What does it mean to be a productive personal trainer? Productivity is easy enough to measure. Basically, it means offering quality service to my clients and managing my time to ensure I am able to do more without stressing myself out.

Here are some habits I’ve developed as a Singapore personal trainer for many years to help me stay productive:

1. Delegate the work. If you’re a personal trainer, then that’s where your expertise lies. So you may want to hire others to do some of the work that your business needs. For example, you can hire someone to do your advertising for you. You can also let an expert design your website, instead of doing it yourself. You have your own work to do!

There are some types of home chores which you can also let others do so you can have more time to rest. Cleaning your house and mowing your lawn are good examples. When you arrive home after a hard day at the gym, what you don’t need is to do house chores. If you have family members living with you, ask them to do some chores like washing the dishes. Let them understand that you need rest because your livelihood depends on your health. If you’re sick, you won’t be earning anything.

1. Create a schedule. Your schedule isn’t solely about your sessions with your clients. You need to schedule when to do other tasks and some may not even be connected with your work.

So what you need is a schedule for each week. It doesn’t have to be rigid. You just need to list down all the tasks you’re supposed to do, and then list them by order of priority. Reserve some reasonable time for your high priority tasks before their deadlines. Then put in some work on the low priority tasks when you have some free time.

1. Learn to say NO. If you feel that you already have too much on your plate, don’t take any more work that adds to your load. If you take more than what you can handle, then you’re not being fair to all your clients because the quality of your service will suffer. At the same time, it can even leave you overburdened that you start feeling unwell, so you may even lose a few days and thus become more unproductive.

And there are also clients who you should simply reject. There are clients who want excessive discounts, like your friends. Tell them that you can’t help them and say “no”. Sometimes you’ll feel that a potential client is too demanding, or perhaps not entirely committed to the process. If you think that a potential client entails too much time and attention, you may want to reconsider taking them on as a client. The experience may not be worth the fees you will receive in exchange, and they may even tell others about how “you failed them”.

1. Give yourself adequate time to rest. You can’t work straight from the time you wake up to the time you sleep. You need some time in the morning to get your bearings, and then in the evening you need time to wind down. You obviously need time for adequate sleep as well.

I rest on most weekends and I take extended vacations for a breather every few months.

So to sum it up, you need to work less to become more productive. By doing so you avoid working on things you’re not equipped to handle, and you get to rest as much as you can. That gives you enough energy to bring your best whenever you are working with a client. Develop these habits and you can stay competitive in the fitness industry for a very long time.