How To Protect Your Time & Brand Value
Today I want to wrestle with a topic that many of us struggle with, including myself. The question of how to protect your time, schedule, and self worth.
In 2020, more of us are working from home, or virtually, than ever before. Our family may also be at home, making the concept of time management, and protecting our schedules, more challenging than ever.
Challenging, yet not impossible, if you actively focus on setting boundaries.
Why it’s important to guard your time
You may just take on the mindset of ‘go go go – let’s get it all done’ – never stopping to take some time to breathe, and reset. I don’t advise this. Great brands are all about protecting their value, and that value becomes eroded and tired when we too freely give away our time and attention due to the lack of boundaries.
If you’re able to implement the following strategies, you’ll find that you’re giving yourself back the time to focus on priorities, and recharge… ultimately recommitting to the tasks that might be at hand.
Why we don’t know how to protect our time
In short, it’s a lot. Balancing your home life, your job roles, your family roles – even your friendships – can be a lot to handle, to balance. Mix in the stress and pressure that daily life throws at us, and it can feel incredibly overwhelming.
But let’s move into some good news; you can implement some simple, effective steps to help you begin to take back control of your time, without necessarily moving mountains. It all starts with setting boundaries around your time, and doing so by defining three priorities that matter the most to you.
To help give you an idea of what I mean by this, let me share with you my three priorities that I recently defined:
- Turning off my phone more often
- Protect my health and wellbeing
- Setting time aside to learn
Protect your time by outlining your priorities
Let’s start with looking at priority #1 from above. When I say turn off my phone, I don’t just mean silent it, or flip it screen down. It’s important that I have times throughout the week where I power it down, and completely turn it off.
For me, not being accessible 24/7 became a priority to help protect my own time, and be able to recharge.
Priority #2: Health & Fitness
Recently, I was able to reconnect with a previous trainer of mine, who helped me train for a competition a few years ago. Working with him again, and setting that time aside to focus on my health, has allowed me to come back to myself, while investing in myself.
This time each week has helped me to not only feel physically stronger again, but also mentally more prepared.
Priority #3: Learning
Recently, I stumbled upon an old tape recorder that I used to use, many years ago. On the tapes were TONS of old teachings, music, and even mantras that I used to feed my personal growth, expanding my ability to learn and explore.
Now, once per week or so I will pull out the old tape recorder, and listen for some inspiration. This time helps to shift me back into the mindset of continuing to focus on learning, and challenging my brain, so that I’m not stagnant.
How to defend your own time
The above are just examples that have worked for me, and helped me take back some of my time, and reset when needed. Your list of priorities might look completely different, and that’s OK!
Everyone has different ways to set boundaries. But the key is identifying what those priorities first are, and then implementing ways to put them into motion. Ultimately, this will help you to protect your brand value, and protect your time.
Don’t forget: No is a complete sentence.
Have you been struggling with your personal brand value? Do you need some help building out, and define your personal brand pitch? You can download my free tool below!
