I had just responded to another AR member on a question he had on another blog where I wrote about, what is a healthy amount of time to spend on AR and when does it become a disadvantage to building your business. Basically how much is too much AR? This obviously varies for everyone, if they are a one man show, if they are new to the business, a veteran in the business, do they have teams, etc. A lot of dynamics that would play into this.
Well I am sure we all have a tendency to get sucked into anything we are passionate about and there are other reasons we get sucked in to spending too much time on AR, like trying to avoid other activities like calling on clients, networking or the other uncomfortable things we have created head trash about that we find everyting else in the world to do first. Or as they say, "not eat the frog first".
I think my biggest recommendation that has worked for myself is that if you don't set a clear schedule based on your biggest priorities, everything else that is not important to you will dictate your schedule. The question I always ask when I am coaching someone through priority management is, "what are the 5 most important things to you in life?" Often I get, their kids, spouse, their faith, health, recreation, etc. Then I ask to see their calendar. If they have one (calendar), over 99%, if it is filled out, those top 5 things are not even on their calendar. So the next question is, if those are so important to you, where are they?" It's either the deer in the headlights look or it's "I don't have time, look how busy I am!"
To that I say, you will always fill your time with something if there are gaps as we leave no margin in our lives anymore. The correct way to do this is fill your calendar with the priorities, time block hours with your spouse, daddy date night as I call it with my daughter, birthday celebrations, weekend away with my son to watch the Raiders play in a different city each year, my gym time I treat like the most important appointment of the day, my hour and half of power in the morning where I spend time in the Word, pray, journal, affirmations, etc. If you don't make it a priority, your clients certainly aren't.
I block all of those things out as reoccurring appointments and then and ONLY then do I fill in consultations, prospecting, daily disciplines for lead generation, etc around my priorities. If you have the mindset that you will be "ON PURPOSE" the entire time you are working, it is amazing what you can get done. If you were focused and working as though you were leaving on a 3 week vacation and this was your last day, imagine the mindset change of your efficiencies that day would be like compared to a Wednesday afternoon at 2 PM.
A get a lot of resistance here telling me, "if I schedule all of my priorities, that only leaves blank amount of time to work on real estate!" Again, if your new schedule only leaves you 90 minutes to prospect, I bet those are some darn focused 90 minutes when you feel you needed 3 hours.
I realize we, to a point, need to be available for our clients in our industry and things will happen where you can not stick to your schedule, but this should not be the norm. Commit to moving forward the appointment you skipped and fitting it in somewhere in the coming days. If you were supposed to take your daughter to the park at 5 PM but a frantic client you have been helping for 4 months just "needs" to see this house that came on the market, (and you daughter understands of course) then go to the appointment but commit that moment to a time and date to your daughter when the time will be made up. Never reschedule something twice though, because then your schedule just becomes a recommendation and you need to take it serious.
I think time blocking is imperative but time tracking must happen before blocking just so you can identify potential problems. Start small on the blocking and build from there. I remember blocking out my entire week and only accomplishing or sticking with it about 25% of the time. It is very important to become 90%+ on your time blocking and add more blocks once you know you can.
I hope this helps.
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