LearnBytes episode #7 – Beth Reading: How to overcome procrastination

Get notified of future episodes: YouTube playlist | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Podcasts | iHeartRadio 

Connect with the show on Instagram: @LearnBytes

In this episode

Samantha is joined by Beth Reading, the founder and owner of My Pilates Time.

In her race against the clock, Beth shares how procrastination has been her biggest efficiency and productivity challenge – and how she has overcome it. We also hear why working somewhere free of distractions (and dirty dishes!) is important.

You can connect with Beth and My Pilates Time on Facebook and Instagram. You can sign up for a free 7 day trial of My Pilates Time at mypilatestime.com.

Links from the episode

Beth’s podcast recommendation is Women of Impact with Lisa Bilyeu.

Sign up for our newsletter, packed full with strategies to help you live your most efficient, productive & organised life.

https://utb.fyi/join-newsletter

Watch it now

Transcript

Samantha  0:02  

Hello, and welcome to LearnBytes, the show that delivers bite sized pieces of wisdom so you can learn how to increase your efficiency and productivity, embrace your natural creativity and lead with impact. I’m Samantha Garrett from Using Technology Better and joining me today to share their wisdom is Beth Reading. Welcome, Beth.

 

Beth Reading  0:23  

Thanks for having me.

 

Samantha  0:25  

You’re most welcome, excited to have you here. So Beth is the founder of My Pilates Time and she’s chosen today to speak on the topic of efficiency and productivity. So, Beth, before we jump into our eight questions in four minutes, do you want to share a little bit about yourself and what you’re passionate about in life.

 

Beth Reading  0:43  

Yes, sure, so um, yeah, like you said, Sam, I’m the owner of My Pilates Time. And I’m passionate about helping women just feel really good in their bodies and in themselves, so that they can, you know, enjoy life without, you know, suffering with aches and pains, and just enjoy all the parts of their life that they want all the activities and fun things they want to be a part of. And I live in Queenstown, New Zealand, I feel very blessed to live here in among the mountains, covered in snow at the moment, so lovely to have that richness of nature around me.

 

Samantha  1:20  

Yeah, everyone will be envious now the moment you said that, but what we can tell people that is if they want to see that beauty, alot of your videos on My Pilates Time we actually see the Queenstown mountains in the background. Yeah, very nice. Lovely, thank you Beth, so, as you know, the show is all about bite sized pieces of wisdom. So that’s why I’m going to give you a four minute timer. And I know the pressure is on. So if you beat the clock, come in under the four minutes, you can ask me any question. And I’ll do my best to answer it. So.

 

Beth Reading  1:55  

Ok, sounds fun, I’ll see how we go.

 

Samantha  1:58  

Yeah. All right. We’re ready. I’m gonna click across and start the all important timer and we’ll go. All right. First mobile phone and current phone?

 

Beth Reading  2:10  

Oh well, my first one, I wouldn’t really know what it was. But I know it was as big as a brick. So it was a long time ago. And at the moment, I have an Oppo, and I liked it because it was teal green.

 

Samantha  2:22  

Pretty I do, that does sound very nice. What does working efficiently and productively mean to you?

 

Beth Reading  2:30  

Well, I love crossing things off a list. So I’m a real list girl. And if I can get through the end of the day and have my list crossed off, that makes me feel really achieved. And I know this is dorky, but even if I do something that’s not on the list, I’ll write it down, just so I can cross it off.

 

Samantha  2:48  

Oh my gosh, I do that too!. I’m so with you.

 

Beth Reading  2:51  

Yeah. Very. Yeah, I love those lists.

 

Samantha  2:57  

When and where do you work best?

 

Beth Reading  2:59  

Well, I’m definitely a morning girl. And I’ve actually changed my workspace just recently, because my husband and I, we both work from home and my kids do online school. So I was sort of at the kitchen table family room. And it’s so hard for me to work and see any dishes in the sink, I just, I had to do those dishes. And so what I’ve done recently is moved to a little, little nook up in my Pilates studio, where I can take myself away, and I don’t have to look at the dishes. And it’s just been so so much better. 

