Realtors - Short on Time? One BIG tip to Maximize your Productivity…
By Jennifer Furrier, October 4, 2007 at 4:03 pm
You are not alone if you feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the workday. Utilizing this POWERFUL tip, will help you get more accomplished in your busy day, giving you more time for what you really want to be working on. And just a warning, you may cringe and fight me on this one, but first, hear me out…
DO NOT CHECK EMAIL UNTIL YOU HAVE COMPLETED ONE LARGE TASK FOR THE DAY. DON’T EVEN SNEAK A PEEK AT YOUR INBOX UNTIL YOU’VE CROSSED OFF A BIG TO-DO!!!
Often times, checking our email is not a top priority, but instead, our clever way of looking for something more interesting than the task at hand or our sneaky way of delaying the start of something more important.
It is easy to spend thirty minutes here and twenty minutes there on email, but how much is actually being accomplished when we’re doing that?
We all know the eighty/twenty rule, which states that twenty percent of our efforts produce eighty percent of our results. It’s important to consider that twenty percent of an eight hour day is ninety-six minutes, which is time that easily gets burned clicking around our inbox with our morning cup of coffee!
This week, when you get to the office, knock out one of your biggest to-dos for the day, before checking your email. You will thrive off of the accomplished feeling in knowing it’s only 10:30 and you already finished one large task.
Ok, let’s recap: DO NOT CHECK EMAIL UNTIL YOU HAVE COMPLETED ONE LARGE TASK FOR THE DAY. DON’T EVEN SNEAK A PEEK AT YOUR INBOX UNTIL YOU’VE CROSSED OFF A BIG TO-DO!!! If you want more simple and effective tips to help you manage your time, and maximize your productivity, check out or call 480-688-0920 to find out how you can get yourself organized once and for all!!
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9 Responses to “Realtors - Short on Time? One BIG tip to Maximize your Productivity…”
Jennifer I must comment on your well written article not because I am a Realtor but because I am a busy person. Honestly when you started talking about time budgeting you make me think of the days that I worked for Anderson Consulting, where every minute was charged to a client and there were many minutes in day.
I understand what you are saying, email is important and it drowns time and it need to be done and checked, but take care of some serious business before diving into the deep end of the email pool. In other words, make sure your closings are in order, your loans are closing and the FBI has not raided your title company, then check your email.
Daniel
dometri.com
Hey! Email is an important, critical function of my business…
Ok, I am really waiting for a funny joke, latest gossip, or follow up comment to a heated blog discussion I am secretly following…how’d you know?
I will get back to real work now that I have been found out…thanks
Yes, Jennifer, I did cringe, but after just completing a week’s assessment of where I spend my time, am willing to give your idea a try… as radical as it sounds!
Great point Jennifer.. Between “real” email, stupid jokes, spam etc., it is easy to get distracted.
Such great comments here! I’m excited to see that I struck a chord with some people!
Yes to Daniel and Nick- You guys GET it!!!
Dru- I’m so excited to hear how taking on this new habit- or at least giving it a whole hearted try, will help you! Please keep me posted!
And April, just love your point about email being a critical part of your biz, because that’s so true! It is important to our businesses, but is it the best use of our limited time in our busy days? When you think about it- you want to be focusing on revenue generating activities, (or at least I do), and though email is great, it’s not a top priority out of all the income-producing activities I need to be spending time on.
In fact, a client of mine who is a multi- millionaire marketing guru has completely cut off email as part of his life, because he realized how much time he was losing and how dependent he had become on it as a means for communicating, that he had to walk away! Now honestly, I don’t get how you could do this- I think it’d be pretty tough to thrive and survive without it. But, maybe he knows something we don’t! Imagine just one week where you didn’t spend a single minute on email… I bet the results of that week would be pretty incredible.
Anyway, thank you all so much for your awesome comments to this touchy subject!
Quite honestly, I’m an e-mail addict. I’m also a social networking addict with mulitple blogs and stuff on Facebook, ActiveRain etc. So, to me your advice hits home. My rule at home is the computer is off after 8pm. At work it’s a different story. You mentioned the multi-millionaire and quite honestly, I’m needing to move in that direction.
Well Shailesh, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem!
In all seriousness, I think it’s great you have a rule for the computer being turned off by 8:00, so maybe, you can try implementing something similiar, at work. For instance, maybe you only open up email, ActiveRain, etc from 11:00-3:00… I’d give it a try for a two weeks, and see what happens to your productivity and your ability to focus on those long term goals. Maybe you read and complete an extra book. Ah- just think of the possibilities!
Great tip. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.
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