My professional purpose is to help you, the broker, optimize your productivity and help you become the best version of yourself. Why? Because happy brokers sell more real estate. I do that by helping you handle challenges that you face every day. If you can effectively manage situations that arise on a daily basis, you'll be more productive, live a more optimized life and, in turn, live a life with fewer challenges.
Today, I want to show you how the power of daily tracking can have a massive impact on your productivity and your results.
If I learned one thing during the first half of 2021, it’s how a commitment to “1 Big Thing” for 90 days can have a dramatic impact on your personal life and professional results. When I say “commitment,” I mean a daily hyper-focus on your 1BT. To stay focused on your 1BT, you need a scorecard to track your results. As a reminder, the "productivity hack" I discussed earlier in the year has 4 stages: After identifying your 1BT, you need to “Burn the Ships,” commit to 3-5 daily action items and track your results/progress.
By now, you’ve identified your Q3 goal (1 Big Thing) and have started to execute on it. What are the 3 to 5 daily actions you’ve committed to doing every day? Let’s take one example. I’ve talked to a lot of agents that are focused on cleaning up their database and in some cases are creating and truly committing to a database for the first time. So, in this scenario, your daily action items might be something like the following:
- Review, edit, prune and re-categorize 2, Top 100 contacts each weekday (track it)
- Reconnect or contact 1 of your "Top 100" in a meaningful way, 5 times a week (track it)
- Prune, update, tag and/or edit, 5 contacts per day in your Activepipe (email marketing platform) - (track it)
If you do not use a software program (CRM) yet like CLOZE, simply create a Google doc or excel spreadsheet to start the process. You’ll be able to use the sheet to implement a CRM into your business (highly recommend). Note: a CRM's main use, if used properly, is to remind you to stay connected to your prospects and client base. Last fall, during the period of time that I taught my "Take Flight" course on my MMPT, I discussed all aspects of database management in 4 episodes between September 14th and October 5th. Those episodes would be good for you to review. If you do the above every day, just imagine where you will be at the end of the quarter.
If you are tracking a health/wellness goal like weight loss/creating a healthy lifestyle, I’ve recently had a lot of success chunking down my initiatives into a daily goal. In fact, my goal in Q1 and Q2, was to simply burn off 500 more calories a day than I took in. The goal was 1 lb a week or 3,500 calories burned (1 lb = 3500 calories) more than I took in. I tracked the following each day:
- No junk food (track it)
- Limit carbs to 1 to 2 times a week (track it)
- Drink 50+ oz of water each day (track it)
- Eat clean, healthy food (track it)
- Sweat 6 out of 7 days (track it. My Apple Watch was super helpful)
I was committed to this from February 9 (the day my Peloton arrived) through June 30 and the result was 22 lbs and, even more important, new bio rhythms and a healthy lifestyle were created. There is zero chance I would have had that success if I hadn’t tracked those 5 action items daily.
If you have a personal finance goal, similar tracking can have a massive impact. I discussed "Financial Literacy 101" and "What I Wish I Knew When I was 30" back in February. Tracking in personal finance is basically creating a budget and sticking to it.
I get the question: "Jim, what tool do you use to track your results?" Well, I've mentioned how much positive impact "The Compound Effect" written by Darren Hardy has had on my life since it was written in 2010. In Chapter 4, he introduces a "Weekly Rhythm Register,” that is a daily scoring, tracking method. Simply google it and you'll find the PDF that you can print. It's been the best tracking method I've found and I still use it today. Some things that I've personally learned over the years are:
- Track using a weekly scorecard instead of monthly. It allows you to re-commit on a weekly basis.
- Track no more than 7-10 items. Anything more than that can become overwhelming.
- Once a habit has been added, you can stop tracking it.
- Keep adding and subtracting from your tracking sheet. Only have items on it that need attention.
It takes 21 days to create a habit and about 90 days to create a lifestyle. Change is not easy and if you are person that has always struggled creating and maintaining massive results, you need to start focusing on "winning each day.” Don't think about tomorrow. Don't think about how important it is for you to start seeing results right away. Just focus on today. If you win enough days, you'll win the week. If you win enough weeks, you'll win the month. If you win enough months, you'll win the quarter and as we learned from the "12 Week Year,” if you win enough quarters, you'll gain a firm hold on your 3-year vision.
I can tell you right now, there is no way that I would have seen the results in my health if I had not tracked it daily. I just wanted to win each day and that's why you'll find me "preaching" on the topic because it was the only way I've found that would work for me. I hate to work out and I used to love food that wasn't great for me so I had to get radical to change the life-long habits I was living.
You'll hear me start dropping the term "optimization/optimize" and that word just means that one identifies the best, most efficient way to tackle any aspect of their life and business. If you want to "optimize,” you must track your results on a daily basis until you create habits and biorhythms needed for your body and subconscious to "take the reins.” It's really that simple. Decide what you want to create, develop a 1BT, "burn the ships,” develop 3 to 5 daily action steps and track each of them daily until they become habits and biorhythms. Life gets really fun and interesting after stacking several 1BTs on top of each other.