 

Samantha  3:34  

That’s an awesome tip. Because I’ve actually had a lot of people ask me about working from home tips given that’s what we’re doing. So that is so fantastic you’ve popped that in.

 

Beth Reading  3:41  

I’ve got a little nook in our bedroom too. So I’ve just put a little chair a little side table so I can even just sneak in here and shut into the bedroom and shut the door. So just little spaces that you can pull away from, yeah, being distracted.

 

Samantha  3:59  

I love it. Your favorite app for helping you work efficiently or productively?

 

Beth Reading  4:04  

I’m just, I’ve been using Google Keep quite a bit just on the side of my emails. So writing emails that are just links that I need to refer to a lot like they’re just easy to go in copy and paste and put them in my emails. Before I was going into like a Drive folder, and it just seemed to take a lot longer.

 

Samantha  4:24  

Good tip! Biggest efficiency or productivity challenge?

 

Beth Reading  4:29  

Okay, well, for me, I would always procrastinate because I was I would always say I’m a perfectionist, so I wanted to get things right. And that would be what I would say, Well, I can’t get that done yet or I won’t post that blog or that video because it wasn’t exactly how I imagined it. But when I got you know whittled it down and started to think why am I actually saying that it was actually because fear was underneath that and the real reason I was saying I wanted it to be perfect was because I was afraid, or fearful that it would be judged or not liked. And when I got over that and realize that, even if I put something out that isn’t maybe exactly right, but it’s still helping people and benefiting people, then it makes that perfectionism, I can just let that go.

 

Samantha  5:18  

That’s fantastic. And do you know what you’ve, that’s, that’s interesting, because the next question was going to be the number one thing you’ve done that has had the biggest impact. And I think you answered that in that, which was beautiful, because we’ve got 35 seconds, so I can move on to the next two questions. 

 

Beth Reading  5:32  

Yeah, okay. 

 

Samantha  5:33  

I think I think we can tick, cross of our list, five and six together. I love it.

 

Beth Reading  5:39  

Book, video or podcast that you’d recommend to others? Um I like Women of Impact by Lisa Bilyeu, yeah I love her little Dear Diary entries.

 

Samantha  5:48  

So good awesome. And if you could save an hour each day and spend that time doing something you’re passionate about, how would you spend it?

 

Beth Reading  5:57  

I do walk every day. But an extra hour would mean I could go up a bigger mountain. And I would love that. I feel like when when I move, you know it, I can think, I can release emotion, it clears my head. So that’s why I love movement. And, you know, walking is golden. Maybe in summer, when I get longer days, I’ll be able to have more time to do that.

 

Samantha  6:23  

That’s great. You, we just had over five, four minutes. All good! You snuck in the answer getting up bigger mountains in time so we’re all good. So I was just thinking yeah, because of course, when we have longer days that the daylight savings, particularly here in our part of the world.

 

Beth Reading  6:38  

Especially South here in Queenstown, you know, summer, the sun doesn’t go down to you know, it could be 11 o’clock, you could still have a bit of light. So it’s crazy.

 

Samantha  6:49  

But there’s a lot of mountains you could climb.

 

Beth Reading  6:51  

Hmm there is. 

 

Samantha  6:53  

Thank you Beth, that was so interesting. And I just wanted to highlight something you said, around that fear of putting things out there. Um, I interviewed someone else recently who actually spoke about the same thing. But their topic was creativity. And they said, so the question to them was about what’s, you know, what’s a barrier to creativity and it was so interesting that it was a similar underlying thing to both the efficiency and the productivity and the creativity. Just that fear so, yeah, I’m really glad that we then tackled about how you overcome that in the fact that if it’s still helping people,

 

Beth Reading  7:27  

Yeah, I think that’s the key. I always I always have that, bring that back. Why am I doing this? And what’s the point of it, you know, and then it comes back to that, that passion. What, what are what am I doing this work for? And it’s to help people. And, you know, nobody ever says, oh that video was a bit blurry at the beginning. Or your shirt, you know, it was twisted. They don’t, nobody cares so much about you, only you, you know, like, they’re all thinking about themselves. And so, yeah, just getting the focus off yourself. And like, you just, you’re helping people, and just having that in your mind is, is been so freeing. Yeah.

