KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Time Thief Takedown - 5 Strategies to Reclaim Your Day

Starting point is 00:00:00 Built by KGCI, Real Estate on air. Powered by the Mindset and Motivation Monday. Here's your morning primer. Hey there and welcome back to the Simple Truth with Stewart. Feeling like there just aren't enough hours in the day? Do you ever look at the clock and wonder where all the time went? Well, we've all been there. Today, we're launching a full-scale assault on those pesky time thieves.

Starting point is 00:00:27 This episode is your ultimate guide to reclaiming control. of your schedule and getting more done in less time. Join me as we explore powerful techniques to boost your productivity and finally conquer your to-do list. Let's get this time back. Right, welcome everybody and I'm hoping that you're all keeping extremely well and productive. And today I'm going to be talking about something that so many people, they have a little bit of a struggle to try and overcome. And really, the big struggle that we overcome is the time that we have in the day. You know, we all sit back and we go through our particular day. And so few times do we actually reflect on what we accomplished. However, we're very hard on ourselves to say, I just don't

Starting point is 00:01:21 feel like I'm getting anywhere. I feel like I'm just standing still. And there's a great saying that goes out there, then you have 24 hours in a day, how come certain individuals can get so much more done in that 24-hour period? And in fact, it seems like they only work for about three or four hours, but how come they get to achieve so much more in the day and you still struggle? Well, that is actually what we're going to be talking about today. And really, I'm going to share with you five strategies that's going to help you to reclaim back your day so that you can be more in control of it. You see, so often we actually don't know where we are when we wake up in the morning. We just kind of just have this almost robotic approach where we get up and then we

Starting point is 00:02:14 just go ahead and start doing things. And we go through our particular day, getting to the end of it and stay there. The day is gone. and we didn't accomplish it. So I want to share with you five strategies that's going to help you to take back your day. Now, the very first strategy that I'm going to share with you is something that we use in coaching to help identify what your day in your week looks like. And really what it is, it's basically it's sitting down to identify those culprits that's stealing your time. So your time is extremely precious.

Starting point is 00:02:53 So the strategy number one, it's about identifying those culprits. And normally they're not individuals. It's normally just your distractions. So the first part of this is what you actually do is you have five sheets of paper. And each sheet of paper at the top, you'll actually label it Monday through to Friday. And each page is going to represent your activities for that particular day. Now, so many times we go on autopilot and we can't remember what we did in the day. So these particular sheets and it takes you one week to help you to track your time in the day.

Starting point is 00:03:34 And what you'll do is you'll take Monday and at 8 o'clock, you'll actually reflect back on the last half an hour. What did I do? And then at 8.30 at 9.9.30. So in half an hour increments throughout the day, you do a quick reflection of what you did for the last. half an hour. Now, yes, it does feel like a little bit of a distraction, you know, jumping out and filling that particular form, but it's kind of a necessary activity to perform so that you can actually identify what you've actually done in a particular day. And once you've actually done that, you'll actually see that, hey, wait a minute, 80% of my day is a non-productive activity.

Starting point is 00:04:17 and when you actually can identify it, it becomes so much easier to go, hey, today I'm not going to be going down that particular rabbit hole. I'm going to be doing these particular activities. So first one, track your particular time. The second one is something where, and you're going to see it when you reflect back on your typical day, you'll find at 830 or you're doing one task

Starting point is 00:04:40 and then suddenly also that 8.30 little block, you did three other things at the same time. And then you're going on to 10 o'clock and you find that you wrote down four items that you did in the 10 to 9 type of time slots. And ultimately, that's what we commonly call multitasking, whereby what we're doing is we're trying to do more than one activity at a time. And in fact, if you actually follow the process, we actually have what we call is a time change. When you're doing one activity, you stop, you recalibrate your brain, you move on to the next activity, and then you carry on. That time in the middle becomes a waste, and it actually will deter you from actually getting to productive levels. So, track your time, Monday through Friday, have a look at it, reflect on it to have a look at see, is there more than one task being done in a particular time slot?

Starting point is 00:05:36 And then what you really need to look out for is when you reflect back on that entire week, how much of it was spent. on social media. Because social media is one of those rabbit holes that once you get into, suddenly two hours goes past. And you actually, when you go back to reflect on your notes, you'll actually see when I wrote something at 830 and the next time I wrote something was at 10. And what did you do from that 830 through to 10 while I was on social media? And you'll start to really identify that.

