How I Actually Save Time Each Week as a Real Estate Investor | Ep 86

Speaker: There's no time. We have to get through this because we are the Furlo Capital Real Estate podcast. Where we gotta go fast 'cause we don't have time.

Speaker 2: Wow. Okay.

Speaker: Oh man. I already lost time. Now explaining why we have to go fast is a trouble. Good. Anyways, all good. Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast where we dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing.

And our mission is to, as quickly as possible, equip people to invest wisely in both properties and residents so that together we can quickly build wealth. Well, improving housing. I'm James. And quickly, this is my wife, Jessi. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: That intro made me kind of like woohoohoo. Oh man. This is how we save time.

Time is money. Time. Talk really fast. Let's go. Let's go. You're just gonna put this on like triple speed and be like, oh,

Speaker: one of those. Isn't that how you normally listen to podcast? One of those

Speaker 3: ads? It's like,

Speaker: that should be, I actually didn't write that down. Oh, man. Keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: Oh my word. Yeah.

That actually really annoys me when they do the fine print all the details and they speed it up so you can barely understand it. Our, our daughter actually, we were watching a commercial or something and she was like, how did they talk that fast? I was like I don't think they, they do, they don't. I think they just, they just crank up, speed it up, yo volume.

She was like, oh, that's a good idea. I was like, no, no, it's not, it's not a good idea. It's. It's just to squeeze Oh man, the marrow out and no one can actually understand it. Yes. So hopefully we're not just speeding through life.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. We're gonna take our time's. Right. And we're gonna let you slow.

We're slow down. We're gonna slow

Speaker 3: down. But

Speaker: you soak in these time saving tips. Exactly. And I gotta be honest, I, I had this idea because I was like, passive real estate investors, they're busy people, they don't have a lot of time. Maybe we can give them some tips on how to save time. Hmm. And I started doing research, I'll be honest, like.

All the tips and stuff. They're pretty basic at the end of the day.

Speaker 3: It's like, be organized.

Speaker: Yeah. Time block. Don't

Speaker 3: multitask.

Speaker: Exactly. Exactly. You get it. So instead, what I'm gonna share is what I do. Which I think saves time. I did not list on there, listen to podcasts and audio books at one and a half Speed.

That would've been a good one. Oh, so that's my first one. No, honestly, that's how I save time. I go

Speaker 3: fast.

Speaker: No. All right.

Speaker 3: To me there's a balance because it's like, yes, you got through more content in the same amount of time. Right. But is your brain actually processing all of that that you're doing? Yeah, and for me personally.

It just doesn't, I need it to be a little bit, bit slower so I can chew on it and contemplate it and think about it. Yeah. It's just like buzzing in my ears. I, I can't process it. That's fair. But people might great. Which I think one other thing

Speaker: that's gonna be a general takeaway from all of this is like, yeah, you gotta know yourself, like what works for you, what doesn't?

And so I'm gonna share. Things that I do that I have found interesting, saved me time. Interesting. Yeah. And maybe these will be insightful, maybe not. Yeah. So take 'em for what they're worth. Alright. The first thing that that I know about myself is that I'm a morning person.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: And that morning time is when awesomeness happens for me.

Yeah. And so I do a lot of things to make sure that I get my morning time. Mm-hmm. And so it's like real quick, first thing. My phone is not in our bedroom. That's true. It is all the way across the house in, in the living room. Yep. And so I do not wake up and first thing, check emails or social feeds. As a matter of fact, I don't have any social apps, networking apps on my phone.

Mm-hmm. No Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. Whatever else there is. Mm-hmm. Threads. I feel like I'm missing a big one, but that's okay. Doesn't matter. I'm not on it. I do have accounts. I do visit on my computer. Mm-hmm. And but not on my phone. Yeah. I don't have any video apps on my phone. I don't even have YouTube on my phone.

Interesting. I think that's a big thing that I do that just stops the, Hmm. You know, the, the TikTok, the death, scroll, doo scrolling, whatever. I just don't it. You can't do it. Yeah. And there are times when it's highly annoying because there's something I want to do or a video I wanna watch. I'm like, ugh,

Speaker 3: you just don't have to wait.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think that's okay. Another thing I do is, first thing I do when, when I wake up in the morning is I drink a cup of water. And that helps me get going. I'm not, I'm sure if I was a coffee person I would do coffee instead, but I'm not. And 'cause I'm just naturally. That kind of guy. So it

Speaker 3: saves you time because it gets you going quicker.

Yeah. Helps. You're not just groggy and sitting around helps wake up

Speaker: faster, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I would say by the time I by the time I get outta bed, walk across the house. I'll grab my iPad 'cause it has like, the next things I'm gonna do on it get a cup of water and then I'm headed into my office slash garage area.

