Another tip that I highly recommend is using the power of positive questions. Now, this isn’t necessarily the positive thinking mumbo jumbo (although I do firmly believe that positive thinking is better than negative thinking), but rather realizing that you will move toward what you focus on. So, although you might have to get up early and go to work whether you enjoy your job or not, why not start off the day right?
I recommend asking yourself some “Power Questions” each day so that you can help your mind to focus on that which pulls you toward your goals as opposed to that which takes you away from them. Some examples could be:
•What am I going to do today to increase my knowledge about real estate investing?
•What property can I make an offer on today?
•What can I do today to find a new deal?
I think you get the point! “What am I going to…”, “How can I…”, etc., are some great ways to begin your “Morning Power Questions”.
At the end of the day, you can ask yourself some “Evening Power Questions” to reflect on the day’s events. Some examples of these could include:
•What did I do today to increase my knowledge about real estate investing?
•What did I do today to propel me forward and assist me in finding another deal?
•What did I do today to increase my net worth and/or cash flow?
Those questions will help keep you accountable to your goals.
Now, while this isn’t necessarily a “Goal Planning” session, it’s important to realize that when you have goals, a strong desire to reach your goals, and a detailed vision of what exactly it is that you want, then you will be more motivated to do what it takes, especially if you have to find bits and pieces of time to accomplish it.
TIME MANAGEMENT
One of the biggest things that I used to help me manage my time was to implement the FranklinCovey system. Preferably at the end of the day, before you go to bed, write a list of the things that you need to do the following day. These items or tasks can typically be divided into four categories: Urgent/Important, Urgent/Non-Important, Non- Urgent/Important, and Non-Urgent/Non-Important.
Examples of these could be the following:
•Urgent/Important: Make the car payment, finish a work report that’s due tomorrow
•Urgent/Non-Important: Make a phone call interrupting your activity
•Non-Urgent/Important: Prepare your will, get your yearly physical, work out
•Non-Urgent/Non-Important: Watch TV, surf the Net
Typically the most important tasks are the Non-Urgent/Important tasks, with the Urgent/Important tasks pretty close in importance.
So, make that list of all the items that you want to complete the following day. The way I typically do it is that, after making this list, I categorize the items with a letter A, B, C, or D. A means that this is an item that you must get done. B is an item that you should get done. C is for items that you could get done, but aren’t necessarily needed. Finally, D means that this item is trivial. Next, write numbers next to each item in each section, in the order that you want to complete them, giving the most important item the number 1. Then, when tomorrow comes, you start with Al and work on it till it’s completed, then you move to A2, and so forth.
I do recommend that you do this every evening so that your subconscious mind can work through it as you sleep, and you will be more prepared when the day begins.
This idea has been around for ages, and it is so simple that it’s scary. I do highly recommend that you check out your local office supplies store for FranklinCovey products, and look into getting their planning system/calendar. It is a great investment and a great time- management system, and it has allowed me to be much more productive with bits and pieces of time than I would have been otherwise. The key is to get into the habit of using it.
It’s also important to look at people who have had it worse than you do who have succeeded! No matter the situation, you can always find people in worse shape than you who have overcome their issues and have moved forward. Some people have tremendous health issues that they have overcome, others have had severe financial setbacks, and others have had to battle time-management issues. Look for people that have been worse off than you currently are, and use their successes to help motivate you to get the job done. “If he can do it, then I sure as heck should be able to as well!”
For me, I think the single thing that had the biggest impact was realizing that there was no task too small that didn’t matter. I have firmly come to the conclusion that taking a series of little actions add up to big results. In my opinion, it’s not an “Additive Effect”, but more of a “Multiplying Effect” , where three actions plus three actions don’t equal six actions, but end up coming out to nine. Something that may appear to be a small action internally may end up having a huge effect in the outside world.
It’s like dropping a pebble in the water. While the pebble is small, that single pebble can have multiple ripples that can go for great distances. There’s an old saying that a butterfly flapping his wings can cause a ripple so far away that it will cause a tsunami thousands of miles away. You never know what your continuous small actions will lead to!
FIVE THINGS, EVERY DAY
If I were to wrap this up in a single bit of advice, it would be this: Don’t end each day without doing five things to further your business. It doesn’t matter if they are small or big. I don’t mean “getting things organized so that you can get started”, I mean actions that will provide you with results.
Depending on your experience, this could be reading part of a book on investing for ten minutes, listening for twenty minutes to training program, making an offer on a property, preparing a mailout, looking at deals on the MLS, signing a lease with a new tenant, putting an ad in the paper, hanging bandit signs, closing on a deal, etc. The list of what you can do is huge - just don’t get that mixed up with trivial junk that doesn’t amount to much more than paper shuffling and busy work that doesn’t get you anywhere.
Now, keep in mind that you can’t just read, read, read, read, and read for your five things, unless you’re brand spankin’ new at this. Take an action to get ahead. Get some business cards out, order business cards, farm your target area - seriously, the tasks you could do are endless, and most of them take a very short amount of time to complete, or at least begin. You may even find that you only have to use a quarter of your wasted time each day!
What’s the key? It’s not the “five things”. It’s the “every day”. Sure, you can take your weekends off, but I don’t recommend it. You spend 40 hours a week or more working for someone else. Why not spend some time working for your freedom?
If you’re anything like me, what you will find is the following: When you make it a constant habit to work towards something, bits and pieces of time will free up. In the general order of things, I think that it is a fundamental law that consistent action is rewarded. The amount of the action isn’t important…the consistency of it is.
By consistently using the little bits and pieces of time that are typically wasted, that small amount of action will have a huge effect on the “big picture” and take you much further than if you used huge chunks of time, but were inconsistent in doing so. I would gladly take twenty minutes a day over a four-hour time slot every two weeks, and could accomplish more by focusing during that twenty minutes. It’s amazing what you can do in a short amount of time when you focus on it.
I hope that you’ve gleaned something from this chapter that you can immediately apply in your own real estate investing endeavors. If you enjoyed the tips, I’d like to invite you to check out my free “12- part Mini E-course on Real Estate Investing” at