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Dear friend,

This week we’re going to talk about a concept that has the potential to skyrocket your productivity and really help you get the most out of each day.

I almost hate to refer to what we are going to talk about today as time management, because it really isn’t about managing time as it is about producing results, regardless of the amount of time that it takes.

So if I ask you to go back and think about why you chose real estate or lending as a career, I bet you would find pretty high up there on that list of appealing features the fact that you could make your own hours, you could come and go as you please while breaking free of the nine to five sort of routine.

And I have never had a real job, so I know that part of the appeal of real estate for me was the time freedom and the concept that there was no one in charge of saying when I had to work or how much money I could make.

It was total freedom and that was very appealing.

Now often what happens next is the realization that you are at the wheel and that you are also the engine that has to drive your moneymaking machinery.

So since you have all the freedom you also have all the responsibility to make sure that you do what you need to do to make money.  Being paid for performance is great when it’s working, but it can also create pressure which leads to stress and can lead to burn out.  So I have always looked for ways to rebalance my life and make sure that I am striking the perfect enjoyment and productivity balance.

These concepts I am going to share with you are a personal blend of everything that I have studied and tried in my own life to make the most money in the least amount of time, with the most total enjoyment of all of it.  And part of that study and learning includes really looking at what it is you are trying to accomplish.

So what game are you trying to play, what motivates you to keep going?  I think the reason we sometimes have trouble with trying to manage our time is not knowing where we are going or how to recognize it when we get there.

So for me part of the solution has been having a crystal clear vision of what success looks like on my terms and not from an external point of view.

If you are comparing yourself externally there is always more, there is always someone else who is doing better, who is making more, who has got more.  So set your own limits, set your own internal parameters for what success means for you.

I’ve shared the idea of defining and working on building a perfect life.  We have done that in our make my life better days segments on Marketing Monday here, and I encourage you to really look at your definition of a perfect life this week.

Last week I asked you to keep time log of your week to record where all your time goes, so did you get a chance to do that?

Of course you didn’t!

it’s hard and it takes some effort and you’re not used to doing it, so I don’t blame you that you didn’t do it, but I’d like to think that you tried at least ONE day to record where it all went.

I know  one thing for sure, this last week went by very quickly, as did the week before that and as will this next week.  Time is very interesting and if you have read any time related materials you know that we all get the same 168 hours a week every week, week after week.

So there’s no getting around that, we can’t stockpile it, we can’t create more of it, we can’t slow it down, but what we can do is SPEND it.

That’s the way I always like to look at a time.

The way I look at it is that there are two types, there’s time that you choose intentionally to spend and time that just slips by without you even noticing it.

So it’s just like we talked about at the very beginning of this pod cast, you are in complete control of how you spend it and what you’ll spend it on.  So even if you didn’t keep the time log of how you spent your 168 hours last week, if you look back over your week, what have you got to show for it?

Did you enjoy it?

Did you survive it?

How much of it just happened and how much of it did you orchestrate and consciously choose?

So I choose to look at it as a game I’m playing that constantly changes and I’m always looking to really create exactly what I want.

So heres a good way to look at your week coming up and looking at weeks ahead to sort of design the ultimate week.  I like looking at a week as a timeframe, because for me it’s enough time to really get a good sense of your week as opposed to the close up view of a day or the wide angle view of a month.

So to start, take a week at a glance, if you get those week at a glance pages or draw out a week on a piece of paper, full hours for all seven days and just leave it blank for a second.

Just look at all that time you have available and just note that YOU are in complete control of what fills up those 168 blocks.

Even if you don’t feel like you control them you really do, because only you decide and choose what you do with each of those boxes.

Now, you may have commitments you have chosen to make that fill up a lot of those boxes, which sometimes makes you feel like you don’t control it and we’ll get to those too.  But let’s start out by focusing on the hours you do control and how we can get the most out of those.

So here’s how I look at time.  I’m looking at this 168 hours to fill them with four categories.  Play time, personal time, prime time and prep time.

And I will explain each of them as we go and we’re going to see how we can spend our time in those categories.  But my philosophy is to start with PLAY TIME, because often that’s the one thing that gets pushed aside or put in last place when we’re under pressure.

Because we often tend to look at them in reverse here, so we don’t want to put that in last place, because often it’s right when we need it the most that we end up putting our playtime last.

Now to me playtime is time just spent on the most enjoyable things, the things that I want to spend MORE time doing, the things that I do just for me.

Now for me that’s golf and movies and socializing or reading or watching TV or getting massages or meditating.

For you it might be yoga, or tennis, or anything that brings you joy and makes you feel refreshed after you have done it.

I find my life works better when I do those things first, so my week will have the time slots for golf on Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning, maybe Friday afternoon, I will have those already blocked off.

I would have time for a movie on Friday night or dinner with some friends, time in the morning to spend at my favourite cafe for breakfast with my wife and some friends, I might block off a lunch or two with a friend.

In my calendar those things get blocked in first and I’m going to build from there.

If you are not used to it, it may seem awkward to put yourself first like that, but I guarantee it would do wonders for your productivity and you’ll actually get more done.

