Create space to finish the year strong

So many people I talk to are feeling cooked at the end of this year, so I’ve prepared a list of the top five ways for commercial real estate professionals to conquer end-of-year burnout.

Come to think of it, this list will help you at the end of any year – or at the end of the financial year (if that’s not in December for you).

In fact, this list will come in handy any time you are making a big push to get a lot of work done before you take a break.

Here’s what’s on the list:

1. Be more ruthless with your time and decline invitations if you want to
2. Stick to your routine and don’t sacrifice what’s important to you
3. Take it easy at end-of-year events to ensure they don’t disrupt the next 24 hours
4. Get your ducks in a row so deals and projects don’t drag into next year
5. Be committed to taking a proper break when you clock off for 2021

To get the full story, and make sure you don’t fall at the last hurdle, listen to episode 66 of CRE Success: The Podcast.

Episode transcript:

If you're feeling like you don't have the energy that you need to make that final push towards the end of this year, then I've got five ideas that will help you maintain your focus and get the energy required to get everything done, completed, finished in the bank, before the end of 2021.

Hello, and welcome to episode 66 of the show. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate professionals save time, earn more and be top performers in their market.

It's a pleasure to have your company for today's episode, which is brought to you by Re-Leased.

In 2020, Re-Leased launched CREDIA to provide market insights based on data from 10s of 1000s of commercial properties globally, to help customers better manage their businesses.

Now before we get started, I just want to remind you, this is episode 66 of the show.

That means there's a back catalogue of more than 60 episodes for you to check out in your favorite podcast player.

You can listen to interviews with commercial real estate professionals, also, people from outside our industry who are experts in their field who have relevant knowledge to share with people in commercial real estate.

Plus, there's episodes just like this, where I'm sharing some best practices.

So, headed to your favorite podcast player, download the back catalogue, so you can listen whenever you like to CRE Success: The Podcast.

Today, I want to talk to you about keeping your energy up for the end of the year.

Now, if you're not listening to this in real time at the end of 2021, I think this will help you whenever you're feeling like you just don't have the energy required to make that final push towards getting anything important done.

But I'm particularly thinking about the end of 2021 because I've been having some conversations with people recently.

And people are telling me that they're cooked. And in Australian parlance, that means that they're feeling like they're absolutely spent.

Like they've got no more gas in the tank to get the year closed out.

Now, I think these people will get the year closed out.

But they're telling me that they're just lacking the motivation to do what they need to do, that getting the things done that are usually easier to do.

A harder to get done now because they're feeling so rundown or they're feeling like there's so many competing demands on their time.

So, what I want to talk about today is five ways that you can maintain your focus and get the energy that you need to finish out 2021.

Now in Australia, that's pretty critical when it comes to finishing things by a certain date.

Because the entire industry basically shuts between Christmas and New Year depending on your office.

You might be finishing on the 23rd, the 24th. Christmas Day is a Saturday this year. So it's a little bit weird. Usually, you just finish on the Friday, but that's Christmas Eve, which is almost a sacrosanct day in itself.

So maybe you're finishing on the Wednesday, maybe you're finishing on the Friday, the 17th.

Whatever it is for you, I hope that you do have a plan on how you're going to relax and recharge.

Because that's one of the ideas that I've got that will help you maintain your energy and focus.

But if you're not in a market like Australia, where everything does shut down between Christmas and New Year, and I know I spent more than 10 years as an expert overseas, there are some places like China or in Japan, for example, they don't even take a public holiday for Christmas.

So, the idea of Christmas, New Year being this hard stop is not necessarily so relevant in some markets.

However, I think the idea of a new year bringing renewal is relevant. And if you work for a global company, then of course, the financial year does usually finish at the end of December.

So, hopefully what I've got to share with you today will serve you to help you maintain that focus as you do come up to deadlines to hard stops to keep you going when you feel like you're about to conk out.

The first idea I've got to share with you on this topic is if you're feeling like there are a lot of demands on your time, and you're feeling just a little bit overwhelmed with all the incoming just to be a little bit more ruthless with your time.

And that can mean declining certain invitations.

So, there's always a lot of events that are going on at this time of year.

Sometimes we just need to prioritize events and we need to decline events, invitations that aren't so important for us to attend.

And that could mean industry events. You probably need to go and have lunch with an important client if that's the expectation or if they have invited you to that lunch.

What about your end of year or Christmas office party?

Is it absolutely essential that you attend that? Maybe you do feel obligated, but maybe you don't need to attend or you don't need to go hard at that party.

Whatever it is that you can do to create a little bit more space and time, use that decline button on your Outlook.

Declined things that you don't absolutely need to be at.

Another thing you can do is just delay things. So if you're getting requests for meetings that aren't so important, push them into next year.

What about annual reviews? I've never understood why so many companies want to do their annual reviews in December, which is typically the busiest month of the year.

I can remember we used to do about 25% of our transaction’s revenue in December. But also, we'd be trying to do annual reviews in December as well.

And you're trying to do a review before the actual year is completed.

So, you don't have a complete picture of the year when you're trying to review people's performance.

So, if you've got any control over that any flexibility, I'd recommend pushing that through to January.

We don't want to rush annual reviews, (I'm going down a rabbit hole here).

But we want to give it the time and space that they need. And we may not have the time and space to do a proper review at the end of this year.

So, anything that you can push into next year, that isn't critical to get done this year that isn't time sensitive, which isn't going to have an impact on your financial performance this year.

Was let's be frank, we're trying to often bank as many things as we can before the end of the year.

We can have that revenue recognized within this financial period, then maybe put that off until January.

You'll also look to delegate certain tasks, right? Things that aren't time critical, or that aren't required to be done just by you.

