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. 

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