Is Your Time Making a Mess?

Water and time, what do they have in common?  Both flow whether you direct them or not.  Consider a wash clothe soaked in water.  Lay it on a counter and the water begins to seep out in every direction seeking the lowest point possible.  Take that same cloth and give it a good twist with both hands and you have a channel of water that goes where you direct it.  Time tends to flow in similar fashion, direct it or make a mess. 

In our last post we began our series on great real estate agents; we focused on their common quality of systems.   A second shared quality among them is they direct and control time to accomplish their objectives.   They know what they are doing each day, what time they will do it, and how much time they will commit to each planned task.  Great agents place high value on time and they get more done in the same hours than others do. 

Here are a few tips for improving your clock control: 

"Every night, plan the next day" - Danielle Kennedy

• WRITE down your three most important objectives
• POST them in your calendar as appointments with yourself
• DECIDE when you will start and when you will stop

Analyze the time you spend each week

• Create categories: prospecting, social media, listing appointments, buyer time
• Track every 30 minutes of business activity and assign it to one category
• At the end of a week, total the time in each category
• Are you spending enough time in dollar productive activity? in the right activities?

Set deadlines for key activities

• Deadlines create energy
• Deadlines prevent the mythical pursuit of perfection. It's critical to get it done, not perfect. 
• Deadlines clear mental clutter: Getting this project done allows one to start the next one with fewer distractions and greater focus.

Create an Ideal Week: draft a template calendar to block time for what's important in life and business.  Start with your personal commitments and then add the blocks that are essential to professional success: phone calls, recurring meetings, education, client time, social media, etc.  Rarely will reality match this template for your week, but having a guideline will allow you to slot more of the appointments into your preferences while allowing you to say "No," to unimportant requests.