Automate, delegate, or eliminate.
My favorite productivity trick is deciding something is actually not worth doing.
Most of us try to get more done by working faster or longer. The better move is to do less of the wrong work. Before you add anything new to your week, run every recurring task through three questions.
1. Can I eliminate it?
Start here, because it’s the most powerful and the least used. Some tasks survive only because we’ve always done them: the report nobody reads, the meeting that could be an email, the weekly ritual that stopped producing results two years ago.
Ask: If I stopped doing this, what would actually happen? If the honest answer is “not much,” stop. Start with a “To Don’t” list as seriously as your to-do list.
2. Can I automate it?
If a task is repeatable and rule-based, a system should be doing it, not you. In our business, that includes:
- Follow-up sequences for new leads and recruits
- Birthday, anniversary and home-purchase reminders
- Appointment scheduling and confirmations
- Transaction checklists and deadline reminders
- First drafts of routine emails and market updates, with AI doing the heavy lifting
Automation doesn’t replace the relationship. It frees you up to have more of them.
3. Can I delegate it?
If a task has to happen but doesn’t require you, hand it off to an assistant, a transaction coordinator, a team member or a vendor. The question isn’t “Can I do this?” You can do almost anything. The question is “Is this the highest and best use of my time?”
For a broker-owner, recruiting, coaching and leading are hard to delegate. Formatting the newsletter is not. For an agent, prospecting and client conversations are the job. Scheduling the photographer is not.
What’s left is your real job
Once you’ve eliminated, automated and delegated, what remains is the work only you can do. For most of us, that’s conversations: with clients, with agents, with recruits. That’s where growth comes from, and it’s exactly the work that gets squeezed out when the calendar is full of everything else.
Pick three recurring tasks this week and run them through the filter. You’ll be surprised how much time you get back.
Framework: This post is part of Action Produces Data, the coaching framework for consistent production: take the next right action, track it and let the results, not opinions, guide what you do next.
Want help applying this in your brokerage? Book a 30-minute conversation with Mark at calendly.com/mjsession.
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