a small fraction of this time is genuinely spent on focused, deliberate work.
As a fitness professional, you are often
trying to juggle quite a few components of your own business; coaching clients, marketing, social media, client acquisition, back-end processes, admin, accounting, and more. This often results in sporadic task-shifting and time being sucked away from you by distractions amidst your work, such as scrolling social media or consuming the content of other trainers.
By taking a more detailed approach to daily, weekly, monthly, and maybe even yearly planning, you can become a lot more efficient and effective.
Yes, you will have to look at your failures honestly, and this can be hard for people. You begin to notice how poor you are at actually getting all of your tasks done, and you can see this right in front of your face when you did not follow through on your plan/schedule. But, these honest reflections of your true work will provide the reinforcement you need
to become a more productive person.
Rather than saying "I will post on social media more this week", say "I will post twice per day on 2 platforms, at 08:30 and 17:30, about these topics,
and here are my draft posts". Then, when will you finish the posts? Will you schedule them in advance? Do you have media ready for these?
Just saying you will do something without these
specifics is of no use. You will end up more anxious than you otherwise would have been, as you now have non-specified tasks looming in the back of your mind, draining your attention during other tasks.
When you plan, you can be comfortable. You know when you will do what. You don't have to be anxious about not getting it done. You know when it's getting done. All you have to do is maintain discipline in actually starting when you said you would.
Clearly, this is of strong relevance to training and nutrition also.
"I will train more this week"
No!
"I will train at 06:30 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for 1 hour, split up into Upper Body, Lower Body, and Full Body, and here are the exercises I will do in tis time"
Much better.
"I will eat clean this week"
No!
"I will eat 3 meals per day, with a protein source and fruits or vegetables at each meal, at 08:00, 13:00, 19:00, and I will consume a total of 2200 calories, featuring 150g protein. I will prepare meal 2 in advance, and cook meals 1 and 3 at the time."
See how different this is?
Yes, it's more to commit to, but all you are doing is
specifying what you really mean. When you do this, you can be more comfortable during the remainder of your day/week. And when you aren't getting results, then you can at least be honest with yourself in saying whether it was the specifics of the plan or your adherence to the plan at fault.
Fooling yourself by not planning might provide some short term comfort, with the trade-off more anxiety, fewer accomplishments, and a worse version of yourself long term.
Is that worth it?
Make a
plan.
