The Tea with Tina
The Tea with Tina is going to be your new favorite weekly chit-chat that will feel like a good, juicy sit-down with your BFF. This podcast isn't your average (and boring) radio talk show-styled podcast. We dig deep, get personal, and have lots of fun along the way. Hear some relatable stories and a different perspective on various topics from health and fitness to pop culture. I am Tina Wieland, a certified fitness trainer and nutrition coach. Grab your caffeinated drink of choice, get comfortable, and be ready to hear the TEA.
The Tea with Tina
241 | My Favorite Scheduling and Planning Tools I've Found Recently
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Ever rescued a kitten from a storm drain? I did, on Halloween night, and it set off a cascade of delightful chaos. This little black furball, currently quarantined from my other cat Binks, has been a symbol of the unexpected adventures life throws our way. Meanwhile, on the professional front, I'm navigating the transition from structured gym environments to the dynamic world of independent business, where action trumps perfection. Join me as I share how embracing organized chaos has not only been a necessity but a source of newfound efficiency in my entrepreneurial journey.
Unraveling digital chaos has been another adventure, thanks to productivity tools like Notion and TickTick. Notion has become my trusted partner in organizing tasks, brainstorming ideas, and managing client sessions, while TickTick offers a clean, user-friendly interface perfect for task management. Dive into my experiences with other apps like Teemo, which adds a splash of color and fun to time management, and Finch, which gamifies mindfulness practices. Whether you're struggling with time-blocking or seeking efficiency hacks, these stories and strategies might just inspire your own organizational journey.
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Welcome to the Tea with Tina, your favorite podcast, where we talk all things health, fitness, lifestyle and maybe a little bit of tea gets spilled. We chat all about this in a super casual environment. So grab your beverage of choice, sit back, relax and enjoy back, relax and enjoy. Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:I am sitting in my office with my kitten I don't know if you got the rundown of that, but on Halloween my husband found a black kitten trapped in a storm drain Not necessarily trapped, he was more so hiding in there. He's five or six months old and I think he's the runt. I think he was more so hiding in there. Um, he's five or six months old and I think he's the runt. I think he was the runt because he was a little bit smaller, a little bit underfed, he had ear mites, a yeast infection, he had some diarrhea sorry for the tmi um and we're just keeping him quarantined for my cat because at his age they need two negative feline leukemia um tests just to make sure that he can't give anything to binks. So he is quarantined in our office. Um, that has been a cute little um. He's been a cute little obstacle lately, like I just went to get up to try to record outside and he like looked at me with his little purr and his little voice and I was like, oh, I guess I can't move so I'm trapped, um, but anyways, things have been busy lately. Life has been busy and most of the time I like to share what's currently going on in my world because it just feels natural, um, and I feel like I'm able to speak upon it better than, like, picking a random topic and trying to get excited about talking about it, if that makes sense. So I actually want to talk about. I feel like I'm kind of up leveling in a way. You know, when you get new systems, maybe if you're, maybe if you're not a business owner, this won't make sense, but maybe it will. If you have new systems in life and you have a new routine, you almost need again a new system to support it, and I have been playing around with some apps, some productivity apps, to help support that, because I was in a little bit of organized chaos.
Speaker 1:I would definitely say that I've started my business with kind of winging it, which most people do. Do you jump in? You wing it If you try to plan everything and make it perfect before you even start, you're going to get nowhere, and that goes with anything With your fitness journey. If you try to make everything perfect, have the perfect workout program, find the perfect meal plan, you're just going to be stuck and frozen and never actually take any action.
Speaker 1:And it's been an interesting background because most of my training career I have worked for other, like commercial big box gyms, and they had a system in place usually for me to follow, and each gym that I changed there was a system. And the new gym that I independently train out of has a somewhat of a system. But I have to create, kind of my own back-end system and I'm someone that, like, I'm gonna create it when there's a need for it. And and um, I'm also slightly picky about, like, certain softwares or certain ways of doing things, because I want to make sure it's something that I'm easily going to be able to do consistently. Um, and you, you may be able to relate whether it's like, like you, that I'm easily going to be able to do consistently, and you may be able to relate whether it's like, like you know, I don't want to download an app I'm never going to use or create this system. That feels like torture to try to do it. I want to make it as efficient as possible, so I've been doing that and on top of having my own business where literally you just you know there's no, there's, there's no rulebook, there's no documents you download online and you're like here's your starter pack. You literally just pull everything out of thin air.
