In a slump? Tips to Increase Your Productivity
Feel like you have too many plates spinning at once? Having a hard time remembering birthdays, appointments or other important dates? Do you have piles of clutter around your home, work and other spaces that seem like they’ll never go away? Are you being easily distracted by “time wasters”?
When your home life and work life are unorganized, your productivity can drop dramatically. I understand the life of a busy real estate professional and know how easily one can fall into a slump due to disorganization and bad time management. In 2008 I am going to share a few new items each week to help increase your personal and professional productivity which will improve your life and your business.
Tip #1: Take care of clutter in baby steps
Got piles and piles of paperwork or mail cluttering your desk, your floor, your car, your kitchen counters? Don’t fret! It may seem very overwhelming at first, but it does not have to be. It didn’t get there all at once, and it doesn’t have to be taken care of all at once.
Take care of it in baby steps by focusing on one pile in one area for 15 minutes at a time each day. Set a timer for 15 minutes and start going through your piles, throwing out what is not needed and filing (in your labeled file folders of course) the papers you need to keep. When your time is up, stop what you are doing, making sure you can mark where you left off, and come back to it the next day for 15 minutes. Any new mail or papers that come to you in this time, automatically file away as you get them. Do this for 21 days (it takes 21 days to make something a habit right?) and see where this takes you. Little by little you will purge and file all the cluttering paperwork you have laying about and before you know it, you have trained yourself into being nearly organized!
© Megan E. Barber, Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, LLC
Megan Barber is a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, owner of Barber Virtual Assisting Solutions, and publisher of The REAL Advantage E-Zine. Megan has spent 9+ years doing the “behind-the-scenes” work in the real estate industry assisting agents with their real estate marketing and transaction needs.