These are things that you can get off your plate, just to create a bit more space in your schedule.

So, you don't feel like everything's closing in on you and you've got all these demands on your time, and that there is no way you're ever going to get it all done.

The second thing that I would recommend that you do is to stick to your routine.

So, that sense of familiarity is going to serve you well as long as of course, it's a good routine.

If you're the type of person who watches 4 hours of Netflix every night, maybe that's a routine that you might want to not be so precious about maintaining, but certainly your daily exercise routine.

If you meditate every day, if that's something that's important to you, spending time with your family, whatever it is that helps you keep grounded and balanced, I think it's important to make sure that you're not giving up those important things.

Because they're the things that actually do keep you sane at times when you're feeling under pressure.

You're learning and growth time, listening to podcasts like this, that's all a part of your routine.

And as much as we can keep that routine going, even when we are super busy, I think that's a good thing to do, because that's going to be more of the familiar, which means that we're not going to be feeling like, we're so rundown because we're having to give things up that are important to us.

Number three, is to go easy at end of your events. So, I mentioned before that you could just not go to some events.

But for those events that you do go to, you can set yourself an appointment after the event.

So, if it's a lunch, maybe set yourself a three o'clock appointment.

And that puts just a limit on how disruptive that lunch can be to the rest of your day.

Or if it's one of those lunches that could potentially carry on into the evening, it's going to stop that lunch from being disruptive to your following day.

Now, it's probably a bit antisocial to schedule a 1:30 meeting after a 12 o'clock lunch.

But to schedule a 3 o'clock meeting, if you've got a lot on and everyone's got a lot on, I don't think people would be to upset if you said that, "Hey, I've got to get out of here after two and a half hours of this lunch because I've got some appointments that I can't miss."

So, setting yourself up to succeed by putting little tactics in place like following appointments, to lunches that can potentially get out of control will mean that you're not wiping out half a day a day of time.

Because of a fleeting moment of fun with things like social events which do need to be done, but we can I think limit the impact that they have in other areas of priorities in our lives.

Number four is to get your ducks in a row. So, if we want to maintain our focus at this time of the year, we don't want to be stressing about all the things that can go off track.

And getting our ducks in a row means making sure that all the other people, all the other resources, all the other areas within if you're in transactions that need to be in place and not going to derail everything that you have done to create a certain outcome by a certain time.

So, lawyers, for example, we want to make sure that they understand what their role is when you need their feedback in order for a contract to be reviewed for at least to be amended for sale and purchase agreement to be marked up.

So, therefore, that comes in at a certain time, then the approvals that need to be done at the client end can be in place, so the transaction can be completed.

Usually in order to create a certain outcome, we want to know that everything else that we're not directly responsible for.

And the revenue can be recognized within this year, because if we're working harder than we are.

But it's still kind of in our control, because we can set the expectation with other people and make sure they have everything that they need to get done, what needs to be done.

We want to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to create that outcome.

So, speaking to lawyers, speaking to people in your accounts team and making sure that they have everything that they need to recognize the revenue.

Our counterparts on deals, whether that is other parties to the transaction, or whether it's the client and making sure that they have the approvals in place.

Making sure that you've got access to people who can support you, within your team, within your support team, administration.

Other things that you're going to need to make everything happen at the time it needs to happen, so the deal can be closed and recognized within this financial period.

And the last thing that I'd recommend that you, do just to keep your focus and maintain your energy is to (something I alluded to, at the start of this episode), make the decision to truly stop when you do get to your holidays.

So, if you are taking a break over the Christmas and New Year period, knowing that you're going to be having a proper period of rest and relaxation, can sometimes just help you find that extra bit of energy that you need to keep going, to make sure that you don't fall at the final hurdle.

And if you know that that recharge and that reboot is coming, you'll be able to keep going, I think.

And I'm going to share with you in the next couple of episodes.

The last two episodes for this year, I'll be talking about some books that I recommend that you can read over the holiday period.

If you're taking a break or if you're not taking a break, it might be useful just to hear about some books that I recommend for people who work in commercial real estate.

But also, I'll be taking you through a reflective practice that I think will help you create the environment, which is going to make 2022 your best year ever.

So, it's normal to be feeling a little bit of feeling of rundown, overwhelm, just feeling very, very spent at this time of year.

I think that's especially understandable, given that 2021 was not the year that people were expecting.

I think after 2020, people thought this year was going to be a lot easier. And for some people it was but for other people, it was actually harder in 2021 than 2020, depending on which market your kind of restrictions you faced.

All of that, I don't want to get into too much of that. I'm just saying that this year, in particular, I think people have had a tough time and a feeling quite stressed.

Just know that's normal. And we just want to try and create the environment under which we can just get that additional bit of energy and focus that we need in order to close out 2021 and to create the best possible end result that we've been working towards all throughout this year.

Focusing on what's important, making sure that we're prepared, delaying the things that can be delayed, and also looking forward to that break that we know that is coming.

It's nearly time for us to wrap up.

Before we do, I just want to invite you to check out our YouTube channel.

If you go to CRE Success, if you just search that on YouTube, you'll find us on YouTube.

I actually record all of these episodes as a live stream talking to camera.

And right now, I can see I've been going for 14 minutes which is a little bit longer than usual.

You can see me make all of these weird facial expressions and ours dieted up by eyes darting, looking for notes, all those fun things.

So, if you want to check that out, I'd love for you to be a subscriber as well that really helps us so go to YouTube, search for CRE Success, subscribe to the channel.

You get to hit the bell and then you'll be notified when the live streams come up.

All right, it's time for me to say thank you so much for being there. I will speak to you soon.