One day a few years back, an agent friend of mine popped her head in the door. I asked her how things were going, and she told me that she was \u201cso busy.\u201d With no deals currently in escrow and not a particularly significant pipeline, I wondered about her use of the words \u201cso busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
First and foremost, no matter how many plates I am spinning, I would never, ever tell anyone that I was so busy<\/em>. It seems to send the message that I don\u2019t have enough time for them. And, it may shut people out.<\/p>\n There are many people who disagree with that philosophy including, Michael Port, the author of Book Yourself Solid. <\/em>Port believes that telling clients how busy you are and how you don\u2019t have any time for them is a means of winning business because human nature is to want something we can\u2019t have. Who would you rather have as your Realtor\u00ae: The busy gal with loads of listings or the guy who hardly has any clients?<\/p>\n On the other hand, being \u201ctoo busy\u201d can actually be a sign of our inability to manage our daily activities well.\u00a0Though most real estate professionals have pretty hectic schedules, few agents have a legitimate need to be busy all the time. It\u2019s possible that they just don\u2019t prioritize well.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBeing busy is not the same as being productive,\u201d says Tim Ferriss, \u201c\u2026and is more often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. Being busy is a form of laziness \u2013 lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.\u201d<\/p>\n If you want to make big bucks in real estate, you cannot sing the \u201cI\u2019m too busy\u201d song.\u00a0You must try to find ways to restructure your daily and weekly activities. When you tell others (and yourself) that you are too busy, you are turning down the opportunity to do more and be more.<\/p>\n One of the easiest ways to be productive is to put things on a calendar<\/strong>.\u00a0For example, if you are planning to send your sphere of influence a monthly newsletter, plan the whole year right now. Add the dates for printing and mailing to your calendar now. Refer to your calendar to keep yourself accountable.<\/p>\n Another way to stay productive and in control is to quit fixating on minutiae<\/strong>.\u00a0Namely, leave your drama at the door. When you walk into the office fully intending to prospect for two hours and then your seller calls about a missing key or an overflowing toilet, everything is derailed. Evaluate what is sucking your time, and figure out a way to overcome \u201ctime sucks\u201d so that you can focus on generating new business.<\/p>\n You can easily avoid the\u00a0“I\u2019m too busy”\u00a0mantra when you learn more about\u00a0productivity tools\u00a0and seek ways to outsource time-consuming tasks<\/strong> by leveraging assistants and support staff.\u00a0Focus on what you do best, and let other people do the rest. In the short sale world, my team has helped lots of agents with the short sale processing, while they work on building a strong pipeline.<\/p>\n The next time you feel like your head is spinning and you are \u201ctoo busy,\u201d think again. Busy is something you\u2019re probably not. It\u2019s likely that you just need a better method for managing everything\u2014one that will give you plenty of time for all the things you really want to do with your life and with your business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Realtors are famous for touting how busy they are, but does this convey success or failure? There are two schools of thought on the topic, and three surefire solutions to being productive regardless of which camp you follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335812,"featured_media":2809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[254,256],"tags":[99,100,140,110],"class_list":["post-2805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-real-estate-practice-editorials","tag-breaking-news","tag-hot-stories","tag-professionalism-2","tag-real-estate-practice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/09\/busy-team.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4827,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions\/4827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}3 Ways to Stay Productive Instead of Busy<\/h2>\n