Your Business is a Reflection of You. Creating Efficiency & Wellbeing.

These short weeks, talk about trying to fit it all in! I’m a day late and following the adage of better late than never. This will end up in your inbox Friday Afternoon, so kick back and have a read before the weekend.

I was recently participating in a webinar with business and thought leader Tanya Chernova, and among many takeaways, she spoke about how at any point in time YOUR business is a reflection of YOU and where you are at. This is the reason I don’t write in these posts about sales techniques (we have Tom Panos for that) and why I don’t write about the market (we have REINZ for that) and why I certainly don’t wade into politics (I won’t even comment on commentators).

This is why I share my thoughts and anecdotes from my week – I invite you to get to know a little bit about who I am, and in doing so you might get a feel for Independent Agent. This is why I created Independent Agent in the first place. A space in real estate agency work where I can still be me, and help you to be somewhere where your business is a reflection of you.

I am fortunate enough to be married to a healer. Not only does this mean I have a constant and steady stream of health hacks and relaxation tips on hand, it also means that I get sent to get prodded, poked and manipulated on a fairly regular basis.

I was recently getting a bit of Chiropractic work done on a surfing hip injury (think of all 95-odd kg’s of me falling into the water, but leaving my leg behind on the board) with the amazing Lorene Dennis from The Connection in Silverdale. We were chatting about stress, and techniques for trying to keep on top of all the things that need doing in this busy life. As well as being a Chiropractor, Lorene has a fair whack of life experience, a brilliant outlook on life, and solid business acumen.

I love hearing about other people’s strategies, and so I am going to share Lorene’s mind-clearing strategy today.

It’s the Dump, Delegate and Do method.

The first thing that you need to do is generate a list of all the things that are on your mind that you need to do. Get it all out on the paper. A brain dump is well known method to get your thoughts out of your head, increase your self-awareness, and also reduce anxiety. Have a read on brain dumping here. Allow yourself 5 minutes – put the stopwatch on – get it all out!

Next, categorise your tasks into three categories. Dump, Delegate, and Do.

Dump – I love this one and I think that it is a great place to start. Clear out the things that you don’t need to do. There will be expectations that you have placed upon yourself that will not be serving you. Probably with that in dumping some activities, a courtesy call to someone maybe required, however the purpose is served if these activities are removed from your list.

Delegate – One of my team sent me a Tom Panos video, and in it he mentioned ‘if you don’t have an assistant, you are the assistant’. Of course, you don’t have to have an assistant to delegate, but it sure does help. Find the tasks in your lists that someone else could do and move them off your list, on to their list. There are people out there who will do it faster, cheaper and better than you can. Find them and send the tasks off.

Do – I have broken ‘DO’ into two categories (hope that is OK Lorene).

Do Now – Urgent tasks that you can sit down and get done immediately – or ones that must be done (like pay the car registration). Go on – get them done. Now that you have gone ahead and dumped and delegated, getting these jobs done will be dramatically easier. I will go so far as to say that with a clear head, you will be able to get a prolific amount of ‘doing done’.

Defer – I added in this one myself because I use it. These are items that are important but not urgent. I introduced you to Kim last fortnight. One of the tech tools that Kim and I use is Trello. We have lists of tasks to work through as we add on to and build this business. One of them is for the future. This is ‘kicking the can down the road.’ It is important to mentally put aside this list or else the benefit is lost. This is why it is important to consider some kind of recording system like Trello or a filing system with a ‘Future’ folder.

Do and Defer benefit from a calendar. Using the calendar on your phone with ‘repeat daily’ setting will ensure that you get a daily reminder (for the rest of your life…) to complete the task. Once you have done it, delete it and all future events. The important thing here is that it is out of your head.

Creating headspace in the busy lives we lead is critical to efficiency and wellbeing. On that note, I have to say a spot of chiropractic doesn’t hurt either.

Welcome to Dhyana Tomas. With an extensive history in real estate – both property management and sales, Dhyana has joined the visionary team at Stephanie Porowini Real Estate in Whangerei. With attention to detail and a strong work ethic, plus experience and expertise, we are looking forward to seeing the impact Dhyana will have in Whangerei. She has already been out knocking on doors and we are looking forward to seeing some results from that. Welcome aboard Dhyana!