So try this week, try blocking out some time in advance to spend a few hours doing something that you really enjoy and you would like to do just for you.  I think you’ll have a whole new perspective on your week this way.

Now if you’re having trouble with it, start out by making a list of all the things you like to do for YOU and select some of the things from that list, even if it’s just one thing, just block it out, put in a time, set aside that time and keep that appointment.

Next I like to block out what I call personal time and I make the distinction between playtime as time spent doing things you want to do just for you, because they bring joy and personal time as time spent doing the things you have to do to support your life and your family commitments.

Things like sleep and eat and grooming and grocery shopping and the car pool and all those things that make up the routine of your life.

For most people this personal time sort of book-ends a traditional work day and it may take up to three or six hours or more of your day, not including sleep.  But write it all down in what would be the most ideal amount of time for what you have to do.

Now it may seem like this part becomes a blur and it can be pretty hectic.  Just look at it from a distance on paper and see what would be ideal.  Where do the hiccups happen when you look at it on paper, are you rushed in the morning?

What would happen if you got up an hour earlier?

Not in reality, just on paper.

Would an extra 30 minutes or an hour help make the morning go a little smoother?

When I talk about getting up and out earlier sometimes people get freaked out, but when you look at it on paper it’s just a number and if you shift your view you’ll realize that one time zone to your west it’s already an hour earlier.

It kind of funny isn’t it, if you get up at the same time biorhythmically, if you were in another time zone it would already be an hour earlier, so your body adjusts to whatever it is.

If you can get yourself to take a slightly experimental point of view and just try on a concept it might lead to a breakthrough for you.

So for right now fill in all that personal stuff including the ideal amount of sleep, the ideal morning routine, meal prep and homework monitoring as if it were all you had to do.  Sometimes doing this can identify where the time crunches come up and sometimes that awareness builds its own momentum.

Now what you are left with after you account for your playtime and your personal time, are the hours that you have available to pay for the whole thing… and what you do in these hours is going to determine what your lifestyle is and how effortless or effortful it is to sustain.

The house you live in, the car you drive, the food you eat, the help you hire, the vacations you take, the cushion you have, the schools your kids will go to, the retirement lifestyle you will live, they’re all determined by what you choose to do with these available money making hours.

And I hope the least one of the reasons you chose real estate as a career was the unlimited upside potential you have to make money.

How you choose to play the game is going to affect how much you make.

As a side note, just because you have an unlimited upside potential, doesn’t mean that you have to focus on making more and more and more.

How much is right for you?

If you know that it’s going to make playing the game a little easier and what you’ll find is that a specific target is going to really bring clarity to your planning and you can focus on reaching that target in the most relaxing way possible.

I like to break up this moneymaking time into two categories, prime time and prep time.

I like to start by looking at the week and blocking off the prime time hours first.

Prime time is the ideal time to do your highest dollar producing activities.

If you are a single agent or a lender, your prime dollar activities are going to be negotiating a contract or signing a listing agreement or taking a loan application, showing property to a qualified buyer, talking to a prospect about setting up a time to take a listing or a loan application or show property.

These are the very tippy-top of the hierarchy of moneymaking time and the more time you spend doing those things the more money you’ll make.

The thing is there are some prime times for doing these activities where it’s going to be like floating down stream versus fighting the current.

Now this may be a little controversial, but ultimately the way I see it is that real estate happens to be a service business and one that tends to happen after traditional business hours.

In my experience if you can accommodate that, you will be able to get more done in less time.  in my work with high producing teams, the buyer agents and listing partners who are available in prime times are more successful.

And what I mean by that is that if you are able and available to work with people when they are available, that’s going to work in your favour and it’s going to be easier for you week after week after week.

You make the rules though and you work when and how you want to work and you find the times that work best for you.

By blocking off your prime time hours in advance, enough to reach your goal, the objective is to use your prep time hours to fill your prime time hours.  So let’s say your goal is to take one new listing a week.  That means that at the very least you’ve got to have time scheduled to go on at least one listing appointment.

Now prime time for going on a listing appointment might be Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evening at six o’clock right after your prospects get home from work or at 8.30 right after the kids go to sleep, or maybe on a Saturday morning.

Or if you’re working with buyers, prime time might be Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  times that are prime for your prospects are going to be easier for you to fill, allowing you to work less.

Prep time is the time you spend either setting up opportunities to spend time with prospects with prime time or tending to the work that you create by spending successful prime time hours.

Prep time is preparing for listing appointments, processing loan applications, handling escrows or developing lead generation and marketing systems.

The distinction is that prime time hours are primarily spent with people while prep time hours are spent on tasks, tasks that don’t necessarily involve other people.  There is a lot of leverage in this model and as you grow your business and you start to involve other people, you can get other people to take on some of the work and we’ll talk about some of those ideas next week, but for this week let’s focus on play time and personal time.

Take a look at your 168 hours this week, see where you can spend some of those hours on play time, schedule it in and work around it.

It’s not going to blow up your week, make sure you keep that time as you would your most important appointment.

Write down your time this week, even if you didn’t do it last week, just observe how much time you purposefully spend versus how much time just floats by unspent or wasted.

I’ll see you back here next week and we’ll compare notes.