05 Jul Good time management helps with productivity

What are your important and productive tasks.  When you know what they are, you then need to be ruthless about doing them.

Topic – Mastering time management

Mentor – Danelle Hunter

• emails
• workstation
• phone

Transcript:

Kevin: Joining us once again this morning, our guest mentor all this week, Danelle Hunter, from Biggin & Scott in Knox, and we’re talking about time management but it’s more than time. In a way, Danelle, I know this out of left field, but I think time management it’s the wrong term for it, really.

Danelle Hunter: Probably. Yeah, it’s all about, I suppose, yourself and how you go about it, not necessarily the time. I suppose it’s your head space as well.

Kevin: Yeah. It’s almost like task management, managing the task, which is really what I want to talk to you about this morning. What do you see as some of the tasks that we can manage and some of the tips to become more productive?

Danelle Hunter: Obviously I’ve sort of spoken about this a little bit, but I think the main thing is having everything feeling like it’s in order around you. For example, if I’m at an appointment and my appointment’s running late, I’ve got my emails on my phone, I can be responding to my emails and getting on top of those things. And having three of four less emails when you get back to the office to respond to helps with your time.

Danelle Hunter: Any downtime that you’ve got during the day, where you’re waiting for something, if you’re on top of it and working where you can, returning phone calls, doing what you can. Obviously we’ve all got hands-free in our cars, so I literally return most of my calls while I’m driving, because at least then when I get into the office I can be focusing on doing stuff on my computer and replying to emails and doing that side of it.

Danelle Hunter: But just about having a clean area, my work station. So putting those things in place like, “Okay, there’s stuff in my in tray that has to be done, I can’t leave without doing that.” And just don’t leave anything, as soon as you start going, “Oh, that can wait to tomorrow. That thing is little, it’s not important,” that’s when things build up and then all those things that can wait until tomorrow, there’s maybe 50 things by the end of the week there and then you’re behind with everything.

Kevin: Yeah. With the tools we’ve got available nowadays, with technology, there is no excuse that you can’t fill in those vacant times when you’re sitting around waiting for someone or doing something. Because as you said there, with your emails, you can be texting people. But keep a list of all your current sellers and that might be a good opportunity for you just to call them up and have a chat when you’ve got that free time, Danelle.

Danelle Hunter: And we all have access now to our databases and stuff from our phones as well. And if we don’t, we can have a hot seller list and while we’re driving around in between appointments, rather than listening to the radio, call that person, see how they’re going, see when they’re ready to sell and try and get back in front of them. It’s just things like that, you’ve got to constantly be thinking, “What can I be doing while I’m doing this,” when you can be multitasking.

Kevin: Yeah, this is what I was meaning right at the opening of the show and I probably didn’t express it all that well, but it is about looking for the tasks to fill in those gaps. And I guess, in a way, that is managing time or managing what you put into the time, Danelle.

Danelle Hunter: It is and, yeah, you’ve just got to constantly be thinking of what can I be doing and I think that’s where people just get distracted and they don’t think about that, they just think, “Oh, I’m driving to an appointment. I’ve got 15 minutes not to worry about doing anything,” whereas that’s not the case.

Kevin: Phones, of course, can also be a big distraction. You talked about people walking in and wanting a chat, there are also phone calls that can be quite disruptive. You’ve got to manage that time as well.

Danelle Hunter: Yeah, you do. And that’s why a lot of the time if I’m in the office and I’m focusing on replying to emails or doing … I do accounts and stuff as well, so if I’m doing an account sale for a sale property or something, I’ll potentially just let my phone ring and let it go to voicemail so that then I can ring them back once I’m in the car and I’m concentrating just on that. And if the conversation goes for 15, 20 minutes, that’s fine because I’m not distracted doing anything else either, I can give them my attention. And at least, yeah, I’ve done what I needed to do in the office and now I can just concentrate on that.

Kevin: Mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. We’ll help you with a bit of goal setting tomorrow, around time management. My guest is Danelle Hunter from Biggin & Scott in Knox. Danelle, thanks for your time, we’ll talk to you again tomorrow morning.

Danelle Hunter: All right, thank you.