As real estate agents, we often need to deal with multiple things at a time.  Very often we have a number of things that need to be done at different times.  Therefore, I thought I would share some general practices that I use that may help you.

There is a rather interesting book that I somewhat recommend that you check out.  It’s called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and the reason that I only somewhat recommend it is that despite the title I have never actually succeeded in finishing it.  The book starts with some basic principles that I found helpful, then goes into detail on an elaborate solution which strong hints to buy his software that integrates with Outlook.

The important thing that I did learn from the book though is how to not stress yourself out and get things done by writing them down.  It is not sufficient to just write them down anywhere – you need to write them down somewhere that you know you will regularly check.

I have two sources that I regularly check.  Neither of them is overly high tech.

1. A whiteboard in my office
2. My Outlook e-mail

On my whiteboard, I write all of the tasks that I need to achieve.  When I finish a task, I remove it from my whiteboard.  I am slightly careful about what I write on my whiteboard though because I do not want other people in my office to know too much about my clients.

In Outlook, my inbox is my to do list.  The basic idea is if an e-mail is still in my inbox I need to do something for it.  Once there is no action item associated with the e-mail any more I move it to a number of folders I maintain.  The folders contain information that I may need to reference at some future date.

In general I try not to do too many things at once.  If I receive a request to do something while I am working on something else, I do a quick triage on it.  The result is one of the following.

1. If the item is highly important, I stop what I am currently doing and work on the new item.
2. If the item can be accomplished very quickly, and I am not deep in concentration on my other item, I finish the new item.  For instance, this may require me to simply respond to an e-mail saying “yes”.
3. If the item is relatively important, but not urgent, I keep it in my inbox or place it on my whiteboard and work on it when I have completed my current item.
4. Otherwise the new item is either kept in my inbox or placed on the whiteboard.  When I have finished my current item, I look at these sources to see what I need to do next.

The nice thing about this system is I do not need to stress about all of the things I need to do.  They are all written down somewhere and I just need to remember to look at my e-mail and whiteboard.  This allows me to accomplish what I am currently working on without worrying and ensures that I get things done in a priority based order.