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On this edition of “Keeping It Real,” a recurring series on Inman, Peter Lorimer discusses how indecision can immobilize your business and how to avoid it.
Time is our most valuable commodity — and I see a lot of agents wasting it. In fact, I believe many real estate agents are wasting more than 15 percent of their time.
That’s six weeks out of a year, just gone. Some don’t even realize they’re wasting time. How do you know if you are?
It comes down, essentially, to two words: action and reaction. Those two words drive everything to do with business success.
If you find yourself asking this next question, you’ll know you’re reacting (thus wasting time) — “What’s next?”
That question, friends, is where the demons lie. For every single moment you utter that question to yourself or colleagues, you’re squandering your precious time away.
How can you know what’s next before asking yourself that question? That’s where “acting” (the antidote to reacting) comes in. And this is where the magic happens. It feels a bit like Mary Poppins, as she continually pulls trinkets and large objects out of her bag — amazing the children. We’re about to do that with your workday.
- Time-blocking. My wife and I have been doing this for over a decade, and we’ve whittled it down to an art form. We’ve learned to transform an eight-hour workday into 16 hours worth of work.
Before a day begins, I know exactly what I’m doing each and every hour. I don’t worry about what comes next, I focus on what’s right in front of me.
- After you’ve blocked your day into specific and realistic slots of time, you can level up by increasing your efficiency during your working hours. This takes creativity and big-picture thinking.
For example, I rarely drive during the workday. I Uber — almost exclusively. Instead of driving, I’m able to work while commuting. This inserts valuable time back into my day.
- I also outsource tasks like transaction coordinating. By simply outsourcing those two tasks, I am able to increase my efficiency by almost 40 percent in a given year.
Outsourcing requires boldness. It can be a bit scary to pay someone else to do something that you’re currently doing. I urge you to think about the bigger picture here. Think about what your time is worth. Are you giving it its due?
Listen to my podcast for an hour-by-hour look into my day and how I turn an eight-hour workday into 16 hours of valuable time.
Peter Lorimer is the CEO of Beverly Hills, California-based PLG Estates.