Starting point is 00:06:08 So be careful of the social media. If you're using it for business, have a block of it. time where you will actually work on it. Don't sit down and just say, I feel a little bit tired. Let me just quickly reflect on what's happening in the world around me. And you start going on to the actual social media. So be careful of that. So the very first is to identify those culprits at stealing your time. And you do that with a tracker. You then see what's multitasking, which you shouldn't be doing so many tasks in a certain half hour time block. And the last one is that social media to see, are you spending a lot of time on social media? Now, the same.

Starting point is 00:06:43 Second is something that we say all the time is you need to prioritize. But in fact, what you really need to do is you need to prioritize ruthlessly. You need to have a look at that particular day and say, I'm only going to be doing those big tasks in the day. Now, there is a method that you can actually research and it's called the Eisenhower Matrix. And really, the Eisenhower matrix is an extremely powerful tool where you'll actually take your particular activity and you'll then, identify is it something that's urgent or important? Because if it is, well, that actually is something that you should prioritize on. If it's something that's not urgent and it's not important, well, that can actually be shifted aside. And this is really when you start looking at your

Starting point is 00:07:32 calendar and your activities that you're doing in the day, you actually want to make sure that they are urgent and they have a level of importance. So you highlight those. And you highlight those and you make sure that they become prioritized in your particular day. So when you're looking at those particular activities, make sure that you focus on what's actually going to have what we refer to as high impact, high impact helping you to achieve that desired goal. It's so, so important. So make sure, number two, make sure that you prioritize ruthlessly.

Starting point is 00:08:10 and you can actually use that Eisenhower matrix where you can actually take all those activities that you want in to do or that you commonly do and actually put them into levels of either they're important or they're urgent or they're not important or they are not urgent. Now another part of this is so often when we're using this Eisenhower matrix we can see what is important and what is urgent and we really put focus into it. But then there's these certain items that we go, well they're not important. They're not that urgent, but I want to do them now. Why? Because I've got some pressure from somebody else.

Starting point is 00:08:48 And what you really need to do is you need to have that clear cut in the middle. The items that are not urgent, not important, you need to start learning to say no to putting them before your urgency and important tasks. So, so important to make sure that you're actually doing that. So prioritizing, having a look and put them into those categories. really making sure that when they're in that particular category, it's a high impact task and to lead you and get you towards that particular goal. And those ones that are sitting in the not urgent and not important category, learn to say no to doing them right now. Remember, there is a saying that I have with a lot of my clients is once you've completed your important

Starting point is 00:09:34 task, those priorities, you earn the right to do another. And what's great about that is once you've actually accomplished all those urgent and important tasks, you earn the right to then start working on the non-important and the non-urgent particular tasks out there. And in that way, you'll actually get to accomplish all of those desired outcomes that you're actually wanting to. So number two out there is making sure that you prioritize ruthlessly. Number three is something that whenever you're going in your particular day and you've identified these particular tasks, it's actually not to put it into some form of workflow.

Starting point is 00:10:14 And ultimately what you really need to do is you need to start mastering this workflow. This workflow is starting at 8 o'clock, going through until 5 o'clock, if those are the hours that you're operating on, from Monday through to Friday. But you need to master that flow of when you're actually doing those activities. Now, how do we do that? Well, number one, you need to look at time blocking. Now, for many people, we kind of misunderstand what time blocking is. Well, it's two words and they give you the hints.

Starting point is 00:10:46 First is time. We need to discover and allocate a specific time that we are going to allocate a specific block. Now, in that particular block, that block equals one activity. This is where so many people get it wrong. When they actually go and book a time blocking session, when I look at that time blocking session, When I look at that time blocking session, it's made up of maybe five or six different prioritized activities. That's not time blocking.