Speaker 1:I remember I had that realization moment a couple months ago. I was like my business I literally just created from absolutely nothing, which is pretty crazy. Everything that I have was made from absolutely nothing. It came from my brain. Obviously, we have platforms and things, but systems and everything has been built by me and it can be a little bit of a chaotic energy and I've been looking in and just trying to streamline stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm also that kind of person who, like, do you ever have like a bunch of screenshots on your phone or maybe emails that you save to read later? And this depends on your personality type Not everybody's like this but I feel like I need to kind of go through and delete like the unused screenshots and organize them and put them into folders and organize to do's, because when I brain dump stuff, if I have a thought, I put it into my notes app and I try to organize it. So we're organizing the chaos and I want to share the three apps that I want to try. Well, actually, four, four, four apps that I use and I'm currently trying to help get organized and stay on track. Alright, so let's dive in. So first one that I want to share is Notion. So you may have heard of Notion. I have been using Notion for a long time and it's kind of evolved. I actually started. There's a girl on YouTube her name's Katie Steckley and I don't know how. I just stumbled upon her video and it showed her using Notion to organize her business and I really enjoyed the layout that she did.
Speaker 1:Because if you give me something I have no idea, I have no idea how to build it. It's kind of like when you have like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Like I struggle to know how to just build something from scratch. If you give me a template to kind of like rehab and fix up and put a little twist on my own, that's that's where I flourish. It's like the sims any of my sims players like if you have a rundown house, if you give me the base and then I'll decorate it to make it look pretty, we're good. But if you just give me an empty lot, you're like build a house, it's gonna look a little janky, okay, so. So with notion, there's actually a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of free templates out there. So go on youtube. They have a template library of their own. Um, feel free to browse. You can copy and paste and download different templates and figure out what works for you.
Speaker 1:But essentially I use um notion as a fancier, more streamlined notes app. I would say um, I have a little to-do tab that my big thing is. I love the little square check boxes that I can just click and it checks the box and it slashes out the task for the day. So I kind of have like a brain dump section. I also have like a weekly to-do, like as far as my client check-ins. I check those off when I'm like okay, I did that Little things that I have to do every week and then I pretty much just uncheck the boxes for the fresh week. So that is one of the things I have. I have a little content brain dump for my content ideas. I track my clients workout sessions in here again using, using the check boxes. Some notes, some various notes in here. Anytime I'm like planning certain things out for programs and just brainstorming.
Speaker 1:Most of the time my ideas go into notion. It's just a great way to be messy. I also just love the layout like it's very simple. You can transform like lines of text into um, like check. You can transform it into drop down boxes just at the click of a button. So it's more user friendly than like notes app or like Microsoft Word or a Google Doc. You know what I mean. You can do those things, but in my opinion I feel like it takes extra clicks. This is a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:I will like have an honorable mention of the notes app. They actually did do an update with the new iOS so you know you can actually color code things and highlight um. You can do voice memos in there. I haven't really played around with that so much because I do my voice memos in the voice memo app for my podcast. But I would say the notes is app is more of my on the go mini notion, so I use that to literally brain dump and I do have little folders categorized in here Like the big thing I use the Notes app for is my class layouts.
Speaker 1:So you know, each week I have different classes, I have five different well, six classes that I teach actually, and I will, you know, copy and paste. Each class has its own little folder. I'll copy and paste the format and then I go through and switch out the moves and it's nice to kind of look back to make sure I'm not like um, repeating too much or I can build off of something. And then anytime I need like just literally a quick thought, um jot something down. You know something I need to just pull up on my phone really quickly. It's generally going to go in the notes app.
