Wikipedia calls the personal computer “a mass-market consumer electronic device.” When first introduced to the market the promises were many:
- It’s the dawn of a paperless society
- It will revolutionize the way we work
- It will save us time and make us more productive
And, for a time, it accomplished all but the first claim. But that was before America Online (AOL) created its chat rooms and long before Zuckerberg hit the scene.
Once the internet became more of a way to socialize, our attention was divided. Today, those social platforms are brilliant places to market real estate services, but also major traps – guaranteed to waste our time.
Our computers are but one of many giant real estate agent distractions out there.
Email interruptus
Do you have a clear handle on what your time is worth? If not, figure it out now. Divide your annual commission dollars by 2,000 and you’ll have your hourly wage.
If you’re a productive agent, that figure may be substantial. Whatever it is, you want to keep every last dollar and hopefully increase the amount, right? That means minimizing common real estate agent distractions.
Check this out:
We “spend more than 90 minutes every day – or seven-and-a-half hours every week – recovering from email interruptions,”
according to research by a Michigan State University professor and published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
That’s an amazing amount of time wasted – time that can be used to increase your income, provide better customer service or even spend with the family.
The trick to avoiding this time suck, according to psychologists, is to stop reacting to the email notification sound alert. Turn it off, if you can and set your email checking on a schedule. Devote a certain chunk of time to checking them.
Social media real estate agent distractions
One of the biggest time wasters for us is social media marketing. It’s critically important to many businesses but it can, and often is, a huge distraction.
“I’ll jump over to Facebook and post this before prospecting,” said many a well-meaning agent. Before she knows it, she is completely caught up on the day’s news and the lives of her friends and has not one real estate lead to show for the time spent.
We spend 40 minutes a day, on average, on Facebook
according to a September 2018 eMarketer study.
If you don’t spend those minutes marketing your real estate business, add them to the 90 minutes wasted with email related real estate agent distractions. This means that non-income producing “shiny objects” are taking 2 hours out of your work day.
How much is your hourly wage again?
Make a vow to do your social media marketing at day’s end. Discipline yourself to do the marketing first and then reward yourself with time spent socializing.
You aren’t really working if you work from home, right?
Here it is, almost 20 years into a new century and too many people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that many of us WORK from home.
It’s almost as if we work-from-home folks, unbeknownst to us, have a sign on our backs that reads “I’m available for all your errand-running needs.”
Why else would your sister call, begging you to pick up her kids from school? Or why would your kids feel free to barge into your home office, without knocking, a gazillion times a day?
The truth is, that while it’s a pity that your neighbor’s dog needs to see a veterinarian, she needs to take the time off work to accomplish it, not you.
Most cities and even some smaller towns have a professional errand-runner or two. Jot down the contact information and keep it handy for those times others feel it’s perfectly ok to steal your time.
It’s known as “setting boundaries,” and it’s the key to success when working from home and eliminating real estate agent distractions. Stop giving in. Soon, they’ll get it.
That’s but one way our work days are sabotaged when we work from home. We often do a pretty good job of it ourselves.
I don’t know about you, but all the stuff in my clothes dryer calls out to me, several times a day: “Fold us!” And, admittedly, folding laundry is sometimes more interesting than what I’m currently working on.
But it doesn’t pay the bills.
Psychologists recommend that you first dump the idea that multi-tasking is a good thing. Especially if you have a short attention span (and that’s easy to acquire when you work from home), take up single-tasking.
“How many browser tabs do you have open right now?”
asks VP of Marketing at Buffer.com.
Ok, I’ll start. I have 17 browser tabs open right now. Come on – count up yours.
Lee claims it’s quite common when we we’re working to have multiple tabs open. He also cautions that “Pretty soon, it’s likely we’ve forgotten what we were online for in the first place.”
Most significant for the work-at-home real estate agent is that multi-tasking is “bad news for productivity, accuracy, and efficiency,” and Lee cites studies to back up his claim.
Give yourself a comfortable amount of time to devote solely to one task and then an equally comfortable, but shorter break time between each task. Set a timer or get Alexa to give you a heads up when each block of time has expired.
It’s not easy to train ourselves to become more self-disciplined, but it’s imperative. Aside from lead generation, it’s one way that will help you earn more money and avoid these common real estate agent distractions.
Drive more leads and listings to your website with these real estate website hacks
What makes you a successful business professional? Here are the 6 ways the best of the best stay on top: