A podcast monologue by Lars Hedinburg (founder, Real Estate B School) describing a rigorous 14-day, 15-minute-interval time-tracking exercise he completed to audit how he spends time. He explains categorizing activities (business vs personal, productive vs non-productive, passion vs pay), argues for quarterly honest time inventories, and urges listeners to restructure their weeks to align time with high-impact activities; ends with a call-to-action to visit RealEstateBSchool.com for resources and strategy sessions.
What's up Business Freedom podcast listeners. Lars Hedinburg here, founder of Real Estate B School, co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors. And I just went through one of the most painful things you can ever go through. And I encourage you to go through it if you want to grow. Grow your business, grow your life, succeed at a high level in any area of your life that matters most to you. And so what I just put myself through and I've done different versions of this over the last dozen years or so and I think I attribute much of my success to my ability to be honest with myself about where I spend my time. And I just went through a two week time study for 14 days straight. I logged from the moment I woke up until I went to bed for 14 days straight. I logged everything I did for 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes I logged exactly what I did. And I bucketed those categories or bucketed the activities in categories of business and personal, productive and non productive, where I was doing administrative work, where I was working in my business, on my business, where I was on media, where I was doing self care, where I was spending time with family. And it was really eye opening. And I think and y' all know if you've listened to the podcast for any period of time that I'm pretty honest about where I failed business and in my personal life. And if there's one thing I've done right, it's where I spend my time and the choices I make with my time. And I think that's the coolest part of life and business is that we're all given the same 168 hours in a week. And this exercise though was pretty revealing. And I encourage you if you haven't done a version of an exercise that this is the not very complicated. We have our new members in Real Estate B school go through this really rewarding and a little bit painful exercise because we can't really help them transform their relationship between time and money if we don't know where they're spending their time. And in real estate B school and on the podcast here, you've heard me talk a lot about time, money and stress and your ability to be free with your time or to have time. Freedom relies on the fact that you cannot spend time doing things that aren't leading you to a higher level in the areas of life you say you want to succeed. And so I'm a husband, I'm a dad, I'm a man of God, I want to maintain my physical body. I have two businesses. You know, I'm involved in a men's group, a married couples group. And so it's not that I'm spread thin. I have just. And that sounds like I've got a lot going on. And I guess it is a lot going on. Yet when you really break down your calendar and every 90 days, you're willing to be brutally honest about where you spend your time. And if you're watching TV or news or you're in sports, or you're on social media, if you're doing all those things, and then in your business, if you're doing a bunch of administrative work, you know, if you're in email all day or you know, you're doing things in the business that you could hire someone who's better suited, that will do them for a fraction of the money that you want to make. All of these things, you need to just be honest with yourself in order to succeed. And so there's not much of a, it's not a real rocket science sort of discovery yet. I haven't met a lot of folks that have actually done this, and I commit to doing it once every quarter. And, you know, there's two scales that I look at when I analyze my time. It's passion and pay. And so there are low passion, low pay, low passion, high pay, low pay. Let me start. High passion, high pay, high passion, low pay, low passion, high pay, low passion, low pay. And so it's everything we do in our business, we're making decisions pretty constantly about where we are in that spectrum. And there may be things you love to do and you're super high passion. They're just really low pay. Like taking photos of a property or showing buyers homes, or, you know, writing up MLS remarks for a listing that you're taking. Those are, they could be high passion, but they're really, really low pay. Spending a whole bunch of time in your email, you know, getting distracted and squirreling around the Internet researching stuff, you know, that that is not going to directly impact your business. Those are low passion, low pay, high passion, high pay. And I covered some of this in the series that we just went through. High passion, high pay could be recruiting, could be listing appointments, could be building systems, strategic planning, visioning, those sorts of things. And then there are these high pay, low passion activities which pretty much you have to do those that could be, you know, for some of you, it's going on buyer consultations, listing consultations, those could be recruiting. Those sorts of things could be tracking your numbers, building systems, depending on what you're sort of geared toward and how your brain works. And so the encouragement here is just to be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time. And if you're not going to make the hard decisions around changing your schedule and your habits when it comes to where you spend your time, then you might want to stop saying that you want to achieve at a high level. And I hate to say it that bluntly, and it's the truth. You know, if you're not willing to carve out an ideal week and first start with an assessment and taking an inventory of where you're spending your time and then making a commitment that you're going to structure your week in a way that puts your time where you say you want to succeed. And that's as straightforward as I can make it. I wish it was easier than that. There are times where I don't want to do the thing I know I need to do in my calendar and I do it anyway. Depending on where I am, what season I am in either business or personally. And I've been at many seasons in the businesses and many seasons personally with our children growing up. And there's been many times I've had to change my ideal week based on the activities I was getting, well clear out time in my calendar which involved doing an inventory of my time so I could make time for the things that were taking more time for the season I was in, if that made any sense. So no matter where you are in your journey, you have to look at your time. So I encourage you just for a couple weeks, just Write down every 15 minutes what you've done. It's not more complicated than that. And then just take an inventory of working in the business, on the business, whether it's administrative, whether it's self care or family, and whether it's media. Media is probably the biggest, biggest time waste there is, and I hate to say it that way because I know a lot of us spend a lot of time on media. So that's all I've got. If you're at a point in your journey where you know you have the potential to succeed at a high level and build something, you know, a business, a meaningful business, a business worth owning and you just need that roadmap, you just need the systems pre built, ready to install in your business and you need to surround yourself with a community that, that is all sharing this belief that our industry is broken in the fact that we celebrate those that achieve a lot of production, yet they're working seven days a week they're working 12 to 14 hour days. And there's a different way to do this. There is this roadmap to freedom that we talk about in real estate B school. That's you. And you know you need a conversation about your business, just go to realestatebschool.com there's a bunch of free resources over there. You can also book in for a business growth strategy session. That's just a 45 minute conversation with one of our coaches just to help you get clear on where you are now, where you want to go, and what is holding you back. Go to realestatepeacechool.com if that's you. And just be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time. And much love, much respect. We'll talk soon.