Speaker 1:Notion is going to be more when I'm on my laptop and it's more formal. It's me more more planning. So that's just how I use it. But you know you can use it for so many different things. You know, go down the rabbit hole, you'd be amazed at what you can do in Notion. But I try to keep it simple for my range. So that would be the first app that I really use a lot to kind of stay organized. The next app I'm using is called TickTick T-I-C-K, t-i-c-k and I really a big thing for me is the cleanliness of the app, like how streamlined it looks and how like user you know I don't want to have to click a ton of things to get to where I need to be. It needs to be quick, simple, drag drop, like really easy, and TickTick in a way is kind of like Notion. It's definitely like a to do list and you check things off and you can adjust like the priority of things For me.
Speaker 1:What I'm starting out to use this for is client programs. Starting out to use this for is client programs. So the reason I really started on this journey is as far as notifications go. So I have to update client programs pretty much every four weeks and there is no notification system within the coaching app that I use that like pops out this big red flag or sends me an email and is like hey, this person's program's due and everybody's programs are due at different times. Like I might have four people to do this week and then three more people next week and you know, unless I manually go in and check to see when it's due, I'm not gonna know. So I wanted a little bit more of an efficient system and I've tried um, the reminder app, I've tried the google app notifications, and just nothing was working. So I've been looking in tiktik and tiktik is nice. You can type whatever you want. Like I'm gonna say this person's new program is due, you know, um December 15th and, and when I do that, it'll actually auto recognize the date and it'll automatically make it for December 15th. And I actually was able to set up a notification for every four weeks to tell me, hey, this, this program's due. So I love that and I get a reminder a week before, so I have plenty of time to program and it shows up in my daily to-dos.
Speaker 1:But pretty much, you can add subcategories, you can have subtasks. When you click on the task itself something I really like it's like a little checkbox. When you click on it, a little page pops up and you can actually type notes in it. Have little like mini tasks to do compared to the big task. So it's actually really nice. And there's a little today so you can see everything that's due today. Uh, you see what's due in the next seven days. Um, it's really nice, so I'm playing around with it. Uh, I'm on the free version currently. I guess you can sync up your google calendar with the um premium, but I don't necessarily need it right now. Um, so I'm just playing around.
Speaker 1:And something else that I like is they have some different formats. Like they have a little timer so you can time yourself doing a task. Like give yourself 25 minutes to focus on, you know a set task and you're only allowed to work on that task. Um, you can track habits and it's very clean, it's very colorful. I I really enjoy that. And then they have the Eisenhower matrix, which I also like. If you're not familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, um, you pretty much can brain dump all of your tasks and you divide them into four categories. There's urgent and important, um, urgent and unimportant, not urgent and important and not urgent and unimportant. So this allows you to kind of break down all your things and being like, okay, what needs to be done right now, what has a priority but can be kind of pushed off, and what's kind of just like random, you can sort it all out, which I also really enjoy. And again, you can just drag and drop. So that allows you when you get that overwhelm and you're like I have so many things to do, you just kind of look and you're like, okay, what do I actually need to get done right now? What's kind of just like a nice thought right. So it's really great how you can kind of organize your thoughts. Again, I'm totally playing around with this for right now but I hope to build upon it.
Speaker 1:I was very slow to coming around to Notion. I literally just started with like a to-do list. I've been slowly kind of building upon it and getting more efficient and streamlining my process. So you know we have that. It's a work in progress. You may be different from me, but I'm just sharing my personal experience.
Speaker 1:The other app which I actually haven't played around with yet is Teemo T-I-E-M-O. Okay, so this is more of like a calendar app, but what I like about it is that you can add tasks and within the task it can be colored. You can have a little emoji assigned to it. So it's more of like a visual thing. So, for instance, it kind of auto defaulted a morning check in so you have time to be like okay, you sit down and you plan your day out, and it's like a little orange peachy color with a sun emoji right and you can set a timer to repeat and you can actually add subtasks to within that task. So similar to the TickTick app, but a little bit more visual. You can add notes, you can add little like tags with it, with emojis I am an emoji gal, I love me emojis, so you can do that and you can also build in a timer with it, so like, let's say, this task is supposed to take 30 minutes. When you click on that, you can start a timer for 30 minutes to get the task done. And, yeah, you can get it done. So I really enjoy that. Um, they have a visual timer, um, so that's kind of what I'm playing around with, and it looks like they have some pre-made. I'm in the desktop app right now. They have some pre-made tasks, which is really nice, so I'm gonna play around with that.
