In this episode, host Julie Hood shares 10 ways to finish your course faster – and they are some of the techniques used in her 24 Hour Course Creator program which will be available in a daily, coached version starting January 11, 2021.
In this episode, host Julie Hood shares 10 ways to finish your course faster – and they are some of the techniques used in her 24 Hour Course Creator program which will be available in a daily, coached version starting January 11, 2021.
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As I start each new year, I always like to take a look at my systems like how I'm organizing things, to see if there's places where it could be more efficient or more productive. And today I want to share 10 ideas with you, so you can have even more time to work on your next course in the year ahead. So let's get to it.
Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host, Julie Hood. Today is a rapid fire session of 10 of my favorite ways to find more time in your life. And it's just in time because we're starting a new session of the 24 hour course creator daily Program on January the 11th in 2021,
I created this program so you can spend one hour a day and get your course completed in just 24 days. I've got it all laid out for you. I tell you exactly what to do each hour. So you just sit down at your computer and get to work. Plus I also have coaching hours. So during the it's about five weeks, we spread the 24 days out over five weeks.
And during that time, I have coaching hours to help you brainstorm your course title and help you out. If you get stuck somewhere in putting your course together. So I really hope you can join us. You can find out more at 24hourcoursecreator.com and I'm hoping you can join us in January. We're going to have a great time. All right, so let's get to the 10 secrets first up.
The one thing I want you to do every day is plan the next day before you get started. So at the end of your day, or later on, before you go to bed, whichever it is take the time to plan what you're going to do the next day, because there's something very powerful about not only writing it down and having it defined for you,
but also when you can sit down at your computer and you know exactly where to start, you don't have to waste those first few minutes going, Hmm, what's on my list today. What needs to happen? What is the highest priority? If you have that already figured out, you can just sit down and jump in and get to work. So definitely do that every day that I do that,
I come up with a much more productive day. So it's something you should try it and see if it helps you to. Number two is to cut your course down and maybe even turn it into two courses. I see this with nearly every single course creator that I work with, they have so much good information and they're such experts. And the course outline that they put together is way too long and has way too many lessons and will just overwhelm your students.
So turn it into two courses. You'll make twice as much revenue off the two different courses and your students will be much happier because they feel like they can get through the first course pretty easily and get their initial transformation. So consider cutting your course down and turning it into two courses. Number three, schedule your course, time on your calendar and schedule it sort of like it's a doctor's appointment.
And you know how the doctors always say, you have to give us 24 hours. Notice if for some reason you're not going to make it to your appointment. And if they don't, they charge you. So I want you to take these appointments that seriously with yourself, schedule them into your calendar, make them unbreakable appointments with yourself, to work on your course and schedule them in,
make them appointments that you know, you're going to keep with yourself. Number four is all about doing really detailed and effective outlines for your course. So I'm going to give you three different ideas on how you could do this. The first one for my people who love mind maps, I know those of you who love them are addicted to them and that's not me,
but I know a lot of you are. And so there's three different tools that you can use mind, master mind, jet and X, mind, not.net X, mind.net. They all have free and paid versions. So you can try one of those tools and see if they can help you with putting your course outline together in a mind map. The second tool is something called workflowy,
and it's an online outlining tool for all my list making, outlining folks who are like me and want to use an outlining tool. Workflowy.com is one of my favorites. And then the third method is to grab either a stack of index cards or a pile of post-it notes. And I want you to put one topic idea, one concept on each card and each post-it note,
and then you can rearrange them on a table and get your layout and outline for your course. So that's three different ways to do a much more efficient and much better outline for your course. Number five is I want you to either get your groceries delivered or at least do grocery pickup for so that you're not spending hours and hours in the grocery store. This is one of the best things I did.
I drive to pick up my groceries. I listen to podcasts on the way and on the way home I can. If I have to wait a few minutes, I always have my phone with me. I can do a little bit of work while I'm waiting, but I don't spend any time in the store looking for groceries. So it's a huge time-saver for me.
Number six is to use an electronic calendar, either something like Google calendar or apple calendar. And here's why I'm not a huge fan of doing all of your planning on digital, because there's something about physically writing things down. I think that's much more effective generally for most, most people, but I do love the digital calendars and the online calendars, because there are a couple of features in those that you can't get with just a paper calendar.
The first one is that you have reminders, so you can set up notifications that will tell you whenever you want to remind you about upcoming events. So I will put notifications in that will maybe tell me four or five hours before something. If I think I'm going to forget about it. And then it gives me a 10 minute notice. I can get either notices that pop up on the computer or I can get notices in my email.
