Time Management For Real Estate Agents

Posted on November 27, 2022 by

Time Management For Real Estate Agents

Real estate agents know that there are just so many things that need to be done. From prospecting and follow-ups and other marketing to scheduling appointments and writing contracts, it can take a lot of work to get everything done. 

So how do successful agents make it all happen? By learning time management skills. 

Time management is task management, so learning a few simple task management strategies will help you check off your list of tasks each day, making you more productive and able to plan your day more effectively. 

In order to be better at time management, the key is to break large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, and to work in shorter batches of time with breaks in between each task. 

To get started becoming better at time management, the first thing to do is to prioritize what tasks are important and need to be done now versus tasks that can wait.

Time management is an important skill to learn for anyone, not just real estate agents. Learning how to manage time and tasks better will make you more productive as well as be able to balance work and life, making for a happier, more satisfied version of yourself. 

Prioritize Your Tasks

The first thing about time management is to learn how to prioritize your tasks. 

Decide on what tasks are money-making and what are time-sucking. Put your energy toward the tasks that are profitable – in other words, the tasks that will move the needle forward in your business and are money-making tasks – over those that are time-sucking, that are not important and not urgent but take up a whole lot of your time.

Define your tasks by how important and how urgent they are. The more important and urgent ones you want to focus on over the ones that just aren’t as necessary.

The Four Categories Of Prioritizing Tasks

  • Important and urgent
  • Important but not urgent
  • Urgent but not important
  • Not important and not urgent


Breaking Up Is (Not) Hard To Do

Breaking up your tasks is easy to do and is really important for task management. By breaking your larger tasks into smaller ones, you’ll get results faster and manage the time it takes to perform those tasks. 

For example, if you’re using video marketing and need to post a short video, you can write a quick script in the morning and shoot the video later in the day. 

Or, if you’re using video text with your sphere of influence, you can shoot one or two quick videos every hour, and by the end of the day, you’ll hit a target of ten or so video texts that have been sent out. 

Think about ordering a pizza. You can’t eat the whole pizza in one bite, no matter how hungry you are, you need to break it into slices and eat it one bite at a time. 

Taking your larger tasks and breaking them up into smaller, easier tasks will help you achieve more with less effort. When you define the tasks that are more important than others it will let you accomplish those tasks that your business will benefit from the most over tasks that aren’t as important and may not yield any positive results for you and your clients.

Become Accountable

Look, we all can get overwhelmed at times. Even the most productive people can be overwhelmed, lose focus or lack the energy to get things done. But here’s the trick to achieving more – becoming accountable to someone. 

What you want to do is create an accountability group. It could be other business people or agents that you know.

Every day you have a scheduled meeting with them to set your goals for the day and review the goals from the day before. We call it “Skin in the Game.”

Here’s why it’s important to state your goals to others. Nobody wants to show up to the daily meeting and raise their hands and say, “Nope, I got nothing done.” Accountability increases your productivity and helps you stay on track when you lack the individual motivation necessary.  

What’s more is that accountability allows you to prioritize what you need to accomplish so that if you don’t have time to accomplish two different tasks, you know which one is more important.  

The way this works is to set two goals for the day; 1 business goal and 1 personal goal. Tell your goals to your accountability group and then report back the next day stating if you completed your goals or not, and why you didn’t accomplish them.  

The 1 Business, 1 Personal Goal Setting

Setting one business goal takes your tasks and helps you prioritize what is most important. So if all else fails, you’ve accomplished the most important thing on your schedule. 

For example, if you set the goal of filming a video for your marketing, if you lose all other tasks for the day, at least you’ll produce your video. That sense of accomplishment and check that task off your list will help you stay motivated for the next goal, the next day, and so on. 

The same is true for personal goals. Set one thing you want to get done in the day. The point here is that you’re creating goals that produce results, by being accountable to others you’re establishing a pattern that becomes a habit in the future.  

Do Quick Work, Quickly

Once you prioritize your tasks and decide which ones are more important to accomplish over others, you need to break those tasks up into even smaller pieces. By making “bite-sized” tasks, you can do more work, faster. 

The psychology behind mini-accomplishments means that you’ll be more motivated to achieve more, making larger or more complicated tasks mentally easier to tackle and accomplish. 

There’s a concept known as the 4 D's of Time Management which is taking your tasks in order of importance and urgency and deciding which ones to tackle and which ones to delete. 

The 4 D's of Time Management are: 

  • Decide to do
  • Defer to a later date
  • Delegate what tasks others can do
  • Drop the ones that are unnecessary

Set Your Routines And Schedules

Routines are necessary for time management and mastering tasks. The reason for this is simple– routines let your brain go on cruise control because the tasks in a routine have been mastered. 

These routines lower the amount of focus and concentration needed which lets you have more brain power for more complex tasks. 

Also, if you set routines, it’s easier to schedule your day, break up tasks into manageable parts, and achieve smaller accomplishments throughout the day, building momentum for more accomplishments throughout the day. 

Success is a process of steps and time management skills benefit from setting schedules and routines by detailing the steps you need to take in order to accomplish your specific goal or objectives. 

Use The Pomodoro Technique

Finally, the most important time management and task management skill to learn is a little hack known as the Pomodoro Technique.

What Is The Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro Technique is setting a specific time to complete a task and having a built-in break to stay fresh on your tasks. 

Here’s how it works. 

The Pomodoro Technique is based on the concept of the 80/20 principle which is a productivity technique that says that 80% of our accomplishments are produced by 20% of our efforts. 

Break your task into smaller bits. 

Set a timer for 20 minutes to work. Focus on one task for that 20 minutes. 

At the conclusion of 20 minutes, take a small break. You should take 5 minutes to be completely free of anything related to the last 20 minutes. 

For example, if your task is filming a video text, spend 20 minutes writing your script, setting your lighting, or whatever you may think is going to be necessary. 

At the end of the 20 minutes, do something for 5 minutes unrelated to filming or writing. Scroll Facebook, go outside and sit in the sun, anything that’s not related to work or the tasks you’re trying to accomplish. 

When the 5 minute break is over, head back to work and either complete your task or start a new one, whichever is the priority. 

Get A Mentor And Coach

Managing your time takes discipline and goal setting. Your accountability group is good for the day-to-day objectives and keeping you on track, but a mentor and coach will help you look at the larger picture and decide what is important, urgent, and what’s unnecessary. 

A mentor can show you the value of systems and routines and strategies that they have and are using that work for them. Often a mentor is a more successful agent in your office that you can work under to learn what are different, maybe more efficient, ways of doing business.


A coach is a person that will help you build the foundation for your success, help you set realistic goals, and to build the steps necessary to achieve them. 

Their value is that they will help you prioritize what is important to focus on and what you may want to eliminate. They are the second form of accountability for your business goals from your accountability group.

Learning to manage your time will make you more productive and a more productive you is a more successful version of yourself. You’ll be able to meet with more clients, close more deals, and grow your business.

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