How to Organize Your Day — Advice from Top Real Estate Agents

The following is adapted from The Next Wave of Influence in Real Estate by Jimmy Rex.

The following are answers from some of the top millennial real estate agents when asked: How do you organize your day, and why do you do it that way?

Alejandra Charest

I organize my days in advance. My appointments are usually made days in advance. If something comes up last minute, I’ll just put it on my schedule. Every day is different because I have two children under two.

If I have appointments, I’m fortunate enough to have family members who live in town. My mom is retired, so I can drop them off at her home.

My mother-in-law takes care of my kids every Thursday. Every Thursday, I try to pack in as much as possible because I know that I am covered all day. If anything comes up last minute, I take them to my mom’s house and I’ll either show a house or do a listing presentation.

Beth McCloskey

I try to prioritize getting all my calls in. Prospecting calls are in the morning, and then in the afternoon I try to make appointments. I always start my day off with some sort of devotional or something to help me with my mindset, then I try to get to the gym or at least just outside for a walk. I try to get a lot of my emails flushed out in the morning. If something needs attention right away, I get that done so I have my emails kind of cleaned out, and then I try to schedule most of my appointments midday to early afternoon so that I can get on the phone again in the later evening, but it doesn’t always work that way. You learn to just go with the flow. I always try to at least block out a certain number of hours a week for dialing, and touching base with new prospects.

Isabel Affinito

I start my day by going to a 6:30 a.m. CrossFit session Monday through Thursday. My gym is my biggest single source of business. I go in the morning so I can start the day on a positive note. Also, I never know where my afternoon is going to go, so I’ve learned if I don’t go in the morning, I’m probably not going.

After my workout, I have a pretty leisurely morning routine that usually takes about two hours. It involves drinking coffee and snuggling in bed with my dog and my husband. I also plan out my day in a paper journal. I time block my day on paper, do a “Top 5,” and write out some things I’m grateful for. It takes up one page of a small notebook.

Journaling has been transformative for me. When I skip it, I feel completely out of control of my day. I find that when I sit down and put on paper what I’m going to get done that day, it puts the day in perspective, and I actually get it done.

Typically, my Top 5 will include a workout and prospecting. That leaves room for only three other important things I can get done. Those might be one listing appointment, one buyer tour, and one small time block for admin tasks. When you really sit down and look at it, there’s not nearly as much time in the day as it feels like there is in the morning.

Keithan Jones

I just go with the flow. If I have plans, if I have appointments, I might drop them in my phone. I have a notebook that I carry around and it’s got everything in it, and I take pictures of the pages or whatever so in case it ever gets forgotten, I have it. I work with whatever works best for the client. If the client says they need me at this date and time, I’m always available. Just don’t double-book.

In the morning it’s gym, breakfast, lead generation. You know, health and body first. And then getting ready and going to work and following up with clients. Seeing what’s going on in the real estate world, who’s having open houses today. Are there any seminars that I can attend? See what the Board of Realtors has going on. Everything real estate. Looking at the markets, seeing if new houses have come up.

Mark Tompkins

I have a very simple Excel spreadsheet. It has all of my pending transactions, my buyer clients that I’m working with, and the seller clients that are coming to the table soon. I organize my day by printing out the Excel spreadsheet with the action items that I need to take care of. Throughout the day, I update the spreadsheet. I started out that way because it shows me the priority of exactly what needs to be done, and it keeps all of my attention on where it needs to be, which is on my clients and on the transactions.

Ryan Kane

I am the free spirit of the group. Basically, I am a 50 percent partner in our group for the Drakulich Kane Real Estate Group of RE/MAX professionals, and the other 50 percent is the husband and wife team. The husband is my best friend since middle school. We basically set our team up five years ago when we moved to RE/MAX and set up the team where we specialize in our roles. I do nothing but buyers.

My business partner J.D., he’s the exact opposite. He’s all listings. His wife acts as our marketer, bookkeeper, organizer, and team leader.

What we’ve built allows me to be that free spirit that I like to be and not be as organized. I’m the only guy on my team. I keep a calendar on the wall in the office, but that’s it. I don’t have a calendar on my phone. I keep everything in my head. I just keep the energy flow going and stay creative and keep relationships going and take things on as they come as the buyer will send. That’s the polar opposite of my business partner, which is why we’re good partners. J.D. is super organized, super calendar-based, and scheduling meetings and getting through his phone calls is all systematized and system-driven, and he’s just done that better than anyone in our office.

When we started to decide our roles, we all took a personality test, a pretty detailed one, and found out what our strong suits are and kind of show our roles based on that. So, just being a buyer’s agent, it’s a little more of a, kind of a social butterfly type. Doesn’t want to be in the office, looking at his calls and this and that. So I get to do what I like to do. J.D. thrives in what he does.

Yasha Albright

My morning routine entails waking up at 4:00 a.m. I usually eat a little meal. And then I start my workout. I work out for about an hour. Sometimes in the middle of my workout, I’ll stop for five minutes. I am a part of the 5 AM Club, so I usually jump on that call or get on the line so I can hear while I’m working out. After that, I get ready for work. I drop off my kids to school and head into the office. Pretty boring, but it’s a lot of moving pieces.

I hold myself accountable. I feel like this is a job, and I need to show up to work every day at a certain time. It’s just nonnegotiable because I have to get in there and make my calls. And you get fired up in the morning, so I don’t mess around with morning routines.

To learn more about the habits of the top millennial real estate agents, you can find The Next Wave of Influence in Real Estate on Amazon.

JIMMY REX has been a top-producing real estate agent for the past fifteen years. Most widely-known for his real estate coaching company, 100K Agent Blueprint, Jimmy is also a mentor, speaker, coach, angel investor, and host of The Jimmy Rex Show. Through the Child Liberation Foundation and Operation Underground Railroad, Jimmy has helped rescue more than 100 children from sex traffickers. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and recently visited his 60th country Tanzania, where he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with the charity organization Waterboys.