So that's really helpful. And then for any kind of meeting that is recurring, so something that you have every day, every week, those kinds of meetings, you set them up once in your tool, and then you tell it how often it should recur. So another huge time-saver rather than having to keep track of every single event. You put it in once and say,
I want this to be weekly until May 31st, or I want this to be weekly until the end of the year. So those two features alone make the online digital calendars incredibly effective and helpful. And the other thing is if you're working with anyone else, either other family members or a spouse, and you need to have some idea of each other's calendars, a digital version is really,
really helpful for this. So when my kids were younger and they were very, very busy with school activities, we each had our own digital calendar. Emily was purple. David was red, and I could always see what their activities were when they were, and I could have them all on the screen at the same time or turn them on and off.
If I wanted to have a cleaner calendar just of my stuff, it was really fantastic way to keep up with what our appointments were and what was going on. Okay. Number seven is to try the Pomodoro technique. If you've ever heard of this, the Pomodoro technique is that you take a timer and you set it for 25 minutes and your goal is to sit down and do focused intense work for 25 minutes.
And then you take a five minute break, get up, walk around, get a drink of water, grab some tea, you know, whatever you need for a break. And then you do another 25 minutes session. And part of the concept of the Pomodoro technique is that you can focus for intensely for short periods of time. And then the break helps you reset and restart.
So try that out, see how it works for you. Maybe it's not 25 minutes for you. Maybe it's 15 minutes or 20 minutes, or maybe you can even go longer than that, but try it out. See if the focused time plus break is an effective technique to help you use your time more, more to use your time better. And then number eight is to switch up whatever method it is that you're using.
So if you're big paper and pen and you do a lot of writing of different concepts, try sitting down once at your computer and see if you get a different level of inspiration when you're typing in digital, or if you're strictly digital person, switch it up once and try using paper and pen to see if you get more inspiration, more ideas and different ideas and inspiration.
And then number nine is to set up your own home set for doing your recording. And this was one of the things I did when I got started. And it is so, so helpful. If you can find a corner of your house that you can do this in. So I have everything set up for specifically podcast recording, but also for video recording with my lights,
I have two umbrella lights plus a ring light. Plus my microphone for podcasting. It's all set up at a desk with a table and then I have a background set up for me so I can sit down. I push a button, all the lights, come on, everything's ready. It's such a huge time saver. If I had to sit down and pull out the lights and dig them out of the closet and set them all up every single time I wanted to record it would never happen.
So try if you can to find a place in your home where you can set up just for recording, whenever you want to, whenever you're ready. And then number to end. My final tip is to put all of this equipment. Once you do get this set up and have your own set is to put them on some kind of Alexa plug or power strip.
So then you can just say, Hey, Alexa, turn on my lights. And your whole set will light up for you. And you're not turning on each individual light and getting all the power to everything. You can do it with just one request. And I know some of these things seem like really small changes that you could make and small things that you could add,
but they add up over time. When you combine all of them, you can get several hours a week back into your life. So please let me know at of coursecreatorshq.com/21. Let me know which of these you have used. And if any of them have been helpful and giving you some more time that's coursecreatorshq.com/21, I'll have links to the different software and different things that I mentioned.
This is just a few of the things that we talk about in 24 hour course creator, and making sure that you are able to put your course together really, really quickly and really, really efficiently. So I'm hoping that you can join us in 2021 and let's get your first or your next course done really, really quickly between January 11th, 2021 and February 15th. So thanks so much for listening.
Thank you for subscribing. And I really appreciate the reviews that you leave for us. I wanted to share a really wonderful testimonial that I got from Fit Fanny Adams on Instagram. And she said, I've just found your podcast and found it refreshing, really full of facts and info. It's wonderful. Thank you, Sarah Jane and I followed up with her and we chatted a bit on DMS and she said that she actually followed what we said in the landing page episode and got her landing page up and running within a few hours from scratch.
So this completely made my day. That is totally what I'm hoping will work for you. I want you to come across these episodes, get inspired, get something up and running in just a couple hours or a couple of days. So thanks so much to Fit Fanny Adams, Sarah Jane. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for leaving a review for the podcast.
You're the best. And I hope you have a fantastic week and can join us for 24 hour course creator in January. I would love to have you there and let's brainstorm about your next course. Thanks so much for listening. Have a Fantasy fantastic week and I'll catch you next time.