What you do...

“Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” (Lou Holtz) from the Jack’s Winning Words blog. I agree with Jack that Lou Holtz is a great motivational speaker and coach. In these tough times this saying of Lou’s is especially true. Most Realtors have some abilities, but many have not been motivated to apply their abilities in this tough market and even more have done so with a negative attitude and thus not done well.

I’ll certainly admit that these are tough times and I sometimes have difficulty getting myself motivated. I am thankful that I have one character flaw that seems to help during times like this – I hate to do a poor job. If I’m going to do something I really put my best effort into it, because I just can’t stand myself if a do a half-a** job on anything. Early on in my real estate career that trait was a constant source of frustration for me, because it seemed that there were always things left undone at the end of each day. I had to learn that real estate is a job that can consume all of the time that you can give it, and then some.

There is always one more thing that you could do in real estate – one more flyer you could print and deliver, one more client you could call, one more letter to a FSBO you could write and mail, always something. The key it turned out is understanding how to prioritize things and how to just let go of some things (generally the really low priority things that I didn’t get around to). That’s still tough for me and something that I don’t do well.

So, maybe to Lou’s advice above I would add – Good time management is how efficiently you do it. Now, excuse me; I think I can still deliver one more set of flyers today, if I hurry.