Every single day, except on the very last day of one’s life here on earth, each and every one of us is given exactly the same amount of time – 24 hours. Time does not discriminate against anyone.
I’m driven. I’m a workaholic. People know it and I know it. I even avoid socializing for the most part because I have little time for anything other than working toward my long-term goals. This has been true especially since December 2010 when I had to make a tough decision to announce that we were canceling a big family trip to Japan (nine of us), which had been planned for several years. (How this turn of event came about is a chapter in itself in a sequel to my original autobiography. It has everything to do with trials and tribulations of investing outside of Wall Street. The sequel, which focuses on investing, will be published when I will have proven to myself that, with unrelenting belief and hard work, anyone can remain free and independent in this country.)
None of this hard work, of course, will prove to be as rewarding if not for my health. So, to stay healthy while I pursue my goals, I do yoga and other exercises for over 1 hour every morning. In addition, depending upon other physical activities, I’m on the treadmill between 3 to 5 hours each day – at a comfortable walking pace of 1.5 miles/hour. How do I get any work done when I exercise for that long? Well, my PC is on the treadmill; in other words, I work out while I work. Because of all of the work that needs to be done, time flies. I’m focused. I let nothing get in the way of attaining my goals. I use my time effectively. Or so I thought.
Recently, my real-estate-investment coach suggested that I keep a log of my daily activities, Monday through Friday, for a month so that I can see how I am actually spending my time each day. And, oh, what a revelation this was!
Two of the most important among my investment activities are to (1) analyze leads that come in and (2) make offers. No offers, no deals. No deals, no revenues.
On day 1 of when I began keeping track of my activities, I found out that I devoted only 1 hour and 30 minutes for analyzing and making offers. Now, to be fair, I was doing other investment-related activities. I was shocked, nonetheless, to find out that I was spending so little time on the most important activities of our investment business, which are key to generating revenues.
- Day 2: I immediately increased that time to 4 hours and 20 minutes. This still did not seem enough.
- Day 3: No time spent on leads.
- Day 4: 5 hours and 30 minutes on leads.
- Day 5: 5 hours on leads.
- Day 6: 3 hours and 35 minutes on leads.
- Day 7: No time on leads.
- Day 8: 9 hours and 40 minutes on leads.
And so on. Here is a list of what I learned from this exercise.
- It is not realistic to expect to devote time for nothing but on leads every single day of the week, especially at this stage when I am the one responsible for almost all aspects of our business.
- That being said, focusing on leads and offers for 4 days per week is realistic. On those 4 days, I expect to spend a minimum of 5 hours.
- I could better focus on leads by changing the order of when I do certain other activities. For instance, I no longer open emails until I either have spent at least 5 hours on leads or am caught up with all of them.
- Part of the reason it takes so much time on leads, particularly on analyses, is because I am developing my own templates for different sets of scenarios for seller situations – so that future analyses will become much easier by enabling me to simply plug in the numbers based on certain assumptions.
- As soon as we begin to generate decent revenues, I will start delegating most of the tasks. As a well-known industry guru would say, “The less I do, the more I make.” I like that idea! In order to delegate, however, I must first understand how various parts of our business work and fit together.
Keeping track of daily activities was such an eye-opening and worthwhile exercise. You may want to try it, too. Discovering how you are spending your precious time each and every day may surprise you.
Happy investing!
