KEITH ROSEN: When it comes to selling and reaching your goals, all roads lead back to time management. Here are three things that you can do immediately to take control of your day.

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Time Management Factors:

-Treat Everything Like an Appointment

Number one: treat everything like an appointment. Bottom line, if it takes up time and eats up your day, then schedule it into your routine. So, your drive time, commute to work, drive time to appointments, the time you take to get ready in the morning—this all takes up time. So schedule it into your day. Doing so will keep you honest about what you can and cannot do throughout a day, as well as how much time you actually have to schedule into your day.

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Time Management Factors:

-Treat Everything Like an Appointment

-Plan for the Unplanned

Number two: plan for the unplanned. Now, this is a simple mathematical equation. Think about how much time you spend engaging in activities that, unless you had a crystal ball, you would never be able to plan for. These are the activities that fly under your radar, also known as externalities. You know, that emergency meeting, a client call that you can’t put on hold, something that’s personal in nature, an emergency, traffic—all these things have a tendency to eat up your day. At the end of the day you look back and say, “Where did my time go?” Well, instead plan for the unplanned. Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself constantly overbooking yourself throughout the day.

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Time Management Factors:

-Treat Everything Like an Appointment

-Plan for the Unplanned

-Build In Buffer Time

Number three: build buffer time into every activity and task that you schedule. What happens most of the time? We plan for the best. Well, yes I know I’m a coach and I’m coming from a positive place but this time I want you to plan for the worst, expect the worst, because if you expect the worst you are going to naturally build in extra buffer time. If everything happened in a perfect case scenario then you’d be completing everything on your day. So when you say that in a best case scenario it’s going to take you 20 minutes to get to an appointment that’s a half hour away, that’s not really going to cut it. Build in that buffer time. How about when it comes to a cold call? How long does every cold call take? Does it take you two minutes? Three minutes? How about the worst case scenario? If you connect with someone, maybe it’ll actually take you five to seven. And finally, how about writing a proposal? You might think you can kick out a proposal in about ten to fifteen minutes, when in actuality a good, well-written proposal might take you an hour. So be realistic with your timelines and build buffer time into every activity that you schedule throughout your day. This way, you won’t get blindsided at the end of the day when you haven’t finished all your To Do lists.