Time Management for Real Estate Agents

Reprinted Compliments of Fidelity National Title Company
1. Get a Handle on Your Time
  • The Myth of Free Time: There is no such thing as free time. If you earn $50,000/year, each hour is worth 25.61.
  • Keep a Log: Record the time you actually spend working on each project. Most likely it’s not as much as you think.
2. Get Organized
  • Set Your Priorities: All tasks are not created equal.
  • Write Down Your Goals: Clarify your goals and write them down with your expected completion date. Carry this list with you and read it at least twice each day.
  • Create a To-Do List and Work Your List: In addition to your goals, write down each task necessary to achieve your goals.
3. Increase Your Efficiency
  • Neatness is More than a Neurotic Compulsion: Keeping your work area tidy leads to efficiency and a better bottom line.
  • Make Your Workplace Work: Configure it properly, don’t be afraid to spend money improving it and don’t use the top of your desk for storage.
4. Shortcuts
  • Reading Shortcuts: In the information economy reading is a must. Don’t be afraid of short cuts where they are appropriate.
  • Speed Reading: Set goals and test yourself monthly. Be aware of eye movement, don’t move your lips, and keep going.
5. Find Hidden Time
  • Make the Most of Downtime: Organize you work so that it can continue while you are waiting at a business or doctor’s appointments.
  • Make a Game out of Saving Time: Estimate the time necessary to complete tasks and consciously race yourself to complete them in less time.
6. Pace Yourself
  • Create Routines: As in the physical realm, there is a time to do each task and each task should be done in its time.
  • Discover Your Work Rhythms: Learn which time of day you are at your optimum. Reserve your most complex work for that time.
  • Adapt to the Rhythms Around You: Business is cyclical by nature. Be certain your ideas and contributions are offered when the time is right for acceptance.
7. Learn to Focus
  • Don’t Scatter Your Force: Apply yourself only to the goals you truly want to achieve. Everything else can wait.
8. Avoid Procrastination
  • Do it Now: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
  • Finish it Now: Sixty percent of all tasks begun remain incomplete.
9. Avoid Time-Wasting Activities
  • If It’s Not Worth Doing; Don’t Do It: Don’t be a slave to your in box. Just because something’s there doesn’t mean it has to be done.
  • Don’t Quit too Soon: Tenacity is often the difference between success and failure.
10. Don’t let Others Waste Your Time
  • Learns to Recognize and Avoid Time Thieves: If your time is not important to you it won’t be important to others.
  • Don’t Adopt Other People’s Monkeys: Don’t take on every responsibility people want to give you.
11. Enlist Others to Save Your Time
  • Become a Squeaky Wheel: The quiet guy gets served last.
  • To Save Time, Smile: Only the super-richor super-talented get what they want without smiling.
12. Invest Time to Save Time
  • Sharpen the Axe: The greater your skill and level of information, the more efficiently you can work.
  • Become an Expert: You save time by becoming an expert. The expert doesn’t start from scratch each time a new client comes through the door.
13. Plan Ahead
  • Think Through, then Follow Through: Learn to calculate the expense of time and money to determine the viability of a project.
  • Anticipate Trouble: Always be mindful of Murphy’s law.
  • Build in Redundancy: Would you skydive without a back-up parachute?
  • Prepare a Script: Understand your objective, goals and victories to be won before you begin the conservation.

Copyright ©Fidelity National Title Insurance Company. All rights reserved. Fidelity National Title Insurance Company is one of the nation’s premier real estate service companies, providing title insurance and other real estate-related products and services. The company’s history spans over 150 years, from its creation in 1848 by D. V. Gillespie, a notary and records searcher, to today’s nationwide expansion with parent Fidelity National Financial (FNF) ranked 261 on the Fortune 500. For more about Fidelity Title, visit FNTIC.com.

Fidelity Title is part of Fidelity National Title Group, Inc.—the largest title company in the nation. For more about Fidelity National Title Group, visit FNTG.com.

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