Running a gym can be exhilarating as well as personally and professionally satisfying—but let’s face it: There can be many moments of feeling overwhelmed, too.

Whether you’re dealing with staff turnover, a surge of new members, class schedule changes, or just regular maintenance, the number of tasks involved in everyday operations can be significant.

Many times, the result is a feeling of reaction instead of management. You spend so much time running around that you might be missing a sense of getting traction when it comes to business growth. Instead of a proactive management approach, you’re stuck in a reactive mode.

Here are four tips for getting unstuck and making much better use of your time:

1. Evaluate every task for delegation possibilities

Yes, you’re the owner—but that doesn’t mean you have to be the class scheduler, member liaison, blog writer, marketer, and maintenance checkpoint. The misstep that many owners make is in believing that tasks will be done faster if they do them instead of delegating to employees. But that puts you in danger of being a micromanager who can’t shift responsibility to others—when that happens, get used to high staff turnover, because frustration levels could run high among your employees.

To delegate appropriately, take time to notice the strengths of each employee so that you can match tasks in an intelligent way. Maybe your front-desk person could be perfect for collecting sales lead information, or your personal trainers can keep track of which machines need maintenance—after all, they’re far more familiar with day-to-day machine operations than you might be.    

2. Hold stand-up status meetings

Don’t bog staff members down with sit-down meetings that add to your schedule. Instead, create a rapid-fire meeting during which each employee must come prepared with an update on his or her specific responsibilities.

It helps to stay standing for the meeting to create a sense of urgency and to schedule it for just 15 minutes, no matter how many people are attending or how much you have to cover. That way, you can cut way down—or even eliminate—the unnecessary small talk that will put you behind on other tasks.

3. Automate as much as possible

Turning to gym management software can be a boon for your schedule. With automation features, you can save a significant amount of time on standard tasks like creating marketing campaigns, collecting lead data, and writing reports.

Best of all, these automation tools can be integrated with other parts of the software that manage staffing, sales, expense tracking, and other aspects of your gym. You don’t have to start every technology-based task from scratch, and that will free up far more time than you might think.

4. Take a vacation

It seems counterintuitive that you’d get more done by taking time off, but numerous studies have tied downtime to higher productivity. When we allow ourselves time to rest and recharge, we often come back to work feeling more engaged and energized.

By the time you take a vacation or even a “staycation,” you should have delegated enough that your employees don’t need to contact you while you’re gone. Honor your commitment to truly recharge by refraining from checking in or going into your gym management software to peruse operations. That way, you can come back refreshed and ready, and your employees will understand how to handle everyday tasks without your input.