Life Time Investment Planning

A part of making your activities habitual is planning and organizing your schedule. If you do not have one now, purchase a weekly planning book at any stationery store or office supply company. Or, copy and use the “Weekly Planner in your Real Estate Forms Portfolio. Using the planner to enter appointments and to schedule activities will help you avoid conflicts and better utilize your time.

Perhaps you only need to maintain a weekly schedule of priorities. The “Weekly Priority Schedule” helps you organize your most important appointments and activities each day according to a morning and evening schedule. Simply fill in each activity you would like to accomplish for the week. The box next to your priorities can be checked off as they are completed.

We are all equal when it comes to the time we have available to us. We all have 24 hours a day to spend. Whether we use that time productively or waste it is up to us. A frequent complaint that I hear from people is, “I just don’t have enough time.” I then remind them that they don’t need that much time, only five to ten hours a week. Their response is, “I don’t even have that much time.” When I hear this, I know they are really admitting that they are not organized enough to get the most from the time they have available. The old adage, “if you want something done, give it to a busy person,” would not apply to them. They are “busy” but it is a disorganized and unproductive “busyness.”

A simple exercise might cast some light on how well organized you are and how you spend your time. On a separate piece of paper, write down the average amount of sleep you get, the average amount of time you spend preparing and/or eating meals, the amount of time you spend commuting to work, the time you spend working, the time you spend “getting ready,” the time you spend watching television (be honest), the amount of time you spend in leisure activities, and finally, the time spent doing any other activity that I have not listed. It would be no surprise to me if your total exceeds 24 hours. That would tell me that your days are busy, but not necessarily well organized and productive.

Closely examine each one of these areas and try to determine where you might reasonably cut back or even eliminate one or more of the activities. You may find it necessary to modify some of your long established habits to accommodate your new real estate investing activities. For example, reducing the amount of time you spend watching television or, perhaps, cutting back on the amount of sleep you get by 30 to 60 minutes might free up the time you need to become a successful investor. It is also helpful to combine activities to make better use of time. If you want to spend time with your family and you also want to exercise, then exercise with your family. You get the idea.

To assist you in organizing your time, let me suggest a time management system that has been very productive for me. There are three parts.

First, establish priorities. Each evening, I make a list of all of the things that I must do the following day. I make the list in the evening because that is the time when the next day’s priorities are most clear to me. Whatever you have to do the following day, whether it is grocery shopping, getting a haircut, or viewing a property, write down the task on your list. Your list could even be broken into three sections:

1. Things that are absolutely essential to accomplish.

2. Tasks that are important that you do once the essentials have been accomplished.

3. Items that you will get to if the other things on your list have been completed.

Regrettably, it is this third category that is usually the most fun and exciting. They are the pleasant things to do and many times are done first. Make sure the items in this third category are, indeed, the last things that you will do. I can’t overemphasize this point. Not only will this insure that you get the most important things done, but you will be highly motivated to get them done so that you can get to those tasks that are more “fun.”

The second part of my time management system is to develop an ability to manage your life: to prioritize, determine what is important, and to be able to put things in their proper order. This is an area with which procrastinators have a tough time coping. Considering that more than three quarters of the population could correctly be labeled as procrastinators, it is no wonder that their time management system, if they have one, breaks down at this level.

The third part of my time management system is to develop an ability to make decisions. Most procrastinators are not decision-makers. But, there are many people who cannot necessarily be labeled procrastinators who still find it difficult to make decisions. The old saying, “do something, even if it’s wrong.” has a lot of merit. I agree with Lee Lacooca, the former Chairman of Onпузне Corporation, who said, “Indecision has cost this country more than bad decisions.” Not every decision that you are going to make is going to be the right one.