Starting point is 00:11:16 That's actually just collectively putting everything together. Time blocking is one activity being focused in that specific time in your calendar. So if you're setting yourself a time where you want to actually contact your past clients and you've got maybe 10 of them that you want to contact and you know that's going to take you roughly about 30 to 45 minutes to do, then what you would do is you would look at your calendar and say, right, from 9.30 or maybe 9.45, I'm going to take that block and I'm going to focus on following up with my past clients. And that's all you do in that particular session. Now, once you complete it, remember, you earn the right to move on to the next task. So if you do finish early,

Starting point is 00:12:00 you can move on. But you focus to get it completed. no other distractions. Now, something that also comes into this when you're time blocking, and I've seen this when I've worked with clients and their calendars, is they'll have a block in the morning and a block in the afternoon of very similar activities. So, for instance, they may have a block in the morning, which is to follow up with past clients, and then a block in the afternoon is to send correspondence or send a newsletter to my past clients and both of them have that level of importance in your business.

Starting point is 00:12:38 So when we start looking at that, what I typically say to my clients is you need to start pulling them together. So what we do is we actually batch similar tasks. Now about batching, we're not saying putting into the same time block, what we'll say is from 9 to 945, we're going to contact our past clients. Then from 945, excuse me, to 1030, we're actually going to do all. of those emails, those messages, as newsletters to our past clients. Now, why do we actually batch similar tasks together?

Starting point is 00:13:12 Well, it's all to do with your mindset. When you are thinking in that particular line of work with dealing with past clients, it just makes sense to group and batch together similar activities after each other. Because you're going to be at a heightened level, you'll be familiar with the clients, you won't forget a particular client if that is the flow that you're going through. So when you're starting to time block, stand back, look at your calendar and see, hey, wait a minute, those two are actually quite similar. Batch them together so that they actually become almost a continuation of each other.

Starting point is 00:13:49 And one of the key things in order to do that is leverage technology. This is going to be absolutely, when you're time blocking, don't try and time block out of the memory because you will start to forget, use technology, use things like digital calendars or digital planners, etc. Because with that, it's very easy for you to click and drag to actually put them together. And also what's so great about technology is it actually becomes a little bit of a challenge to overlap them because it just doesn't look right. So you can actually have them so that becomes sequentially next to each other.

Starting point is 00:14:25 So use that technology to master your work. workflow. Get that time blocking where the block is one task focused at that particular time of the actual day. And if you do discover that there are more tasks that are similar in a particular day, make sure that you batch them together. So that becomes an easier flow. Now, the fourth strategy that I want to share with you is really one that is, it's actually extremely important. Because as you're going through your particular day, you're going to actually start to burn out. don't take breaks. So what you really need to start doing, and the fourth strategy is eliminating these energy drains. Now, I used to do it personally. I used to start at seven o'clock and push

Starting point is 00:15:12 myself until like six, seven o'clock that night, 12 hours straight. And I would say to my clients, I would say to colleagues, you know, I'm doing a 12 hour day and I'm doing that Monday through to Friday. But ultimately what starts to happen is you start to actually become exhausted and your mind starts to slow down. And what I actually noticed was my productivity level started to decrease because I was actually burning out. So the solution to that is taking breaks. Now, this is something that I used to put into my particular business. When I did my time blocks, once I'd finished and I used to refer to them as category blocks, category blocks is where I might have three time blocks in a row of similar activities.

Starting point is 00:16:06 Once I'd completed that, I would take a break. I would get up from my desk. I would go for a walk. I would actually go maybe get some refreshment, something to eat, just to really. just to relax and just move out of that particular environment, get the flow of blood going through my actual body, and making sure that I just got this little bit of energy again. I didn't want to go from one big activity to the next big activity

Starting point is 00:16:33 because ultimately what happens is your energy starts to deplete them. By the end of the afternoon, you're absolutely exhausted. So by doing that, and these breaks could be anything from 10 minutes up to about and a half an hour. Having those particular breaks really energizes yourself, it resets yourself.

Starting point is 00:16:53 So when you go into the next actual activity or the next priority, you've got a refreshed bit of energy and you can actually start to go ahead with that. So eliminate those energy drains but I'm doing a continual flow. Have those breaks in between. Now there's another little elements to this

Starting point is 00:17:11 and I got to discover it was when I was working at my desk, My desk used to become quite cluttered and ultimately becoming quite cluttered became a distraction. I'd be busy with something and then I needed to find a pen and I couldn't find a pen because I had papers everywhere. And I'd spend the next 10, 15 minutes looking for a pen. Then I'd find a pen that wasn't working and I'd look for another pen. Alternatively, I used to have my setup where I could actually view and I could just see out of the corner of my eye. I could see the television.