 

Samantha  8:08  

That’s gonna be really helpful to people. I’m so glad we spoke about it.

 

Beth Reading  8:11  

Yeah, because everybody’s got something that that is unique to them. And you know, I’m not the Pilates teacher that somebody else is. But there are people there that need what I have. So everybody has a gift. And if they can express themselves, and not try and be like anyone else, and yeah, and not worry about what people think of them, because there are people there that will benefit from what they have to offer.

 

Samantha  8:38  

Yeah, it’s like you never ever going to please and be the person for everyone. So focus on the people that you are the right instructor for and the rest will follow. 

 

Beth Reading  8:48  

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Samantha  8:51  

So where can people find more about you more about My Pilates Times? Because we’re going to pop all these links below so I’d love you to share.

 

Beth Reading  8:57  

Yeah, mypilatestime.com. And you can head over there. And there’s actually a free seven day free trial on the website. So that’s a great way to give it some classes a go and see if that might work for you. And My Pilates Time on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Samantha  9:13  

Awesome. Thank you. Well, that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for sharing your time with us, Beth. 

 

Beth Reading  9:18  

Thanks for having me.

 

Samantha  9:20  

You’re very, very welcome. So if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, and you want to keep learning alongside me and learning from our guests then do make sure you subscribe to the Using Technollogy Better YouTube channel or if you’re listening to the podcast, follow the show so that you can get notified about new episodes. Now we also have a friendly little fortnightly newsletter, which is chock full of tips and tricks and strategies to help you be more efficient and more productive and also more organised. So those lists feature in there, I must say. So if that sounds like your kind of thing there’s also a link below for you to sign up for that. So that’s it for today, but I will see you again soon for another byte-sized piece of the learning journey that is life. Bye for now. 

 

LearnBytes is brought to you by Using Technology Better. We’re all about tech training delivered differently. If you want to solve your tech frustration and become more confident, efficient and productive with the tools you use every day, then head on over usingtechnologybetter.com to get the training you need to be awesome.

Related Post

How well do you use the
Apple Apps Google Workspace Microsoft 365
tools in your workplace?

Find out if you’re working with the tools OR if you’ve got the
tools working for you.

What Industry Are You In?

Using Apple Apps, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

What Type of user are you?

🫣 Entry User | 🤹 Skilled User | 👑 Elite User

Take the quiz to find out. 

Privacy Policy

Using Technology Better Privacy Commitment

Introduction

We hold the privacy of your personal information in the highest regard.

Using Technology Better regards customer privacy as an important part of our relationship with our customers. The following privacy policy applies to all Using Technology Better users, and conforms to Internet privacy standards.

This policy will be continuously assessed against new technologies, business practices and our customers’ needs.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact the support team on our Contact Us Page.

Collection of Information

In order to use the Using Technology Better website, we may require information from you in order to provide the best service possible.

All correspondence may also be collected and stored, particularly in regard to sales, support and accounts, including Email.

Any information collected by Using Technology Better is collected via correspondence from you or your company. This may be via the telephone, Email, mail, fax or directly through our website.

Visitors and customers of japan.usingtechnologybetter.com will have their information shared back to DAIWABO INFORMATION SYSTEM CO., LTD. and DIS Service & Solution Co., Ltd.

Use of Collection Information

Any details collected from Using Technology Better customers is required in order to provide you with our

products and/or services, and a high level of customer service.

