Most people don’t realize how much time they waste throughout the day. Let’s say that you watch on average 1 hour of television per evening. Multiply that by 365 and that’s 365 hours worth of watching TV. If you divide 365 by 24 (number of hours in a day), you arrive at 15.2. That’s right, by just watching 1 hour of TV per day, a person spends 15.2 days of their year being unproductive. That’s a long vacation by most standards. Can you imagine all of the progress you could make towards realizing your financial dreams with 15.2 extra days to work on them? Now I know that it is important to have a little time to relax so that you don’t become burnt out. This was just one task though. Imagine all of the other ways that we waste time throughout our day. Looking at people’s statuses and pictures on facebook, taking long lunches, zoning out and listening to music; virtually anything that you do that isn’t helping you directly or indirectly achieve your dreams is wasteful.
I recently challenged myself to work on maximizing my time in order to become a better employer, real estate investor, colleague, and mentor. I decided I would devote 60% of my work day to work on goals I have set for that month. 30% of my work day would be spent on creating new goals and challenges for me for the next week or month. 10% of my work day would be spent identifying my weaknesses and developing solutions for them. This 60-30-10 ratio can be applied to any goal you set. For instance, if you have recently purchased a self storage property and your goal is to increase occupancy from 65% to 80% within one month, you can use the 60-30-10 ratio for your work day. 60% of your work day would be spent on marketing your property, sending referral bonus emails to current customers, and making improvements to your property. 30% of your day would be spent planning future goals such as; how to get from 80% to 85%. 30% of your day would be spent figuring out how to sustain your occupancy rates once you achieve your 80% goal. Finally, 10% of your day would be spent on introspection and indentifying why you are having problems meeting your 80% occupancy goal. If you spend 100% of your day working on a goal, setting higher future goals, and identifying any problems you might have in obtaining a goal; you will always be working towards a goal and you will achieve them.
So to get you started, I challenge you to spend tomorrow working on a single goal. Identify a goal that you have that can be accomplished in one day. Spend 60% of your work day on obtaining that goal. Spend 30% of your day planning future goals. Finally, spend 10% of your time thinking about what is wrong with your plan and how to fix it. Of course these duties don’t have to be done in this order. Develop a plan for your day and budget your time accordingly. After spending a day doing this, you will find that when you apply it to other tasks too, you are consistently achieving your goals. Good Luck to you.
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