Do you feel you never have enough time at the end of your day? Never enough money at the end of the month? We all have certain habits we need to quit to start increasing our own personal and professional success. Here are some of the top habits that always seem to hinder one’s success.
1. Saying YES When You Want To Say NO. If an activity, partnership or opportunity doesn’t resonate with you and does not feel aligned with your values and goals, you need to be comfortable about setting boundaries. Learn how to say no with kindness right from the start because, as you become more successful, more people will compete for your time and attention. Not setting healthy boundaries will end up in overwhelm and burnout. I am that classic people pleaser and have had to learn the hard way to learn to say NO and stop saying YES to everything and everyone. “This has everything to do with me and nothing to do with you and I need to say No for me, right now and I hope you can understand.”
2. Losing The Yearn to Learn. If We Are Not Growing Then We Are Dying. You have to eliminate the status quo and constantly looking to self-improve. As realtors we are business owners and need to understand the key to growing our income and business comes directly from growing ourselves. Remember that earners are learners and the agents who invest in themselves and take action on what they learn show a direct correlation to higher income levels.
3. Working Thru Meals & Breaks. Working through meals and breaks is a habit I find a lot of agents take on. Most justify it with, “If I work through lunch, I’ll just leave a few minutes early” and that isn’t what ends up happening. It’s hard to disconnect midday, especially if you’re in a productive spurt, but it’s important to take a few minutes to recharge. Not doing so will lower your productivity and lead to burnout faster. Success isn’t about time management it is about energy management.
4. Failing To Exercise. This is not something I find easy but I personally know the ramifications of not finding time to exercise. If you fail to exercise, that lack of discipline will translate into other areas of your life, including your business. When you exercise, you are more alert and sharp, and you will operate at a higher level. It allows us time to burn off stress and think clearly and feel like you have so much more energy to maintain a peak state.
5. Multi-tasking. What agents call multitasking is really task-switching. Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking doesn’t save time. In fact, it will probably take you longer to finish two projects when you’re jumping back and forth than it would to finish each one separately. It is technically impossible to multitask. When you try to do multiple things at once, you effectively take away full attention and concentration from anything, and you shortchange whatever it is you are doing.
6. Striving For Perfection. I was speaking with a Psychiatric doctor not too long ago and he said we have people who feel "it isn’t good enough" and the rest feel "we aren’t enough" and that nobody feels "good" is an option any more. He spends all his time pulling the perfectionists back and pushing the underachievers along reminding them they have value. I often let the perfect become the enemy of the good. The result is I have a lot of projects that are still in the “development” queue, while I continually refine them. The fact is, however, most defects I see are not elements others will see. I am working on letting go of the hesitation to perfect everything I work on.
7. Not Protecting Your Recharge Time. If you’re a workaholic, it can be easy to let your own time get taken over by work, over and over until you’re not taking any time for yourself. This may seem like it’s making you more efficient, but it will start quickly doing the opposite. There’s no faster way to burn out. Don’t fall into the habit of denying yourself the time you need to recharge.
8. Immediately Responding To Texts & Emails. This is by far the largest problem with many people achieving success, especially on a day-to-day basis. If you answer an email or text, you should be committed to it, or it’ll quickly take you away from whatever task you are completing at the moment, hindering success. Plan periods every hour or two to answer daily emails or texts and stop being reactive and start being proactive.
9. Not Prioritizing Your Day. I always ask myself if each task is something important or is it unimportant? It forces you to actually sit down and only pick a few things you’re going to get done, especially the things that often end up getting punted from day to day. Before that, I was letting my calendar and to-do list run my day and never felt like I was getting the important stuff done.
10. Needing To Know More. How many of us feel we need to know more or come up with more ideas and constantly just go through our days and never really get anything done? Isn’t it time for us to take action and do what we already know we should be doing? Implementation and execution is a huge issue for so many agents who are busy worrying about what they don’t know instead of acting on what they already know.
So there you have some of the habits that hinder so many of us in business and life. I trust you will find a way to be able to remove those habits that are hindering your own success and take things to the next level.
Strength and courage,
Wade
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