Pro Tips to Get More Done
Tue, Jul 8, 2014
One of the most common problems we have as a society is staying focused. Distractions come whizzing at us like bees to flowers and it’s hard to escape them. Over the years, I’ve developed some strategies that move me from a place of distraction to pure, glorious focus. I wanted to share three key techniques that you can start using right away: Sort it out If you’re like most people, there are many different types of tasks on your to-do list. Go through it and pull out the ones that you can do another day, delegate over to someone else, or not do at all. This strategy puts your task list into perspective. It’s like sifting sand through a strainer – the smaller grains fall through and you’re only left with the big pebbles. These big pebbles are your vital tasks and they’re the ones you need to get done TODAY. Once you finish a task, drag your pen across the paper and cross it out. It will feel GREAT. Eat the frog There’s a quote by Mark Twain that says, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Apply Mark Twain’s frog-eating wisdom to tackle the day’s most important task head-on. Complete the #1 task on your list at the start of your workday. Do this before you check emails, listen to voicemails, or talk to co-workers about the upcoming office party. Even if it means your day starts two hours later than usual, it will be worth it. Cut the cord What would you say if I told you to stop answering your phone and stop replying to emails? You’d probably tell me I was crazy, that disconnecting is irresponsible and just not a realistic option these days. But you’re already choosing times to disconnect, whether you realize it or not. You disconnect when you show a house and when you close a deal, don’t you? In those situations, other people are expecting you to completely focus on the task at hand, and you can’t do that when you’re checking a buzzing Blackberry. It is critical to the life and health of your business for you to schedule some offline time for yourself so you can focus and complete your important tasks. Don’t worry, I promise you that your emails will still be there when you get your priority tasks done! This is one of the critical strategies I share with agents I work with. I help them understand the important difference between Rainmaker activities and the $10 per hour work that consumes most agents but which can easily be delegated for less than what you are worth. Also, I help agents understand the difference between working ON your business and IN your business. Working IN your business is all the small daily details you have to attend to, from creating feature sheets and banging in For Sale signs to running ads and following up with prospects – it’s attending to “tasks.”. Working ON your business is asking yourself (and answering) the bigger questions such as who you should be targeting and how you can set yourself apart from your competition; what marketing you should run and how to improve your conversion rate when you talk and meet with prospects. When you work ON your business, you’re strategizing how to do what you do much better – more efficiently and more profitably. Agents who spend all their time working IN their businesses really don’t have a real estate business at all – they have a job, because if they stop, their business stops. Understand that your business will never improve until you start to work ON it!“Most agents are so busy doing it, doing it, doing it, that they don’t have time to think about how to do what they do in a better way”
The place to start with all this is FOCUS, and focus isn’t an ability you’re born with; it’s a skill that you develop and strengthen over time. The key to good focus is having a set of strategies that allow you to keep your eyes on the prize and your nose to the grindstone. What are some of your most effective strategies?_____________________________________________
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