Ever since I ended up with 95% of the listings in our office back in Spring of 2007, I realized that I had to master my time management. And I have been trying different things over the past 2 years to organize myself, get more out of my time and relieve the stress associated with the life of a Realtor.
Well, I think I have it now! TIME-BLOCKING!
Time-Blocking is not a new concept and certainly not something that I have created and deserve any credit for. I came across the concept of Time-Blocking while reading Success As A Real Estate Agent For Dummies" by Dirk Zeller - and from perspective Dirk is the person that I am giving the credit to for getting me finally on track with my life. And although I am not fully there yet in a complete time management system that I adhere to every single day, I am pretty close - I WILL be there by the first of the year!
For those of you that haven't heard of time-blocking - Time-Blocking is really looking at your schedule each day and creating blocks of time that will be allocated to doing certain tasks. For Realtors, it falls into 3 main categories (and I hasten to add that these are Dirk Zellers categories that I use in my time management system!). The 3 main categories of tasks are Direct Income Producing Activities or DIPA, Indirect Income Producing Activities or IIPA, and Production Supporting Activities or PSA.
Now without rewriting Dirk;s books here on my blog, I will give you a brief idea of what falls into each category:
DIPA: Prospecting; Lead Follow-Up; Listing Presentations; Buyer Interview Presentations; Showing Property to Qualified Buyers; Writing and Negotiating Contracts.
IIPA: Making Client-Development Marketing Pieces; Producing Direct Mailings; Creating or Fiddling with your Websites; Optimizing Your Search Engine Placements; Publishing Hardcopy or Email Newsletters; and a near-endless list of other efforts that agents invest in to indirectly produce income.
PSA: Office Hours; Administrative Work; Errands; MLS Searches; MLS Input; Home Flyer Creation; Filing; Copying; Faxing; Meeting Home Inspectors or Appraisers; Getting Feedback from Showings; and purchasing supplies are only a sampling of the necessary tasks that support your production efforts.
Now the key to effective time management is to create a plan/schedule that works for both your business life and personal/family life as well. I have a wife and 3 kids (all boys!! - Riley whose just turned 1 year old and has been sick since he was born - Gain whose 3 years old and Jacob (my stepson) who is 9 years old and has Asperger's Syndrome) - so to say the least, my family life is somewhat demanding and I have to admit was eating into my business life! This is why I needed to master tie-management - my business was growing immensely but so were my family commitments. TIME-BLOCKING has allowed me to do this.
I firstly block off time for my family, for example: every Friday from 5 pm onwards is time "Time With My Wife" (which 98% of the time includes the chldren). And I take Saturday as my day off - no real estate at all!
But when I stated in the heading that I have finally mastered my time management issues, I not only meant that I needed to first put my family life into my schedule, but also realize that you cannot just draw up a schedule and expect you are on your way to time management success. I tried this - drew up a schedule, basically copied the one tat Dirk Zeller provides in his book, and tried to work this schedule for me and it didn't work.
First problem was, that was Dirk's own schedule. And secondly, in my opinion, it doesn't work that quick or easy. You need to take it bit by bit. The key is to make sure that you put as much time as is possible (70%) to the DIPA tasks mentioned above. If you can't do 70% - make it a goal to work towards that!
My schedule, as soon as I get up, is DIPA tasks and I intend to do as much of those tasks each day as is possible to ensure that the IIPA and PSA tasks don't eat up all my time as they have been for years. IIPA & PSA tasks, while necessary, do not increase my bank account to the same degree that DIPA tasks do!
I have uploaded a copy of my schedule to my website www.real-estate-success.org . From there you can download a copy and use it yourself or work your schedule to be something similar.
Let me know how you make out.
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