Time Management Strategies To Stay Productive This Holiday Season

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The holidays are nearly upon us, which means more and more investors will undoubtedly be spending time with family and friends. The holidays are, after all, the one time of the year everyone should prioritize spending quality time with the ones they love. Entrepreneurs and real estate investors, in particular, will find it of value to find a balance between work and play. To make sure you can maximize your time with family and your business, try implementing some of the following time management strategies.

The Importance Of Time Management

Time management is one of the single most integral skills exercised by prolific entrepreneurs. It is time management that allows savvy investors to optimize their schedule in a more efficient manner. Time management also facilitates productivity and allows people to get more done in a shorter period of time.

That said, the most important benefit of time management isn’t necessarily a higher work yield, but rather the time you are granted as a result. Proper time management ultimately leads to more free time, which is where the real benefits are realized. With more free time, entrepreneurs are able to pursue more learning opportunities and profit-generating activities.

At this time of the year, the free time you are left with could also be dedicated to friends and family. While time management strategies will ultimately make you more efficient with your time, it’s what you do with the time you are given that really makes a difference.


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Time management tools

3 Effective Time Management Strategies To Implement This Fall

Time management is a skill investors must exercise and hone over the course of the entire year. However, the holidays have a tendency to ask more of an investor’s time than the rest of the year combined, and should therefore be approached with a different plan. If you want to make sure you are productive over the course of the holidays, try implementing some of these effective time management strategies:

  • Learn To Delegate
  • Dedicate Time To Opportunities & Operations
  • Don’t Let Your To-Do List Control You

Learn To Delegate

A great deal of today’s investors have gotten to where they are by taking control of every situation and seeing each task through to the end. Smart and diligent investors are great at getting things done; it’s perhaps one of the most differentiating factors between entrepreneurs and those working traditional “nine-to-fives.” That said, this is a piece about time management strategies; the goal is to manage your time effectively enough to be able to enjoy your time off without making sacrifices to your real estate business.

In order to do just that, you may need to learn how to delegate a little more. Trust in the people you hire and work with on a daily basis. More specifically, pay special considerations to the best use of your time, and make sure it that takes up the majority of your work hours. More menial tasks are perfectly fine being left in the hands of those you have aligned your services with. Trust your team to do the job you hired them to do, and you will find yourself with a lot more time on your hands.

Dedicate Time To Opportunities & Operations

There isn’t a single person who doesn’t wish they had more time; it’s the one commodity we all wish we had more of. Consequently, time is the one commodity we can never get back. The single greatest thing we can do is optimize the time we are given, and one of the best ways to do that is to designate certain times of the day for opportunities and others for operations.

Simply divide your days into two unique parts, each with their own objective: focus your time in the morning on opportunities (growth, sales, scalability and brand exposure) and focus the remaining hours in your work day on operations (delivery and follow-up). In doing so, you may notice a healthy blend of progress and potential.

Also, in dedicating a specific time of day to particular projects, you are more likely to be more efficient and stay on task—eventually freeing up more of your time. Remember, every little bit counts.

Don’t Let Your To-Do List Control You

Prioritizing your tasks for the day, or even over the course of the entire holiday season, is a great way to stay on track. Just know this: it’s entirely possible for a to-do list to become counterproductive. Those that let their to-do lists dictate their every move—without room for flexibility—may find the same list they use to get things done prevents them from realizing progress.

By all means, make a to-do list and prioritize those tasks that are most important to you, but don’t assume you can’t diverge from its path. Sometimes making adjustments to your to-do list is necessary to realize maximum efficiency. The hard part, however, is in realizing when to do so. The next time you find yourself stuck on your to-do list, try shifting some things around, and you may find yourself more productive.

Time Management Tools For Real Estate Investors

There are a number of time management tools for today’s investors to take advantage of, not the least of which are designed to make their users more efficient. The following time management apps are perhaps some of the most popular, and for good reason:

  • Evernote: Evernote is a simple app that allows investors to take notes on any of their devices. More importantly, Evernote has a free version that is capable of syncing all of the devices it is installed on. Sync data, remember internet pages, capture photos, create lists and record voice reminders from your phone and carry them over to your computer when it’s time to work.
  • Dropbox: Not unlike Evernote, Dropbox is an app that can sync files, photos, documents and videos from individual devices via cloud-based computing. However, whereas Evernote is typically reserved for one person, Dropbox allows several people to share files over the cloud, essentially eliminating a lot of time-wasting, back-and-forth conversations. When used correctly, Dropbox can save an incredible amount of time over the course of any collaboration project.
  • Audible: Reading remains one of the most valuable activities for today’s entrepreneurs. The right books are a great catalyst to spark one’s pursuit of further education. However, reading is incredibly time-consuming, especially for someone looking to run a company and spend time with their family over the holidays. Fortunately, Audible awards those interested in reading the opportunity to listen to books. That means you can “read” a book while driving, or even doing other things around the house.
  • Google Drive: Anyone with a Gmail account is automatically granted access to one of today’s most valuable tools: Google Drive. This time-saving tool offers its users the ability to make spreadsheets, write documents, create slides and save all of them to an online database for free. Google Drive is great for collaborative projects and can very easily cut back on wasted time.
  • Trello: Trello has made a name for itself in the corporate world with its ability to visualize tasks and projects. Its easy to translate interface is great for managing projects between multiple people. Trello is really a simple way for teams to communicate and collaborate on a daily basis.

Summary

Implementing the proper time management strategies over the course of the holiday season may be enough for investors to simultaneously spend time with the ones they love and maintain business operations. Those that can optimize the hours they are given in a day are certainly awarded the opportunity to get more done, but it’s important to remember that the benefits of time management aren’t necessarily relegated to productivity; it’s what you do with the time you are given that makes the biggest difference. In managing your time effectively, there’s no reason you couldn’t realize more business success and spend all of the time you want with loved ones this holiday season.


Key Takeaways

  • While time management strategies will ultimately make you more efficient, it’s what you do with the time you are given that really makes a difference.
  • Truly great time management software can make optimizing your work hours easy.
  • There are a number of time management tools to help you optimize your own time; you just need to know where to look.