Prioritizing Your Daily Disciplines to Create the Long-Term Results You Desire – #TomFerryShow

June 9, 2020

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You’re so-called “busy” all day…

Replying to emails.

Returning calls.

Playing phone tag with an appraiser.

And suddenly, it’s early evening and you say to yourself:

“I didn’t get any of the things I needed to do done today.”

…

Let’s fix that.

Busy and Productive Are Not the Same Thing

Yes, those tasks that ate up your day were all things that needed to be done.

But just being blunt… the way you prioritized them is detrimental to your business, long-term.

The key to success is identifying and prioritizing the 4-7 daily disciplines that truly move the needle for your business.

And then making those your priority every day!

If you’re letting the “urgent” tasks override the “important” tasks in your business, you’re never going to get ahead.

What’s the difference?

Important tasks are those big-picture activities that create growth in your business.

Urgent tasks are those that move a particular transaction forward.

The solution? Prioritizing and time blocking. Keep reading…

What Moves the Needle for You?

The specifics of identifying what moves the needle may vary for every person reading this, but from a big picture perspective, I think it breaks down into four categories:

Marketing & appointment setting – Without this, there’s no business coming your way
Nurturing & follow up – It’s the biggest complaint about real estate professionals… “I never heard back from them.” You need to make nurturing a daily discipline to move people from prospects to clients.
Going on appointments & converting – How many appointments would I see in your calendar over the next two weeks?
Servicing & closing transactions – You’ve gotta do the work and keep people moving through the process.

So let me ask you… Are those four activities ingrained in your daily routine?

If you said yes, congratulations! If you said no, you’re likely letting the “urgent” part of your business get in the way of what’s truly “important” to your long-term success.

Let’s talk about how to fix it…

Create Your Daily Action Checklist

Only you (and your coach) know the 4-7 most important activities to keep your business moving forward, but whatever those things are, they need to be on your Daily Action Checklist.

Here’s an example:

Take your MEDS: Meditate, Exercise, Diet and Sleep
Analyze data: Looking at trends to create confidence and certainty of your knowledge of the market.
Review your schedule
Scheduling appointments: If you’re really committed to this business, it’s in your schedule
Go on appointments
Post social media content

What if… for the next 30 days, you said, “Here are all the things I know create certainty in my business,” and you prioritized them?

Let’s keep going so I can show you how.

Time-Block Your Way to Big Success

If you were to look inside my calendar, you’d see a mosaic of different color boxes blocking out nearly my entire week.

The most “important” items go on first, followed by the urgent.

I like to leave myself a little wiggle room because we know things pop up and sometimes tasks take longer than expected.

But what else do we know?

THIS: Work expands to fill the time you allow for its completion.

Which is exactly WHY it’s so important to “time block” your calendar this way.

If you show up at the office with no structure in your calendar and decide to do “urgent” tasks like returning calls or talking to your appraiser, those tasks will expand and eat up all the time you hoped to devote to more “important” activities… once you completed the “urgent” tasks.

So without time-blocking, you’re hoping that you’ll be disciplined enough to complete the urgent and then move on to the important… But that’s not reality.

The best way to make the “important” truly important is to prioritize them and build them into your calendar FIRST!

Be sure to build in time for rejuvenation, too!

A Few Notes About Lists

Lists can be useful, but they can also pose a trap.

Many people create a big list of “things to do” and then tend to choose to tackle the easiest tasks on the list.

Just one problem: Those easy things aren’t what moves the needle. Then those tasks that WILL move the needle end up getting ignored because you keep adding easy tasks to the list.

Am I talking to you?

Here’s another common list-making mistake: You combine your business, personal and family tasks all into one list. Don’t do this! It jumbles up your priorities and only causes confusion.

That’s why I love the Daily Action Checklist for your business. The only things on it are things that you know move the needle in your business.

And by making those tasks a daily discipline, you create certainty in your business both now and for the long run.

Did this help? Let me know your thoughts and any additional questions you might have in the comments below! Thanks for watching!

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