Capture where you spend your time in blocks during the day.  This will show you where you are currently focusing your attention.  After 1 week you will see some trends starting to emerge.

Topic – Make sure your day doesn’t get the best of you

Mentor – Scott Stein

• Mixed priorities
• Create a time log
• Divide functions and allocate time

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Assess your quality of time not quantity of time

Transcript:

Kevin:   . . . yesterday with our guest mentor, Scott Stein, where we were talking about being aware of where you spend your time. Not just about time management, but getting the most out of your time and making sure that it’s very productive.

Kevin:   Scott, of course, is the author of a book called Leadership Hacks and there’s a link on today’s show to take you through to his website. A lot of great material there, too, as we say good morning to Scott. Good morning.

Scott:   Yeah, good morning, Kevin.

Kevin:   Yeah, a lot of great material on that site, too. I’ve been browsing through in preparing to talk to you and looking at some of your videos, particularly the one on the homepage, which I’d like to feature because I think it talks a lot about some of the mistakes that leaders make with time as well, Scott.

Scott:   Yeah. I think, the thing about leaders, and people across the real estate industry, is they’re so busy with things.

Kevin:   Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Scott:   You know? And I think sometimes we kinda mix up our priorities. We get so busy doing things that we don’t check in with the family, we’re not present with them, and kinda things get out of control. And I know a mate of mine, a local agent that I’ve known for years, he’s a great friend of mine and that’s one thing that he’s always struggling with. How do I find more time, but how do I also make sure I spend time with my family and my spouse, and on the things that are important to me as well, in addition to work?

Kevin:   Yeah, interesting story in that video, too, where you talk about how pissed off you got when none of the other dads turned up to the sport. But you realised then that maybe you were in the same boat about twelve months earlier.

Scott:   Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting ’cause it was a school excursion for my youngest son. It was going to the aboriginal sacred site, which is quite powerful. And I ended up going, and to go on the way into the site, the aboriginal elders made up this little white alter paint. And they said, “All right, for men’s business, the men have to paint the boy’s faces and the women have to paint the girl’s faces before we go in.” And of course, as I was standing there, there were all women. All the mums, I was the only dad.

Kevin:   Yeah.

Scott:   And I think, yeah, I was a little bit upset. But then I realised I got lucky. I had been so busy with everything else, I just happened to actually schedule the time to be there.

Kevin:   Yeah, jeez.

Scott:   And I think that’s true for a lot of people in real estate, going, “Jeez.” You know, if you have kids, that time goes so quick. Don’t let it actually pass you by.

Kevin:   Yeah, powerful message I got. And we’re off-topic here, but it’s an important point, was many years ago I took over, and this is pre-real estate, when I was in broadcasting. And I took over as the general manager of a radio station from a gentleman who’d just turned 60. And he said to me, “Kevin, never ever make the mistake that I made, and that is that I didn’t spend enough time with my family. All my kids are all grown up and I hardly even know them.”

Kevin:   And I think it’s a lesson you can learn too late in life, isn’t it, Scott?

Scott:   Absolutely. And I think it’s even more important in the real estate industry, when your weekends are, especially Saturdays, which is normally a family, kids, sport, time, when most agents are actually working. So you’ve gotta be even more aware of how you map your activity.

Kevin:   Absolutely. Let’s get on the topic. As we talk about some of the lessons out of your book, the Leadership Hacks and the five key things you can do to make sure that you get the most of your day. Yesterday we talked about being aware of where you spend your time. You’re suggesting mapping your current versus your ideal activity. Tell me about that, Scott.

Scott:   Yeah. I think, if people wanna be more productive, and we talked yesterday about, all right, you’ve gotta be more aware of it. One of the practical things you can do, a simple activity, is create a time log. Right? And you can go old-school, every 15 minutes. Just do it for a week. Write down what did you do with your time. Or, you can use one of the online apps, like Harvester, right? It’s an online app that automatically programmes it in. And what I find, for most agents, they don’t have to do it for a week. After a couple of days, they’ve realised that there’s a lot of areas that they’re wasting their time.

Scott:   So I think, the other thing that you can do is actually map down, on a sheet of paper or an iPad or a tablet, where should you be spending your time? What are the main areas of focus that you should be concentrating on? And make sure you include work but you also include family. And that’s gonna give you something to focus on.

Kevin:   Give me that app again that you mentioned?

Scott:   The app is called Harvester.

Kevin:   Harvester. How does it work? What does it do?

Scott:   What it does is it allows you to go in and there’s multiple functions inside of it as far as what can you do, but it tracks kind of your time log. You know, what are you doing with your time? Is it actually helping you? Is it not helping you? I mean, there’s a couple of other functions that you can do for projects and things like that. But the most basic version allows you to just do a time log.

Kevin:   You recommend that people should do that at least for one week. Have you noticed, when you get people to do this, are there any common trends that you’ve seen that come out of it?

Scott:   Yeah, yeah. What I’ve found, and, in fact, quite a few people will look at it even after a couple days, or some people really commit and they do it for a week. They look back and they see how much time they lost doing what I call time-fillers. Right? So they go, “Oh, social media. I thought I was gonna go on and just check a couple things and jeez, I spent a half an hour, 25 minutes, 30 minutes.” You know, because those things suck us in and we’re not even aware of it.

Scott:   So I think reviewing that and looking at what should I be doing? And then you listening to the voice in the back of the head, “Am I doing and focusing on the things I should or am I not?”

Kevin:   Would it help if you had that list and maybe put it up in front of you? If it’s a list of maybe a half a dozen things you should be doing, that if you put that up in front, maybe that”s your trigger or your conscience being able to prompt you?

Scott:   Correct. I have that. And the other trick, so what I recommend is that you do a little mind map, right? So you write your role in the middle and you’ve got a couple of arms coming out for it. for the main areas of responsibility. But the key is to put percentage of time next to each of those areas. So if you’ve got eight main functions that you do as an agent, try and actually divide them up. It’s not gonna be in equal percentages.

Kevin:   That’s right.

Scott:   What percentage of your time might be 35%? What might be 10%? What might be 20%? And use that as your guide. Because what people actually get mixed up is the amount of time they spend in some areas versus others.

Kevin:   Yeah, and it’s interesting, too, just on that. Because those percentages would change. It depends on where you are in the stage of your business. If you need more listings, you’ll be spending more time on prospecting. If you’ve got more listings, you’ll be spending more time on servicing. So that’s a variable, too, isn’t it?

Scott:   Absolutely. And also, if the market swings in the cycle, you might be shifting more on your rent roll, right?

Kevin:   Yeah. That’s right.

Scott:   Than on some of the other areas. It does give you a really good way to kinda make a strategy as far as where do I need to focus my energy and activity.

Kevin:   Yep, Scott Stein, our guest this week. We’ll be back again tomorrow. Talk to you then, Scott. Thanks for your time.

Scott:   Thanks, Kevin.