Have you ever felt like you don’t have a life? Like your career commands your every move? Don’t worry—we’ve all been there—especially those of us who work in luxury real estate sales with high-net-worth-individuals. After all, whether you’re inundated with showings, overwhelmed by listing presentations, struggling to stay on budget, or constantly catering to clients, the world of luxury real estate sales requires a great deal of effort.
Don’t even try to deny it. The luxury real estate sales industry frequently places a strain on its’ constituents. But, does this mean achieving a life-work balance should be any less important to your happiness? For starters, developing a life-work balance is vital to an individual’s mental well-being and overall physical health. Besides, sustaining a life-work balance keeps you from burning out and reduces total stress levels as well.
It’s no secret that stress can be positively linked to many other disorders. Ordinarily conjoined with mental health on a broader level, you can also connect long-term stress to an increased risk for anxiety, insomnia, and depression.
Consequently, if you want to be professionally successful as well as individually content, you must make a concerted effort towards accomplishing some “lifestyle symmetry.”
Who says home-sellers can’t have a life?
Quite plainly, everyone deserves to be satisfied with their lives. Yet, at Luxury Estates Auction Company, we see so many luxury realty salespersons go through life never thoroughly enjoying themselves. Of course, while some high-end sellers are merely ignorant of anything other than work, most professionals in the luxury home market only lack a working knowledge of how to reach balance-related goals. In either case, your journey on the path to enlightenment doesn’t have to remain shrouded by uncertainty. Let alone, there is no reason to succeed at the office but fail at home.
Trust us. You can have your cake, and eat it too!
Now, when it comes down to achieving a perfect life/work balance, there’s one major issue. Achieving a perfect balance isn’t merely improbable; it’s one-hundred-percent “beyond the pale.” But, forget the futility intrinsic in man’s quest for perfection. There are practical ways you can change your life for the better!
So, regardless of why your high-end real estate sales career accounts for 99% of your waking moments, one thing remains true for anyone feeling lopsided in the equilibrium department. If you want to create a better balance between your home-life and work-responsibilities, start with your schedule. To emphasize, the role of time-management is incredibly essential to achieving stability as a salesperson in the luxury home marketplace.
OK. I know what you’re thinking. There just aren’t enough hours in the day! As a result, it’s no surprise many real estate agents and brokers get stuck in a rut.
Perhaps you believe you cannot possibly do anything more due to time restrictions. Or, maybe you feel any significant shift in one direction or another will compromise your financial well-being or personal freedom? Whatever the case may be,
YOU’RE DEAD WRONG!
With the right roadmap to regularity, you can neutralize any worry-ridden concerns. Similarly, familiarizing yourself with various operational techniques curbs bad habits and is imperative to maintaining a life-work balance. If you’re unable to imagine living a positive even-keeled lifestyle as a high-end home marketer, read on.
Here are some ways to help you find a balance at work, and at home:
Evaluate how you spend your time
How many times have you started the work-day ready-to-go, only to come home waving the white flag of retreat? Or, have you ever wondered how some work days go by in-the-blink-of-an-eye; all-the-while you have practically nothing to show for it? In a final instance, has employment ever encroached on your personal life and affected your ability to socialize for whatever reason?
At the same time, it’s not uncommon for many high-end home-sellers to waste the earlier, albeit energized, part of their day on superfluous tasks. What’s worse, after devoting some time to maintaining their online profile, publishing promotional material on social media, and nurturing a handful of clients, many sellers end their day making little, if any, headway concerning their most important tasks. Sound familiar?
Instead of starting your day with tedious tasks likely to add more onto your plate, such as emails or cold-calling, try writing down everything you do throughout the course of a day in 15-minute increments. A quarter-of-an-hour should give you enough of an idea as to which activities are most time-consuming. Meanwhile, obtaining an incremental account of your day reveals areas where there’s likely room for improvement.
Assign a value to individual tasks
Assigning a logical value to your day’s different activities is perhaps the most crucial factor when seeking a life-work balance. Alongside many of my co-workers at Luxury Estates Auction Company, I prefer to use a traditional Likert Scale (or “1-to-10 scale”). In such cases, a value of one represents the least important, whereas a value of ten epitomizes maximum importance.
Nevertheless, you choose to assign more critical tasks a smaller value or opt for an entirely different metric altogether. In any event, the important thing is you give each item in your schedule an honest valuation according to your core principles and values. That way, when you organize your to-do list, later on, prioritizing your important tasks becomes as easy as “1-2-3.”
You might be surprised at how your day turns out after employing this strategy. Besides, it’s not surprising to find out that there are many other systems which lead to an acceptable halfway point between work and home.
Arrange your schedule accordingly
Now, that you’ve independently gauged your day’s behaviors, arranging them into a sensible sequence can tell you a lot. Put another way, ordering your schedule from least-to-most, or vice-versa reveals a distinct pecking order. Plus, when you compare your schedule-items by importance to actual time invested, you end up with a concrete concept of how you spend your day.
Quantitative data not only delivers an accurate picture of your day, but it also allows you to manage your time much more systematically.
Diversify your dailies
If you’re attempting to balance your personal and professional affairs, consider how you can increase your productivity level as well. For one thing, it’s ok to draft up multiple lists with categories covering life’s various wheelhouses. Furthermore, delineating between factors such as Family Matters, Work Stuff, or Personal Affairs can prevent discrepancies causing imbalance. All the more, defining where your primary roles may differ from situation-to-situation nurtures inner-equality and promotes social cohesion. By categorizing your responsibilities more precisely, scheduled tasks are less likely to intertwine, create conflict, and cause discord in your life.
Think about it this way: What if you assigned your work-related activities greater values than those having to do with your family? In effect, you’d run the risk of omitting an essential task-group entirely; therefore, drastically impact any shot you may have had to gain peace of mind.
Unplug and concentrate
You hear it said all the time, but is anyone genuinely going “off-the-grid?” I sure hope so, but, if cutting all cords comes off as completely absurd, it means you should probably give “tech-free time” a chance. Now, I’m not suggesting you go all “Jack Kerouac,” and fall off the edge of the earth in search of what truly matters. Instead, when first moving toward a life-work balance, takes things slowly. For instance, instead of selling all your earthly possessions and getting “out of Dodge” right away, see how you do offline for only an hour.
The moral of the story is this: In as much as technology and modern communications can help you, it can hurt you as well.
OK—it’s true. Tech and innovative channels can augment and accent a productive person’s general demeanor. However, they can also be severely distracting and act as a genuine enemy of progress. At the end of the day, some tasks are downright better done away from the internet. Far from any cell-phones or tablets, and devoid of all digital distractions, you may feel more focused than ever before– or not.
Taking everything into account
In today’s fast-paced luxury real estate sales environment, it’s crucial you take the time to balance your personal and professional life. Hand-in-hand with extraordinary health benefits, balancing work and home stuff is indispensable when fostering interpersonal relationships. In the same manner, when a company’s staff are individually stable, and in control, the collective mission becomes fortified exponentially.
Incidentally, if you find yourself sacrificing personal relations, wasting time reading unnecessary emails, or selfishly envying another luxury real estate sales specialist, chances are your time-management skills could use some work. What’s more, if you’re an action-oriented, it never hurts to reach out to some of the industry’s leading authorities. Speaking with an aggressive marketing firm might just be the spark you need. That is if you want to affect change in your career, around the office, and on the home front.
CONTACT US TODAY!
Luxury Estates Auction Company can’t exactly be your life coach. However, we can help you start closing sales and moving forward with a more effective strategy for taking on the high-end real estate market.