Correspondence is recorded in order to provide service references, and to assist in our staff development.

Web Site Use Information

Similar to other commercial Web sites, our Web sites utilize a standard technology called “cookies” (see explanation below, “What Are Cookies?”) and web server log files to collect information about how our Web site is used.

Information gathered through cookies and Web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web site, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web site.

Storage of Collected Information

The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) on our website, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

When Credit Card details are collected, we simply pass them on in order to be processed as required. We never permanently store complete Credit Card details.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

If you have any questions about security on our Website, you can email us at <ContactEmail>.

Access to Collected Information

If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate it by emailing us at <ContactEmail>.

Orders

If you purchase a product or service from us, we may request certain personally identifiable information from you.

You may be required to provide contact information such as:

Name

Email

Postal address

Your school or organisation

Financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date, name on card, card billing address).

We use this information for billing purposes and to fill your orders. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact you.

Communications

Using Technology Better uses personally identifiable information for essential communications, such as

Emails

Accounts information

Critical service details.

We may also use this information for other purposes, including some promotional Emails.

If at any time a customer wishes not to receive such correspondence, they can request to be removed from any mailing lists by contacting support.

You will be notified when your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

Third Parties

Using Technology Better may at its discretion use other third parties to provide essential services on our site or for our business processes.

We may share your details as necessary for the third party to provide that service.

These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Using Technology Better does not share any information with third parties for any unknown or unrelated uses.

What Are Cookies?

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a Web site, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies.

Each Web site can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a Web site to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

Browsers are usually set to accept cookies. However, if you would prefer not to receive cookies, you may alter the configuration of your browser to refuse cookies.

If you choose to have your browser refuse cookies, it is possible that some areas of our site will not function as effectively when viewed by the users.

A cookie cannot retrieve any other data from your hard drive or pass on computer viruses.

How Do We Use Information We Collect from Cookies?

As you visit and browse our Web site, the site uses cookies to differentiate you from other users. In some cases, we also use cookies to prevent you from having to log in more than is necessary for security.

Cookies, in conjunction with our Web server’s log files, allow us to calculate the aggregate number of people visiting our Web site and which parts of the site are most popular. This helps us gather feedback to constantly improve our Web site and better serve our clients.

Cookies do not allow us to gather any personal information about you and we do not intentionally store any personal information that your browser provided to us in your cookies.

Legal

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Website.

Links

Links on the Using Technology Better site to external entities are not covered within this policy. The terms and conditions set out in this privacy statement only cover the domain name of usingtechnologybetter.com

Changes to Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it periodically. If we make material changes to this policy, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this Privacy Policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this Privacy Policy, without your prior consent

Delivery Policy

Most goods are digitally delivered instantly via email.  Our services may be delivered either via an online medium or live in person.

For our online delivery see below.  For services delivered live onsite, please refer to our speaker agreement form which is emailed to you on confirmation of booking.

Refund Policy

We do not offer refunds or returns unless we cannot supply goods or services or the goods or services are not delivered as promised.

Australian law is the governing body for all work, goods and services supplied by Using Technology Better.

Marketing Release

Using Technology Better (UTB) may film, record, and photograph me (the results of which are the “Recordings”). UTB may also incorporate into any production(s) any separate content (e.g., quotes, testimonials, biographical information, profiles, photos, videos, sound recordings, artwork, etc.) I provide to UTB or approve in writing (“Materials”).

1.License

I grant to UTB an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to, in its sole discretion, (i) edit, translate, and modify the Recordings and the Materials, (ii) attribute the Recordings and Materials to me by my name, age, and city and state of residence, (iii) incorporate the Recordings and the Materials into content to promote UTB, its programs, or products (“Content”), and (iv) publicly use, distribute, reproduce, create derivative works from, and perform/display the Content, and any excerpts thereof, in any language.

2. No Compensation.

I grant this permission without any financial or other obligation of any nature.

 

For any issues or concerns please contact us