Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

AdviserBlast – Quick Tips to Accelerate Your Practice
In this issue: One thing to keep you focused now

 AdviserBlast provides answers to your questions about the financial services industry, with clear, concise, and immediately actionable advice. I'd welcome your feedback, comments and any questions. 

Question:
You talk about avoiding distractions and staying focused. I'm overwhelmed with everything that's going on in the industry and everything I have to do! What is the number one thing I should do to stay focused and productive right now?

Answer:
Focus is now more important than ever. With so many distractions swirling around everyone in the industry, it's easy to be overwhelmed and effectively paralyzed by it all.

Time-blocking is the easiest way for you to be productive and effective.

I'm going to be blunt, though: For this to work, you've got to carry through. People may say they want to do this and even talk a good game about what they intend to do, but they never execute.

Why? True change requires both thought and action, and breaking old patterns to develop new actions is not easy.

Time-blocking is simply doing specifically planned activities at specifically planned times. I use and teach this same technique which I used as an athlete. I stuck to my plan and got done what needed to be done. Other people and issues simply had to wait (usually not for long) until I had completed that time block's activity.

I can hear you saying, "But there's no way I could do that in my practice, especially with this market!" Sure, we've got to be realistic. A perfectly time-blocked week is an ideal, and there will be times when you need to make adjustments. But only when you do have your ideal time schedule written out, can you see exactly what is not getting done and take appropriate actions.

The thing I like best about time-blocking is that it eliminates the paralysis and wasted time which can come when you are simply overwhelmed by your workload.

Because you know that other important activities have already been scheduled and that they will actually get done, you can fully concentrate on the job at hand. You don't waste time flitting from one seemingly urgent thing to another, but never truly getting much of anything done.

You need to develop a time-block schedule which fits you, but here's a broad example to consider.

Monday/Friday:
Focus on: admin, client touches, email and other business-building/preserving activities, any meeting preparation for this week or following week.

Have business planning meeting with partner/assistant, outlining week ahead and clarifying activities.
No face-to-face client meetings are scheduled on these two days.

Tuesday/Thursday:
8:30 – 10:45am Prospect meetings
If no meetings are scheduled, make calls to existing clients, if needed, otherwise follow up on warm prospects, contact new prospects
10:45 – 11:00am – 15 minute break
11:00 – 12:00pm – Any admin from morning or emergency admin
12:00 – 1:00pm – Work on marketing/sales campaign & strategies
1:00 – 1:30pm – Any client review needed after day’s market close
1:30 – 2:00pm – 30 minute break
2:00 – 4:00pm – Client meetings
4:30 – Leave office
5:00pm – Gym or physical workout of some kind

Wednesday
7:30 – 9:00am – Admin or account review
9:00 – 12:00pm – Client meetings
12:00 – 1:00pm – Any admin from Mon & Tues (non-urgent admin)
1:00 – 1:45pm – Break
1:45 – 3:45pm – Either client meetings or business building activities
3:45 – 4:30pm – Complete any outstanding admin; any Continuing Education activities

You can see from this sample schedule that time is allocated to cover practically everything you’re going to face within your practice: from admin to Continuing Education to client meetings to business building – everything is covered. You’re able to stay better focused and avoid time-wasting, non-productive distractions.

Stay Tenacious!
Paul

PS: If you'd like a copy of a weekly calendar which allows you to write in your own activities, you can download the one I use by clicking here.

Copyright Paul Kingsman 2008
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Paul Kingsman provides financial services professionals practical tools to achieve consistent, outstanding results. As a motivational speaker and executive coach, he is a sought after expert on how to make your split seconds count. Having won an Olympic medal by only four one-hundredths of a second, Paul knows the importance of keeping focused and now teaches people how to overcome distractions and achieve their own success. His experience as an adviser for Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo has given him an insider’s understanding of the unique business challenges faced by financial services professionals and an ability to guide his clients in implementing results oriented solutions.

To find out more about how he can help equip you or your team to achieve your own Split Second Success® through his presentations or executive coaching, email him at Paul@PaulKingsman.com

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