“A day is 24 hours, mostly misspent.” Ambrose Bearce
So I am a fanatic about time blocking. But after reading THE ONE THING by Gary Keller I learned I am doing it all wrong. My Outlook calendar looks like a rainbow of colors. There are blocks of time for paperwork, networking, and agent meetings, each with a special color. The goal was always to have many colors so it would indicate all of the business “BUCKET” I needed to do. They were strict appointments with myself to get stuff done. Sound OK, right? I was getting my STUFF done but I was not doing the things that truly grew my business, improved my skills, or made progress towards my long term goals.
New plan- Productive Time Blocking. By knowing
what my ONE, overall goal is I need to spend time doing the things that will get me moving in that direction daily. Put another way, I was in the weeds, being reactive to what needed to be done rather than working from the 10,000 level working on the ONE THING that would make everything else easier. I needed to spend more time working ON my business rather than IN my business. I needed to switch from being a MANAGER (oversees and directs) to being a MAKER (do or create). My goal needed to switch from getting more done to having less to do. Time needs to be spent each day getting BETTER; on becoming; on mastering.
The first step was to define what my ONE THING is. In real estate it is about creating and deepening relationships. I didn’t define it as PROSPECTING because that infers cold calling. I take it more to mean, who can I help, teach, connect, or influence each day? Then it is time to put time on the schedule.
1- Time Block your time off– To be successful you need first to schedule time to reward and recharge yourself. The word recreation is really to re-create. Resting is as important as working
2- Time Block your ONE THING. Gary Keller suggests 4 hours each day, absolutely no interruptions or distractions. Absolutely no changing it. It is an appointment, set in stone with yourself. I have heard it called your POWER HOURS. It is the time you use to grow, create so that your business GROWS and gets easier. This is time that doesn’t seem URGENT but is critically important. It is suggested to do it first thing in the morning. If you start working on the URGENT stuff first you may never find time for the CRITICAL. Four hours seems excessive but 3 hours is very doable for me.
3- Time Block your Planning Time- This is the perhaps 1-2 hours a week where you decide what actions your will take during your ONE THING time. My actions this week will be things like integrating my 3 databases, writing my blogs for the week, learning the process of pre scheduling a year’s worth of enewsletter, scheduling lunches with my key referral partners and working on a handout/checklist of after the closing resource people for my clients.
You can see that the TASKS to my ONE THING are all small steps, like dominos in a chain. Each one is designed to move towards my ONE THING and really to allow me to eventually do less, not more and see geometric results at the same time. Your ONE THING time block becomes your most important appointment you have each day. Put it on your calendar and protect it at all cost.
The most successful people don’t achieve extraordinary results by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.