AGC #004 - Questions for better productivity

In this issue, I’m going to teach you how to improve your weekly productivity.

Most coaches have to wear many hats, manage numerous people and put out new fires daily. That means that most of their time is spent working “in” coaching rather than “on” coaching, wishing they had more time and brain space to make their team better.

Coaches need systems that force them to prioritize what moves the needle.

Without these productivity systems in place, numerous challenges can arise:

Challenge 1 - Wrong focus: Spending time doing things that feel productive but are really part of the 80% of things that don’t help your program progress.

Challenge 2 - Context switching: Being continuously distracted by emails or notifications that take you out of your flow state and waste lots of time.

Challenge 3 - All talk, no action: Having too much of your day taken up with collaboration and meetings that drain your time, energy, and creative bandwidth.

You can overcome all of these challenges by building a better system for improving your weekly productivity.

Here is a 4-question process to follow.

Question 1: What can I add and drop?

Coaching is, by its nature, collaborative and relational. Great connections and ideas can come from intentional time spent with players and staff members.

But when you look at your calendar, do you see any meetings you shouldn’t have booked, or aren’t aligned with your main priorities?

Eliminating these - and learning to say no moving forward - creates more gaps in your calendar. Now, make sure you add blocks for getting things done that really matter to you.

If journaling your thoughts about the previous day’s practice is important, for example, put time on your calendar to do it - it’s less likely you’ll forget or lose that time to less relevant tasks.

Question 2: What can I simplify?

Once your calendar has been curated, you can begin to simplify.

Simplification usually comes in the form of more straightforward processes, a reduction in the scope of work, or putting a limit on certain things that require thinking and decisions.

An example of simplification where I work has been practice planning. By creating a template that automatically calculates time, rest, and reps - instead of staring at a blank page - we can plug in our exercises and quickly map out the session. It easily saves us 20 minutes a day.

(Note: If you’re interested in trying this out for yourself, you can download my free Simple Practice Planner for Notion, or check out the premium version ($15) which helps you smartly archive everything so you can always find the content and context of every exercise you’ve ever used)

Processes and systems help simplify. Always be on the lookout to improve yours.

Question 3: What can I automate?

Next, you can look for obvious places to insert automation.

A perfect example is running player meetings. We are a highly communicative coaching staff at Liberty Field Hockey, and have multiple meetings per semester with a single player and all three coaches, whether at our behest or theirs.

Here’s our old process for organizing these:

• Step 1: Send out a reminder to sign up

• Step 2: Manually check for responses or requests to meet

• Step 3: Contact the player to find a time that works for all parties

• Step 4: Send a reminder about the meeting if necessary

Now, the players have a Calendly link they can use to book a meeting, which automatically checks our calendar for conflicts, only offers open slots, and has a maximum daily number so we don’t overstretch ourselves.

Automated calendar booking software is hardly revolutionary, but it’s one of many free or low-cost tools that can give you easy efficiency wins.

Question 4: What can I delegate?

Delegation of tasks means releasing control of less valuable work than the time it would take you, personally, to do.

Giving everyone on a coaching team clear roles and responsibilities is the jumping-off point. This should ensure repeating tasks - for example, college coaches logging practice for compliance, or club coaches making tournament registration forms - are correctly delegated.

A robust task management system, where you can assign tasks to the right people, with appropriate instructions and deadlines, forms accountability loops. It also allows a coach to offload whatever they can.

Finally, if you’ve ever found yourself having to explain the same thing to multiple people you work with, it might be time to make some process documents or videos.

You likely have a ton of procedural knowledge of your own environment, so getting it out of your brain and onto something you can send to someone will save you even more time.

I hope that this newsletter will help you better organize your day, or give an idea or two you can use to prioritize more effectively!