Use this framework to get a handle on where all your time is going.

Last month, one of my newer clients told me that he really needed help with managing his time.

He was feeling overwhelmed – trying to manage an overflowing inbox, juggle multiple deals and still have enough time to lead his growing team.

Maybe you can relate…

After he shared what was going on, I asked him this question:

“Would designing The Ideal Week help you?”

He said it would.

I then asked a few of my other clients if they wanted to get in on this and work on it together.

Most of them said yes.

So, we’ll be having a series of group coaching session on The Ideal Week.

The first steps in this process are setting priorities and then auditing how you’re currently spending your time.

This gives individuals the information needed to design, implement, and then stick to their Ideal Week.

Now, even if you can’t join us, I don’t want you to completely miss out.

One of the tools we’ll be using in the program is called The Time Value Matrix for Commercial Real Estate Leaders.

This straightforward framework will help you organise your activities based on what you enjoy doing and what makes you more money.

For a 10-minute tactical training on how it works, join me for episode 178 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Transcript:

So, one of my good clients came to me a few weeks ago and said, "Darren, I'm just drowning in busy work. And I need to get a handle on how it is I should be splitting my time so that I'm focusing on the things that matter. And also, so I have enough time for my family, for my health, and for things that are important to me outside of work. Can you help me?"

And I said, "Well, yes, I can. How about if we create the ideal week?"

And I'm actually going to be working with a few of my clients on that over the next couple of months.

And given that managing time, and not having enough time is such a common problem for commercial real estate principles.

I thought in today's episode, I would share just one of the frameworks I'm going to be taking my clients through, so that you can identify how it is that you're spinning your time, and perhaps just make a bit of a shift to spend more of your precious time doing things that you enjoy, and that also contribute more value to your business.

Hello, and welcome to episode 178 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak.

And if you've got a commercial real estate business that you'd like to see grow faster, you are in the right place, because that is exactly what we help people do.

Really appreciate you joining us for today's episode. And just a quick reminder, by the way, that if you do have some time to go back and listen to previous episodes, we've got a whole bunch of tactical episodes, which are all about helping you and your team to save time, earn more and be top performers in their market as commercial real estate agents and brokers.

And more recently, we've been focused on strategies to help commercial real estate leaders to get their business growing faster.

And I just wanted to give a little bit of a sneak preview because coming up over the next few episodes, I'm going to be interviewing some commercial real estate business owners and talking to them about the strategies that help them to get their business growing faster.

So, if you want to learn from some of your peers in the industry, as opposed to just me talking all the time, well, I'm going to be taking a backseat and just asking some questions.

So, some of the industry peers can be giving you some of their insights about what is working for them in their business right now.

I hope that you can join us for those upcoming episodes.

Today, though, there we are talking about saving time. And as I mentioned, I'm going to be helping a few of my clients to create the ideal week.

And managing time is something that I have done a lot of research on since I started CRE Success, but more in the frame of looking at it from the perspective of agents and brokers.

So, the first ever training program that I created for commercial real estate agents in this business had a module and it called, 'Time management'.

And actually, the second version of that training, which is called, 'Top Performer', which I've talked about on this program before, that module is called, 'Efficiency and Effectiveness.'

But as I mentioned at the start, my client was looking for an idea of what the ideal week should look like for a commercial real estate business owner.

So, that's what I'm going to be talking about with my clients over the next couple of months.

And what I want to do today is just to share one framework, which I'm going to be taking my clients through.

And this is all about how it is we should be spinning our time based on the value that it contributes to our business but also based on what we enjoy doing.

And I got this framework from a book by Dan Martell, which is called 'Buy Back Your Time'.

And I want you to imagine a matrix. And this coaching program that I'm in loves teaching things through drawing and through visualization.

Now this is a podcast. So, I want you to imagine that there's a vertical y-axis and a horizontal x-axis.

And on the vertical y-axis, we've got a measure of value.

So, maybe if you want to write it down, you can put on the vertical axis a 1$ sign on the bottom and $3 signs on the top.

So, things are at the bottom of this schedule are relatively low value and things at the top of the schedule a relatively high value.

And then on the horizontal axis, on the x-axis, we want to look at basically what you enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing.

So, maybe put a little frowny face on the left-hand side and put a happy face on the right hand side.

And this is all about your personal sentiment towards activities.

What lights you up, what drains you. What's a downer and what's uplifting for you.

And within this chart, within this x and y-axis, there are four quadrants if you like.

One of them is called the delegation quadrant, one is called the replacement quadrant.

One of them is called the investment quadrant, and one of them is called the production quadrant.

And what I want to do is just talk you through those four quadrants and I hope that evokes an awareness around some of the activity, some of the tasks how you are spending your time currently.

And then we'll talk about where it is, (and it should become obvious as we go through it) that you want to be spending more of your time.

So, in the bottom left-hand corner, we've got the delegation quadrant.

This is stuff that isn't particularly valuable and that you don't particularly like doing.

And what you like doing and don't like doing is a little bit subjective, but things that are valuable and nonviable is less objective.

But for me, if I was thinking about running a business, I think the admin maintenance dealing with difficult and low value clients are the types of things that would be in the delegation quadrant.

