Work Smarter AND Harder: Time Management Techniques for Real Estate Professionals

Having strong time management, especially in the endlessly fast pace of the real estate industry, is a crucial skill to master. It's what helps you know where to focus your efforts, prioritize your tasks effectively, and gives you the free time you need to do what you do best: serving your clients.

Prioritizing Tasks and Setting Realistic Goals

Believe it or not, no matter how swamped, overwhelmed, or hectic your schedule is, effective time management is within reach. As the old saying goes, you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. To have effective time management, you have to start small with your goals. First, ask yourself what you want to accomplish in the 24 hours you're currently in. You can also zoom out a bit more and ask what you want to accomplish in the week.

Once you have an idea of what you want — and need — to accomplish, grab a pen and paper or open up your favorite note-taking app. Jot every task down that comes to mind. After you complete this brain dump, it might look a little overwhelming when it's all down on paper. But this is the purpose of the exercise: it's setting the stage for you to use actual time management techniques.

Now that you have a bird's eye view of your day or week, you can prioritize your task list based on urgency, less important tasks, and what can be reprioritized to a later date so you're more freed up in the present moment. By grouping your tasks and ordering them from most urgent to least urgent, you can quickly get a grasp on where you should focus your time first. Start with completing tasks labeled as most urgent, then assign a timeframe for completion to each of the tasks as you go down your list.

Implementing Time-Blocking and Batching Techniques

The timeframe you assign to complete each task is critical to actually achieve effective time management. To make this even easier, you can implement time-blocking and batching techniques. With time-blocking, you set aside dedicated time for each and every task on your list in order of importance and urgency. You can put this in action by blocking out chunks of time on your work calendar, so you won't be disrupted by meetings and have designated, heads-down focus time.

For batching, you'll group tasks together by their similarity. This is a good technique to use after you've completed the more urgent, time-sensitive tasks. Let's say the bottom half of your task list has things like replying to emails, updating your social media profiles, and reviewing some reporting. Because these are more digital-oriented, where you'll be spending time in front of the computer, you can group them together and dedicate a block of time to knock these similar tasks out.

As a bonus, if you find yourself having a hard time getting your tasks completed, you can use another time management tactic known as the Pomodoro technique. With this technique, you spend 25 minutes focused on work, then take a five-minute break. Once your break is up, you repeat the 25 minutes of focus, then another five-minute break. This is a great technique to pull out of your back pocket if you're struggling to focus (which is totally natural), or if you have more simple, straightforward tasks you can quickly tackle.

Tools and Apps to Streamline Workflows and Increase Productivity

Having solid time management skills is key to maximizing each hour you have in your day. It's also the key to unlocking the ability to work smarter, not harder. Thankfully, nowadays we have a vast variety of digital tools, apps, and software to streamline current workflows and give productivity a boost, all while saving even more time than ever. While browsing, researching, and shopping around for the right tools is common as a real estate professional, you can make your time management even easier by investing in a single, centralized solution that does it all for you. Doing so can help you get more free hours to get back to doing what you love most.

By taking the time management techniques we've recommended and partnering them with smart, intuitive tools designed specifically for real estate professionals, you can get countless hours back in your day, work smarter and not harder, and have the peace of mind your business is keeping up with the market.

To view the original article, visit the Inside Real Estate blog.