On this 232nd episode of my Monday Morning Pep Talk, I will break down how you can turn a 7-day week into a 21-day week, developing your ideal day to ultimately increase your focus and productivity.
Before I discuss the fundamentals of an ideal day, I want to remind you of my professional purpose and that is to help you, the broker/advisor, optimize your productivity and help you become the best version of yourself. Why? "Because Happy Brokers Sell More Real Estate”. I help you become that by teaching you to handle the challenges and opportunities that you face every day. If you can effectively manage certain situations that arise on a daily basis in your business, you'll be more productive and live a life that is the best version of you. My ask is that you listen as if you are in a one-on-one coaching session with me in my office or on a phone call. You can get all of the replays of our coaching sessions on YouTube, searchable under @askjimmiller. While you're there, hit subscribe.
Two books completely changed how I look at my day. The first was The Power of One More written by Ed Mylett. He challenges his readers to take each day and break it into 3 parts, creating, in essence, 21 days in a week. The beauty of this idea is that it gives you 3 deadlines each day. Sound familiar? In our quarterly business planning strategy, we are giving our year 4 deadlines instead of just one annual deadline. Let's start to do that with your day by giving yourself those 3 deadlines. Let's look at how that could take shape for you:
Part 1: Your Morning Ritual (Define your start and stop time)
- Wake up and freshen up
- Mindfulness practice (prayer, meditation, thinking session, journaling)
- Work Out/Move Your Body/Stretch
- Dress rehearsal of your day (planning)
- Scheduling of emails and other correspondence
- Dress for the day
Part 2: Arena Time (Define your start and stop time)
- Scheduled emails drop
- Correspondence with clients and transaction partners
- Meetings/Training/Self-development
- Negotiate contracts
- Prospecting for new clients
- Listing presentations and buyer consultations
- Touch points with your Top 100, Top 100 Referral Partners, Warm List, Hot List
- Review the Day and memorialize your top take aways
- Prepare for the next day
Part 3: Evening with Your Family and Friends (Define your start time)
- Work Out/Move
- Prepare Dinner/Eat
- Mindfulness Practice
- Evening before-bed ritual
The second book was written by Brendan Burchard and the title is High Performance Habits. Starting on page 98, he introduces his “transition mantra” for releasing negativity and setting positive intention to best transition from one section of your day to the next. He describes a “transition” as moving from and through the events of the day that require a different version of you. If done poorly, it sucks energy from you. I’ve learned the importance of mentally “switching gears” to increase my effectiveness and it has made a huge difference in how I show up. He gave an example of one of his coaching clients that completely changed his life and business by learning how to transition from startup tech CEO into husband and father between his "arena time" and his evening by doing a quick 5 minute transition exercise before he walked into the family home. By creating two different superhero suits, it saved his marriage and made him a much more productive individual overall.
How would your productivity be impacted if you gave yourself 2 extra deadlines per day, while becoming the best version of yourself for everyone you interact with throughout the day? For those of you tracking yourself using my Take Flight Progress Tracker, this episode can help you throughout many of the 26 categories of your life and business.
How I look at my day, starting with a highly productive morning, has changed my productivity to a level that I thought I'd never see. I find myself playing on offense not defense. My advice for you is to evaluate how productive you are currently and use this MMPT as an approach to improve your days. Have a terrific week.