And I think as much as possible, we want to be running this through kind of like a what I'd call a focus funnel, and looking at how can we maybe eliminate some of these things.

If we can eliminate them, can we automate them? If we can't automate them, can we outsource them?

And if we can't outsource them, well, let's try and delegate them.

Because what we want to do is free up as much time as possible, so you can shift your time away from the delegation quadrant, so that you're spending more of your time doing things which are either more valuable and or more enjoyable to you.

The next quadrant is the upper left-hand corner, which is the replacement quadrant.

This is stuff that's valuable, but you don't really like doing, maybe you're doing it out of obligation.

So, these are the things that actually help grow your business, but you don't really find that enjoyable.

And, you know, one thing that used to fall into this quadrant for me is reviewing contracts.

Really important work, but not really a lot of fun, or at least not much fun for me.

Compliance, HR matters, maybe financial planning and stuff that is important that does contribute value, but maybe it's stuff that you don't like doing.

Another word might be 'transaction' for this quadrant, because you do it, and you get money back, but what you're not accounting for when you're spending time with this quadrant is that it is draining your goodwill.

It's not lighting up, it's draining your energy, it's stuff that you don't like doing, right?

So again, if you do this too much, what you're going to be doing is you might be contributing value to your business, but you're also contributing to potentially burnout, which means that you've got less energy to be able to spend more time to do the things that you enjoy doing that are actually more valuable.

So, what we want to do, when the time is right, and I realize that but not all businesses it's possible.

But we want to identify when is the right time for us to outsource or to delegate this to other people to hire subject matter experts to come in once the business can afford it, so you don't have to do this work.

Because it is important, it contributes value, but it's just the stuff that you don't particularly enjoy doing.

Alright, let's move over now to the stuff that we like.

And first we've got the stuff we like doing but is not particularly valuable. So that's on the bottom right-hand corner of this quadrant.

And this is the investment quadrant. I kind of think of this as the gratification quadrant, because these are activities that are enjoyable, but are less impactful on business growth, or at least impactful in the short term.

They're kind of like indulgences, right? We get some intrinsic satisfaction from these activities. But they might not be that valuable to our business at the time.

And some of them could be things that are actually outside of work. But they're also things that we do that are directly related to our business.

So, it could be mentoring, up and coming staff, whether in the business or even in the industry.

It could be charity work. It could be self-education. It might be exercise.

So have a think about your work activities that fall within this quadrant, but also your non-work activities.

Your work activities might be things like if you're a deal junkie, doing small deals, right?

So, it's stuff you like doing because you're a deal junkie, but it's not really contributing that much value to the business.

If you find you're spending a lot of time on your phone, scrolling. That's a gratification thing, I'd say actually, probably it's a really bad thing for you, in my opinion.

But you need to identify where this time is going. And keep the things which are positive gratification, which actually do give you energy and which can contribute positively to your mindset, exercise, spending time with your family, self-education.

Keep doing those things. But also see are there things that you're doing for gratification, which if you gave them up wouldn't have much negative consequences.

That would be the mindless scrolling on social media and also perhaps giving up some of those small deals that you enjoy doing, but perhaps might be from a business perspective, better off having someone else do them.

And our last quadrant is the production quadrant, which is kind of like I want to see you accumulating more of your time doing more activities in this quadrant.

So, this is the stuff that's valuable to the business and it's also the stuff that you like doing.

So, it might be winning big listings, hiring important people for the business, leading sales meetings or team meetings. It could be networking, strategizing for the business, and also managing key relationships.

And this is where the gold is. This is what gives you stimulation. This is what gives you the inspiration to keep going.

And what we want to do is to be as much as possible spending our time. The time that we're allocating towards our business, because not all their time is for our business.

But the time that we are spending in the business, we want to be spending in this quadrant.

Because this accelerates the growth of the business. And it's also stuff that you enjoy doing.

So if you like prolongs the amount of time that you're likely to want to be in your business, because the time that you're spending in it is productive, and it's doing stuff that you enjoy.

So, I take you through this exercise just to, I guess, illuminate that there are things that you're doing right now, which you probably shouldn't be doing.

Even if they feel like they're important, they might not be the most important.

And this matrix around looking at what is valuable, what is not valuable, what do you enjoy doing, and what you don't enjoy doing is just a very simple way of considering how it is that you are spending your time.

And if you go through and really audit how you're spending your time, I promise you that you'll start to see some ways that you're spending your time that you could reallocate to more productive, more happy tasks.

And then hopefully, you'll be motivated to delegate the time that you're spending in your delegation quadrant to somebody else.

So, really encourage you to review how it is you're spending your time. Have to think about this matrix.

And if you'd like to know more about how it is that we are helping our clients to design the ideal week, I'd invite you to send me a DM.

You can message me on LinkedIn and just put the word 'Time' in the DM, in the private message.

And that will tell me that you are interested in learning more about saving time.

And if you're on Instagram, you can find us there, @cresuccess is our handle.

Again, DM us the word 'Time' and that will tell me that you are interested in finding more ways to save time, and perhaps even we can work with you in the future to help you design the ideal week.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening and I will speak to you soon.