Tips to Better Prioritize Your Time

Are you a newly licensed real estate agent, or a more experienced agent who has hit a productivity slump? In the business of real estate, the abilities to self-manage and maximize productivity are fundamental to ongoing success. Today, we’re sharing our Top Tips to Better Prioritize Your Time as an agent. 

1.) Establish Healthy Sleep Patterns

It may be tempting to skimp on sleep in an attempt to get more done but compromising your sleep willaffect your health and productivity over time.

A huge study on over half a million employees from various industries revealed that workers who slept the recommended 8 hours were the most productive! If you’re having trouble with your sleep schedule, address it as soon as possible—you’ll see a clear boost in your productivity and time management when you do.

2.) Protect Your Work Hours

We all want to be available to our friends and family, but it’s vital that you set aside consistent work hours that are to be interrupted only in case of emergency. If you’ve previously answered their calls any time of day or night, your social circle may require time to adjust to your new structure. However, the more you’re able to hold firm on your decision, the less they’ll attempt to reach you during your blocked-out work hours.

3.) Effort Management and Selective Delegation

There’s an old adage that “time is money,” and that’s certainly true for real estate agents. When you’re trying to decide whether you should work on a project yourself or delegate it to someone else (i.e. a home cleaning service, home stager, or writer), a quick calculation can help you make that call.

Imagine you have 1,000 points of effort per day. These points must be spent on things that will optimize your business results. 

Let’s design a formula to represent your “ideal” task: for instance, any task on which you reaped $2 per point of effort expended. If you are facing a task that requires 100 effort points, with a potential value of $200, but will only cost $75 to hire someone else to do it, it’s a savvy move to hire outside help.

Save your personal efforts for tasks that will yield higher returns. While this idea makes perfect sense, it’s unusual to see agents follow through on it with any consistency. If you can, you’ll be ahead of the game in prioritizing your time.

4.) Tackle Your Least Favorite Tasks First

We all have parts of this job that are the least enjoyable. Identify which tasks you dread, then tackle them first thing every day. Don’t give yourself time to think about how you feel or plan out your approach—both of these thought patterns are simply disguised procrastination.

Take a deep breath, count to three, and get started.

This technique works surprisingly well, but only if you are committed to starting when you hit three! If you continue to procrastinate once you’ve counted, this otherwise effective trick won’t work for you in the future.

5.) Accomplish Simple Tasks During Your Least Productive Work Hours

When you track your work patterns, you’ll likely find hours during which you are the least productive overall. There’s no use fighting yourself on this one; you’re not going to have much luck forcing yourself to do high-level work when you’re dragging. 

Instead, take advantage of these low-energy periods, or “slumps,” by using them to complete mindless, simple tasks. These rote tasks will be a continuing part of your job, so it will prove useful to have this block of time set aside to check them off your day’s list of objectives.

6.) Use Social Media Professionally, Not Obsessively

There’s no denying that social media is a vital tool for the modern real estate agent. We all must have, use, and cultivate influence through our social media presences.

On the flip side, the biggest social media apps are run by powerful companies worth billions, and their sole objective is keeping you—the product—glued to your screen using their apps! Through a complicated series of behavioral triggers and inscrutable algorithms, they are highly effective at keeping us logged in.

Your task, difficult though it may be, will be staying dedicated to using your social media for professional tasks during your work hours without getting pulled in to the entertainment side of these interfaces. 

To accomplish this, you’ll likely want to block out a schedule for using social media, responding only to hot leads. 

7.) Choose the Best Tools, Customize, and Use Them Optimally

Compared to 20 years ago, today real estate agents have a staggering wealth of software and social media tools at our disposal. Whether you want to streamline your lead management, in-house communication, property listings, or finances, you have many software options. 

Narrow down which tools will work for you. Then, customize them as much as you can. Learn how to use them quickly and efficiently and make them part of your day-to-day routine. By doing so, you’ll keep yourself current on your work, and won’t get overwhelmed by tasks when you log in.

8.) Surround Yourself with Successful Agents

You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” This tends to be true throughout life generally, and it’s accurate with regard to your real estate career too!

If you want to be a top agent, but you surround yourself with those who consistently struggle, you won’t be able to improve your skills or mindset. Make yourself the mindful architect of your professional community; choose your circle carefully.    

“Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, “I’ll get back on track tomorrow,” try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.” – Gretchen Rubin