How to Get an Extra Hour Each Day — Without Working an Extra Hour!

If grocery shopping normally takes you a solid hour, what would you need to do to get that task done in half the time?

Well, you could rush like mad up and down the aisles grabbing everything you needed. But that would be exhausting and not very sustainable. Chances are, you’d think of more practical tactics. Such as making a grocery list. Knowing which aisles the items you want are located. And shopping at times when the checkout lineups are shortest.

The lesson here is that, if you really had to, you could come up with ways to get things done faster — without necessary working at a frantic pace.

It’s the old adage of “work smarter, not harder”.

So let’s take a look at this from the perspective of you as a real estate agent. If you had to free up an extra hour a day, how would you do it?

I talked about this in a previous blog post on time management for real estate agents. Lots of great ideas there. In addition to those, here are some more strategies worth exploring:

• Have you ever arrived way too early for an appointment? Use the “expected arrival time” feature on your GPS app (i.e. Google Maps) to accurately schedule driving times.
• Want to free up hours each month? Use a good real estate CRM where you can manage everything in one place: task lists, properties, contacts, calendar, keep in touch calls, marketing, etc.
• To save time while getting more real estate agent leads and referrals, automate your keep-in-touch marketing — especially for your past clients, hot prospects and geographic farms.
• Spend 15 minutes each morning planning your priorities for the day. Most time management gurus, such as David Allen, say you’ll accomplish more in less time if you do.
• Put a lead-capture form on your agent website, ideally one that automatically sends those leads to your CRM system for prompt follow-up.
• Avoid “half done” tasks whenever possible. For example, writing only part of a property description and then leaving the rest for later. You’re far more likely to complete a task faster if you get it done in one go.
• Every once in a while, do a “leaking bucket” audit. In other words, look at those activities that are wasting a lot of your time and explore if you can drop them, automate them (for example, your real estate direct mail), or delegate them to others.
• Avoid answering personal emails and calls during the work day. A “quick call” with an old friend can easily stretch to a half hour or more. Keep your day’s communications focused on prospects, clients and the office.
• Make good notes during prospect and client meetings. (You can do that in a good real estate CRM system.) That way, you won’t waste time trying to remember what was said or duplicating effort.

Just one or two of these techniques can easily free up an hour of your time each week, without necessarily working longer or harder.

And keep in mind that an extra hour a week adds up to each year! Imagine what you could do with that additional time!