As a real estate agent, you’re essentially an entrepreneur. Although you may be working with a team at a brokerage, your success is your own responsibility. As you grow your career, you’ll need to learn how to make the most of your time. These organizational skills can help you get more done in less time!
Batch Your Tasks
Many successful entrepreneurs “batch” their tasks to maximize productivity. The idea is that your brain does best when you can focus on one type of work for a block of time. Otherwise, your focus is constantly fragmented. For example, you could answer emails for 20 minutes after lunch or write all of your social media content for the week on Tuesday afternoons.
Don’t Overschedule
Although there are 24 hours in a day, you can’t possibly work all of them. In fact, you can’t even expect to work productively for 8-10 hours. Your brain and body need downtime, and even the best willpower in the world can’t force perfect concentration for that many hours. Don’t try to schedule every minute of your workday with tasks. You’ll only be setting yourself up for failure.
Eat That Frog
Mark Twain once wrote, “If the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a frog, you can know that it is probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day.”
That saying has become the basis for a productivity philosophy. Essentially, if you do the task you’re dreading the most first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will go more smoothly. Otherwise that task will hang over your head, and you’ll be less focused on and productive as you try to find busy work to keep putting it off.
Prioritize Ruthlessly
Chances are good that you have at most 2-3 major things that need to get accomplished during a workweek. Everything else is either routine upkeep—client communication, administrative work, and so on. The important things should have top priority. Otherwise, you’ll find that all your time is taken up by the little tasks while the big ones haven’t budged.
Plan to work on the big tasks first and fit in everything else around them!
Review Your Goals Daily
It’s very easy to lose sight of why you’re doing this job in the first place. You get caught up in the grind, and before you know it, your dream of being a real estate agent has been ground into dust. Not only should you have short-term and long-term goals for your career, but you should also review those goals every day.
A good time to do this is early in the morning as you plan your day and prioritize your tasks. Write your goals down on a piece of paper and put it somewhere you’ll see it. Spend a few minutes reminding yourself of the reasons you want to succeed and the milestones you’re working toward. Then make every decision for the rest of the day with those reasons in mind.
