If you can carve out five minutes every morning to organize your day, you’ll save yourself many, many more minutes.  I know you’re busy.  We’re all busy.  But we’re only talking about five minutes.  300 seconds!

I’m not talking about anything elaborate, just sitting down and thinking about what you want to accomplish that day, and how you’re going to do it. You’ll find that just the act of sitting and thinking for a few minutes every day will make you more organized, disciplined, and productive during the rest of the day.

Here’s why it’s important.  Very few people start each day with an organized plan  They have a general idea of what they need to do, usually built around the appointments they’ve set up or their “to do” list, but they don’t have a firm structure.

So what happens?  They start with all sorts of energy and enthusiasm to get things done, and then something unexpectedly comes up that dominates their day: a problem with a deal, an angry call from a client, an email with a request.  Whatever it is, it wasn’t even on the schedule, but it ends up becoming the main focus of their day, and they never actually get to any of the items on their supposed “to do” list.

Now, sometimes emergencies come up, and will throw even the most disciplined person off their game.  But here’s the key: someone who actually has a schedule set up is MUCH more likely to get able to get back on schedule after a disruptive event than someone without a plan.

Put it this way: you’re much more likely to get back on course if you actually HAVE A COURSE to get on. If you start the day with only a general idea of what you want to accomplish, it’s a lot easier to end up getting distracted and disrupted.

It’s like sailing a boat.  Sometimes, the wind is going to pick up and throw you off course.  But the sailor who has set a firm course about where she wants to go is going to have an easier time recovering than someone who was just “sailing around.”

So plan your day.  You don’t need to spend half an hour doing it.  You don’t need to hyper-organize your day into 15-minute increments.  Just spend five minutes gathering yourself, setting your goals, structuring your appointments, organizing your thoughts, and committing yourself to what you want to accomplish.

This post is part of a series of what I call the “36-1/2 Rules for Client-Oriented Real Estate Agents,” a collection of short takes on the CORE concept that I’ve developed over the years of discussing and teaching the system.  We’ll count up to the 36th rule over the next few months, and then the 1/2 rule.  You can get the full list of rules by clicking on the “36-1/2 Rules for CORE Agents” category on the blog – scroll from the bottom if you want to read them in order.