Starting point is 00:17:42 and while I was sitting there, suddenly my attention would move towards the actual television. And that became a distraction. But ultimately what happened was it started, these particular distractions actually started to take away my energy as well. Because when I started to reflect back on doing those priority high activity tasks, I just felt I didn't have that energy to do it. I didn't have that motivation to do it. So ultimately, that became a distraction that removed energy. So look at your workspace.

Starting point is 00:18:19 Make sure it's a workspace that has a level of high productivity associated to it. Make sure it's a little bit clean. If you're using pens, make sure that you have three or four pens available. If you need notepad, you've got those available. If you're a person that needs refreshments, make sure that you've got some water next to you. Make sure that you've got all of these little items so that you can actually work. your day ahead. And by doing that, you're actually going to find that you'll have a lot more continued energy. Now, something that was great, when I used to take my breaks, it was at that time

Starting point is 00:18:52 in the breaks that I used to use that to replenish anything. So for instance, if I had a glass of water next to my desk, when I was working in that particular break, that's when I would go back and I'd refresh that glass of water and put it back next to my desk or get something to eat or look for more pens or anything of that nature. I would do that in the break, but I'd get that completed. So that was quite important. And then something just as a side note. And so too often we look at all the tasks that we've got to do for the day ahead.

Starting point is 00:19:25 And all we do is we say, well, I've got to do everything. Now, if you remember, we reflect back on what's important, what's not important. And ultimately, when we look at some of those not important, and not urgent types of tasks, ask yourself this question, can I delegate that to somebody else? Because if I give it to somebody else, well, then it's going to free me up of my particular time. And a lot of times those not urgent or not important types of activities or tasks are actually quite energy sapping because you really look at it and go, I'm just going to get it done. But there might be a way of leveraging it with somebody else.

Starting point is 00:20:08 So fourth strategy out there is eliminating those energy drains. So the first thing is making sure that you take breaks so that you can just get your body going. Have a look at your workspace and everything around you. Make sure that there's nothing that's just going to pull you out and really sap you from that energy of continue of your work. And also just look at items and see, is there something that I could actually delegate to somebody else and just leverage that off? So the fifth, the fifth one, the fifth strategy that I want to share with you. And this is really, now that you've got a nice, holistic approach of all the activities that you need to do, you can get it into a time block into your calendar.

Starting point is 00:20:50 You're really focusing on those high priority important tasks. Maybe they're urgent, getting them out of the way. And really having this workflow of a day with breaks that's giving you all this energy to carry on. The fifth strategy is really the strategy of you need to start embracing what we call a realistic approach. And what we mean by a realistic approach so too often that when we're doing a high priority on urgent task, we get into it and we're chasing perfection. We want to make sure that the outcome is absolutely perfect. Now we had scheduled ourselves maybe let's say 45 minutes to do this particular task. But ultimately, because we're chasing perfection, it goes on for two or three hours.

Starting point is 00:21:45 So to give you an example, I was working with a client that was recreating their website and they did a bit of an upgrade to their logo. Now on their logo, they have a standard font and a color, a pantone for the actual logo itself. and they were deciding to make a few changes to the logo. Now, font, they kept exactly the same because that was going out. But the color, they wanted to make a few changes. Now, to select the color, they originally had the color pantones for the actual company that they were supposed to use. But they wanted to make some changes. And what should have taken about 20 minutes to have completed, they spent two days.

Starting point is 00:22:32 on. Two days to choose between a shade of blue. That was what they were working on for two days. And that actually just burnt out time. It actually just wasted time. And when we finally sat down, I asked them, is that perfection important? Is your clients going to say, we preferred it to be a lighter or darker shade of blue? And that question actually led to the point of, we're actually just wasted two days instead of having it completed in 20 minutes. So make sure that you do embrace this realistic approach. Don't chase perfection. Get it done.

Starting point is 00:23:15 Make sure it is at a level that is acceptable and move it forward onto them. The next part is, you know, and this is where I said to them, you need to learn to say enough is enough. Just like when they were working on that particular logo. go, the first day that they were working on, they worked on to 11 o'clock that night, and they were going backwards and forwards with the different shades. And I said to them, why? Why did you push yourself to 11 o'clock that night? And they said, they wanted to get it right.

