This article series is largely taken from the Success Faster On Fire Hot! (which was released on Amazon in October this year) with permission from the author. It was edited for length, style and grammar.
A ways back in my life, I dated a psychologist. Overall, it was a good thing. But, if you’re gonna date a psychologist, you better like to talk and get introspective often. You’ll likely get called out on your body language and recognize theirs — because that’s how they hang in the world.
They are trained and wired to hold mirrors in front of people and to create safe spaces around that process. Most of them, in my experience, incorporate this skillset into their everyday stuff. It’s part of what attracted me to the doctor in the first place.
I learned a lot and helped edit a dissertation somewhere in those three or four years. When you’re personally close with these trained professionals, whether they’re family or friends, you start seeing things differently.
For the longest time, I thought compartmentalization was bad. Or maybe useful in the short term — like, blocking out something that’s too much to handle at the time, and then much later, it morphs into baggage that no longer serves its original protective covering.
In the psych world, compartmentalization is really this thing that you work through, fix or, at the very least, identify. Awareness is curative, I’ve learned, and I now love that phrase.
I’m not a psychologist, but I have seen one, two or maybe three, and I’ve dated one (just one), so I’ve developed my personal set of amateur psych opinions along the way.
In the therapy world, so much of the effort is in helping people make peace with their past and their troubles or helping them gain an awareness of what those things are, especially when they get in the way of their life, happiness, job, sobriety, effective parenting or just getting out of bed.
But I have come to recognize the other side of the compartmentalization coin, the part that helps us traverse complicated issues and be more productive at work. One of your best tools to help you compartmentalize the most important thing in your business is your daily standup meeting.
This daily standup meeting is simple and short. The agenda: What will I do in the next two hours that will specifically and concretely move me toward my goal? And then you do that thing, and only that thing, single-tasking for the next two hours.
You can multitask your way throughout the day and your life, but you single-task the first two hours of each workday. Here are a few modifications of your daily standup meeting agenda. Pick one that resonates with you:
- What is my fastest route to a lead, client, contract or paycheck? Do that thing first.
- What is my fastest route to six (I just grabbed that number, but you’ll find your number) decent real estate conversations? Do that, and only that, for the next two hours.
- What is my fastest route to a $10,000 paycheck today? Work on that, and only that, for the next two hours.
- What two things will I do today that foster genuine real estate questions and possible active business? Do that, and only that, thing first.
- What is one concrete step I can take today that moves me toward my goal?
This is how you will begin every workday. Start with this meeting, and then proceed accordingly for the next two hours. Every other meeting and all the shiny objects come after that task is complete. That’s it.
If you really want to embrace this, place that meeting permanently and perpetually in your calendar for every workday. This task alone can manifest momentum and bank.
Julie Nelson is the chief success officer at The Nelson Project, eXp Realty in Austin, Texas, and the author of Success Faster: Quickly Launch or Relaunch Your Real Estate Career and Success Faster On Fire Hot. You can follow her on YouTube or LinkedIn.
