Get More Out of Your Day: 3 Time-Saving Tips for REALTORS®

There are 24 hours in a day. While that may sound like a lot, once we begin those hours fly by. As a REALTOR® each day is filled with generating leads, following up with potential clients, handling the many moving parts of your current transactions, and of course, the countless other duties and responsibilities that never fail to pop up. Keeping all of these balls in the air can be quite the challenge, not to mention all of life’s other aspects that don’t fall under the real estate umbrella. However, with a few scheduling and routine tips and tricks, you can not only streamline your day but even have a few minutes left over.

Add “Time Blocks” to Your Daily Schedule

Did you know that studies have shown that a 30-second interruption can cost you 30 minutes of time and concentration? This is what makes time blocking so valuable. Each day schedule uninterrupted blocks of time that are dedicated to accomplishing a single task. An example of this would be setting aside 45 minutes each morning to prospect. During this time you won’t answer phone calls or emails, eliminating those costly distractions, and allowing you to effectively and efficiently complete core daily tasks. Studies also show that time-blocking can reduce errors by 50%.

Identify Your Proactive Hours

Keep a record of your activities over a typical week. How many hours do you spend doing things like taking listings, marketing them, and taking measures to close deals? How many hours do you spend prospecting? These hours can be identified as proactive hours, and the more of them you have, the more productive your day and week will be. Time spent sitting around the office or in other types of meetings can clog your schedule and reduce your potential productivity; while other types of activities are necessary and unavoidable, increasing your ratio of proactive hours can make each day much more fruitful.

Control and Reduce Your Distractions

We live in a distracting world. We are constantly plugged into all of the information and events from around the world. Of course, many distractions are unavoidable, but the ones that can derail a day are very much in our control. Checking email, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more are easy traps to slip into. Fortunately, there are some tools out there that can make these time-stealing actions easier to avoid. You can block certain websites on your computer during certain times of the day. You can even set your email inbox to pause notifications in the same way. Also while looking at your schedule, make a commitment to only check your email at certain times of the day, and use a time block to respond; this will make focusing on any task at hand much easier.