Managing Your Time in Real Estate

 

Managing your time in the real estate business.  

First, this is something people struggle with in general, not just Realtors.  However, in the world of real estate sales, it appears to be magnified even more as it's a commission only business.  If you're being paid hourly or salary and mismanage time, for the most part, it's become accepted. Of course, it's a contributing factor to the lack of productivity, yet, for the most part, things go forward.  As a Realtor, you have a much shorter fuse before you find yourself out of time, money or both. As a commission only, independent contractor this should very well be your #1 priority.

Talk to us about your experience with having a schedule to follow, maybe what you did and any suggestions you may have for our agents in action.

When we think about having a schedule, we often have some amount of resistance to this process.  Often, we feel it's will be restricting and cause conflict with the discipline necessary to follow a structured schedule.  I know this because it's what I used to think myself until I changed how I looked at my schedule.  Dr. Wayne Dyer has often said, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."  So true! Try it, take a step back and be open to other ways to apply meaning to things that take place in life.  Instead of seeing your schedule as something that is "hard" to follow or stick to or we resist by saying things like…"I left corporate America and got into real estate so I would be able to have more flexibility in my day…(as a side note, that way of thinking is a quick way to find yourself, back, working a corporate job) I want to suggest doing what I did years ago. Going forward, I want to recommend you look at your schedule like a GPS. It tells you how to get from one place to the next.

What did people do back in the CA gold rush days in the late 1840's - early 1850's? We've all seen them, the maps with the dotted lines that eventually lead to gold and their riches. I know it may be a silly way of looking at it, yet when you imagine you have a big X on your map (these represent your goals/dreams, the things you're most passionate about) and you follow a dotted line (which represents the daily tasks to complete along the way to reach your destination - your goals) you are now connecting in your mind...'when I follow this process (schedule) it is leading you, closer and closer, with each step you take to accomplishing the goals you I have set out to achieve. Isn't that better than all of the other negative emotions we typically have when we have attempted to follow a schedule in the past?  Trust your schedule and be thankful for it...it is a tried and true system for you to strike your goldmine!

Bottom line on this, we do it every day, when we don't know how to get somewhere and need directions, we rely on a map, GPS or some kind of system to help us get to our destination.  I trust this is making sense and I am getting through to you - following your schedule is the KEY to getting to where you want to go. It's your friend, not the enemy.

Let's look at some tips from Todd of ways he's learned over the years to help manage his time and follow a schedule for success.  

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