Starting point is 00:23:48 And I said, well, one, you're chasing perfection. Rather just work with what you have, work on, and focus on those productive activities. But more importantly on that was, I said, why did you work to live? What should have been happening is if you are running with a particular day, especially with a task that should take 20 minutes and suddenly they hit the two hour mark, you need to sit back and say, you know what, enough is enough. And that is enough for today. What I really need to do is that is enough focus on this particular activity,

Starting point is 00:24:23 which has gone over that time factor. And I need to now focus on the next high priority, high importance and high urgency task. So it is something that when you're working through something and it's taking you five or six hours with something, stand back, have a look at it and go, hey, maybe that's enough or today. Maybe I'll continue this tomorrow. And why is that so important is as you start going through, we actually find that when you continue with a single activity for more than about 45 minutes to an hour, your mind and your brain level actually starts to decrease in its productivity output. So when you start hitting that two, three hour mark, you hit a level of

Starting point is 00:25:11 exhaustion. And ultimately what you're going to start doing is you're going to start making errors. And those errors are going to cost you more time in the future. So ultimately, what we normally say is when you hit that two hour mark, you need to say to yourself, that is enough. I need to stop what I'm actually doing. Take a break to reset myself. Is it something that I come back the same day? Or is it something that I carry on the next day? I used to have the saying with my staff many years ago.

Starting point is 00:25:41 And I say, if you start a task and you cannot, well, let me rephrase that, if there is a task that you would like to start, but you will not be able to complete it today, do not start it today. Start it first thing in the morning. So let me refresh that. We'll rephrase that. So if there's something that you cannot complete today, don't start it today. Start it first thing in the morning. And the reason I had that is I had so many of my staff in the past where at two,

Starting point is 00:26:13 three o'clock in the afternoon, they would start a certain activity and they would try and overlap it until the next day. And what I actually found is that two hours in the late afternoon actually became nonproductive. when they started at 8 o'clock the next day. In fact, they scrapped everything and they started fresh. So ultimately, if you cannot finish something in the particular day, don't start it in that day. Start it early the next morning. You'll have a lot more energy, a lot more focus time into it, and you'll be able to go through all of that. And then finally, when you start to embrace this realistic approach, you've got to do something that I say every single time.

Starting point is 00:26:55 You need to celebrate. you accomplish a certain task and it's done. For instance, you wanted to make contact with your past clients and you've allocated 45 minutes and you've gone through it and the list is all being checked off. Celebrate it. Actually recognize that you've actually done it. That actually gives you a level of energy. That actually gives you this little motivation to move on to the next task and it doesn't become chores. It's something where you can stand back and go, wow, that was amazing. This is something that is really going to help you in your particular day. Just doing those little, little celebrations is so important. So just as a quick little overview and a summary and a

Starting point is 00:27:42 recap of what we spoke about, the first one, or the five strategies, is identify those culprits. Really start looking at what you're doing in the day. What is? What is? is those distractions, highlight all of those. The second is to prioritize ruthlessly. Use that Eisenhower matrix where you can actually put it into the categories of what is urgent and important and what is not urgent and not important so that you can actually decipher the difference between the two. The third is master that workflow. So when you've got those particular tasks and activities, you can put it into your calendar into those blocks. Remember, the time. block, one activity in that block at a specific time and you can then roll through that throughout

Starting point is 00:28:29 the actual day. The fourth one is to eliminate all those energy drains, taking breaks and making sure the environment that you're working on is nice and tidy and clean and it doesn't have that little distractive elements. And then finally the fifth one embrace that realistic approach. Don't look for perfection because I can tell you now, but is going to start burning your time. Learn how to say, enough's enough, and I will actually stop and continue tomorrow. And when you do finish something,

Starting point is 00:29:03 make sure that you celebrate it. It is just so, so important for you to actually go ahead and celebrate those activities that you have completed. So you've learned how to identify and defeat those time-sucking villains. Remember, taking back control of your schedule is the first step to a calmer, more productive view. Implement these strategies and watch your free in time multiply. Stay tuned for more time management hacks on The Simple Truth with Stewart.

KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Time Thief Takedown - 5 Strategies to Reclaim Your Day

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