Use Meeting Time Effectively

Although meetings can serve a useful purpose, you want to use this time as effectively as possible.  The key meeting for many REALTORS® is the sales meeting.

If you are responsible for planning this meeting, you can help your team by always starting on-time and sticking to an agenda.  Also, consider discussing the meeting agenda with your team members in advance to surface any issues before the meeting.

You can find more Sales Meeting tips in our Field Guide to Sales Meetings.

Get Curious About Productivity

Interest in personal productivity has exploded in the past decade.  The emergence of technology and new efficient systems now offer hundreds of ways to boost your productiveness.

The key is to find the system that works the best for you.  We recommend you start with browsing the most popular productivity books and read reviews of people who have tried their approaches.

Select a valuable approach you like and start small. It takes time for a new habit to take hold and starting small will make sure you don’t get overwhelmed.  Take what works and refine the approach to your work style and situation.

To get you started, we’ve compiled some great books on time and project management here.

Beware Time Black Holes / Defeat Distractions

Distractions are the enemy of productivity.  If you’ve ever ended your day and realized you’ve accomplished little then you know how distractions can kill production .

Two of the biggest distractions are email and checking your social media profiles.  While both are incredible tools, they can easily disrupt you from getting your tasks accomplished.

Social media is entertaining and useful, making it a sneaky productivity trap.  The best strategy is to schedule a set amount of time for your social media updates.  Discipline yourself to stick to this schedule.  Your schedule will help you be more efficient while preventing your Twitter updates from turning into a comfort call.

Although it’s widely known that email can be a huge distraction, it’s still hard to ignore the constant alerts from quasi-important emails.  However, a few easy guidelines can help put you on the right track including:

√  Turn Off Notifications: It’s almost impossible to ignore constant audio reminders and alert pop-ups.  Turn these distractions off and schedule a time to regularly review your inbox.

√  Be Ruthless:  Handle each email quickly.  Delegate, delete, or answer emails that you can resolve quickly.

√  Filter Priority Messages: Email systems such as Gmail have powerful filtering tools that can help you prioritize and organize your inbox.

Use Technology to Stay Productive on the Road

It’s difficult to stay productive on the road.  Thankfully there are excellent tools available to help you stay-on-top of your job even while 30,000 feet in the air.

Our favorites are:

-     Goodreader is an app that makes PDFs easy to read on your mobile device.  Goodreader also syncs your documents with popular “cloud storage” services like Dropbox, giving you quick access to them when you are away from your computer.

-     Documents to Go is a powerful app that allows you to edit your Microsoft documents.  We’ve found this app especially helpful for reviewing spreadsheets and authoring offers and counteroffers from the road.

-     National Association of Realtors® Member Guide: We created the Member Guide App to help you save time finding the information you need on Realtor.org.  This app provides one-click access to contact information, educational programs, and Association event info.

We hope these tips help you get more out of each day.

Do you have any additional tips you use to stay productive? Share them with us in the comments!

Read more:   http://themembersedge.blogs.realtor.org/2011/12/16/realtor%C2%AE-guide-productivity/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMembersEdge+%28The+Members+Edge%29