Speaker 1:The part that seems overwhelming to me is simply adding in my to-dos, because I gonna tell you, the one thing I struggle with that maybe you'll struggle with is I'm a free spirit, but I want to be organized like, uh, unless it's like a very concrete task, like you have a doctor's appointment at 3 pm, um, I do not like time blocking my time, and maybe I'll play around with making it more generalized, the idea of being like okay, so what am I doing at 10 45? I am recording a podcast episode. I don't like taking that extra time to Block it, but I know that it'll help me stay on task and stay organized. Like, hey, you have 20 minutes to record these podcasts and it'll allow me to not go over on time. Um, it'll allow me to just stay on track a little bit more. Okay, so I have that. That's another one T-I-M-O.
Speaker 1:And then the last one that I've been really enjoying is the Finch app. I found this on the app store and I heard a couple people mention it and I see some ads for it. But Finch is a fun little kind of gamified app of just getting some basic things done. You could do it for a lot of things I would use this more for, like, mindfulness, simple tasks, um, so you have a little bird to take care of. In Finch, my bird's name's Noodle. I just let it, um, like auto, make a name for me and I thought that was a cute name. You pick color.
Speaker 1:Um, you have a little house and you have tasks to do, and mine are really simple, but I do it to just kind of keep me on track. Like brush your teeth, wash your face, um, take three deep breaths, do one thing for yourself today, like there's all these little things to do and um, each time you complete a task, you, um, you get points and you can kind of buy stuff for your bird. I have a little wizard hat on mine, okay, um, there's a mushroom hat I'm looking at. You can decorate your room. The bird will grow. You can nurture it.
Speaker 1:Um, you, you can add custom tasks. Sometimes the tasks are a little bit more in depth, like you can actually like journal in them. You could write your thoughts, share your feelings, um, so it's actually really nice, I would say, on a more mindfulness side of things. So, um, more of that yoga, mindfulness, breathing, self-care side of things. I think it works really well. Um, so I would recommend that, if that sounds like something on up your alley, you can actually send your little bird on um journeys, adventures, and they'll come back.
Speaker 1:Something I thought was interesting was like, um, he came back and he'll come back with something every day and, uh, I don't know, he's like I like the baby shark song. Um, do you like it? And I didn't want to be mean. There was like two options of saying like ew, that's an annoying song, get that out of your head. And oh, yeah, that's a nice song. So I just said, oh yeah, that's a nice song and I was like maybe that was the wrong choice. But, um, so I guess my bird likes the baby shark song, so that's what we have there.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, so I've been using the Finch app for that kind of just to gamify, some basic stuff to keep me on task. So between all of those, those have been the things that I've been using to kind of organize my brain. Again, it's a little bit more in a trial and error phase. I definitely use google calendar for, like my client, um sessions, just because it syncs up with um, my gym's uh scheduling system, and it's just nice. I even simplify that. I try to color code things with my brand colors. I'm always looking for ways to make it more efficient. Even something simple like putting an emoji in front of my task, like a little flex emoji in front of personal training sessions, makes my life easier, makes my brain think like one second less right. So little things can go a long way, but I hope maybe you'll look into these apps and think about it.
Speaker 1:So just to recap, I have Notion N-O-T-I-O-N. Tick, tick, t-i-c-k, t-i-c-k, t Is it T-M-O, t-i-i-m-o, t-m-o? And then the notes app and finch okay, so give those a check. Uh, these, these aren't sponsored or anything. This is just me like researching and looking through a hundred different apps and be like, oh, these are half decent, let's see how this works. So that's just how my brain works. Um, but thanks for tuning in, guys. I hope this helped and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye.