The first thing I do on my iPad is I have an app called Read Wise that surfaces highlights from previous books that I've read. And I, I read through those. I do about 12 a day. Mm-hmm. 12 highlights? Yes. 12 highlights. Yeah. You can set the. How many you get per day. I think I like interest to do as many as like lows.

Two or four or something like that. Mm-hmm. And I was like, yeah, I need more than that. I read, I read too much for it to be four. And so I do that. What else do I do in the morning? Oh, I I do some affirmations 'cause I'm that kind of guy. Yeah. Just read through lists from the, and affirmations.

I mean, it is that, and, but it's not like you are amazing. It's more, it's more like, like goal setting, just things reviewing, goal setting. And even that, like, it's just things I wanna remember, like discipline equals freedom. You know, like these truths. So that, I mean, I've got a section, I've got a section talking about my faith.

Here's what I believe. So I want that regular reminder. I've got a section talking about money. Here are my money beliefs that I wanna remember. I've got a section on discipline. Here's what it means to be disciplined. I've got a section on working with other people. Here's how to work well with other people.

Mm-hmm. I, I've got a section on just like business concepts and ideas that I want to keep on the forefront of my mind. And I got a whole section on communication. And you

Speaker 3: read those every single day?

Speaker: I read, I have, they're broken up into sections, so I don't read the entire thing, but read sections section.

So throughout the week, I, I hit all of them.

Speaker 3: And how did, like, draw the tie for me on how that helps you? Save time gets

Speaker: my mindset right, so I'm not wandering throughout the day. It helps me to focus.

Speaker 3: So if you have particular meetings or particular tasks later because you reviewed your affirmations or these, or these mindsets, you're like, you know what, I'm gonna prioritize this other thing.

I'm gonna do that first and this, this other task or event or whatever might get pushed. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because I have this viewpoint about life. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. I like that. Yeah. Oh, I think I might need to adopt that. Dang,

Speaker: you're welcome. Because

Speaker 3: I, I, that's like, when I get into the office, that's one of the first things I do is I, I kind of like, I have a running planner essentially.

Yeah. Of like, okay, these are the ongoing things. These are the most important things. These are the things that can wait. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, I've, and then I have. Another list elsewhere of like, it would be amazing if I got to these things at some point, but I think I would prioritize them differently if I really thought, okay, what's my, what's my big picture goal here?

What do I believe I'm doing and why I am doing it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 3: You know, I'm, I may prioritize differently.

Speaker: Yeah. And I do, by the way, I do also set quarterly goals and I look at those, and then within the quarterly goals I set weekly. Goals mm-hmm. Which then lead into daily tasks. Sure. And, and those are like my big rocks.

And then I have what, you know, like most people, I've got 15 other little things that Sure. Kind of fit all around it. Yeah. But it helps me prioritize. Mm-hmm. Which ultimately helps me save time or at least spend my time as well as I can Sure. Spend it. Right. And ultimately, if I do those big rocks and those things, it leads to time saved in the long run.

Mm-hmm. If that makes sense. Yeah,

Speaker 3: that makes sense.

Speaker: Yeah. For me personally. I like, if it's a workout day, sometimes I'll just then go straight into a workout. Mm-hmm. Sometimes I'll work for an hour or two before doing my workout. It kind of depends on where my energy levels are at or if I've got some tasks that I wanna you know, do which you'll notice what I haven't done yet.

Haven't checked my email.

Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you haven't checked your email or messages.

Speaker: Now usually it's, 'cause it's just starting at like five in the morning and people are, no one needs to reply right away, so, so I'm good. So that's part of it. It's like interesting. I'm tackling the big stuff first,

Speaker 3: huh?

Speaker: Yeah,

Speaker 3: that would be speaking of like working out or perhaps, I dunno, I'm just thinking through my own schedule.

It would be a slippery slope for me if I, if I didn't work out right away. 'cause I've done that before and then I'm like. Yeah, no, not, that's not gonna squeeze in anywhere else during time. Well, and that's what I

Speaker: found for me, is that workout needs to happen before 8:00 AM Okay. So, 'cause after eight it's not gonna work for me anymore.

May not be at five

Speaker 3: 30 or six, it may be at seven, but it, yes, it happens within that. Initial block still.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3: That makes sense.

Speaker: Yeah. 'cause I'm like you, right? If I've, I've tried the whole, you know, I kind of get tired at 3:00 PM maybe I'll just wait to work out then. And for some reason I get the 3:00 PM I'm like, man, I don't feel like working out.

I'm still tired. Or I'm like, oh, I gotta finish up this other project real quick. Right. You know, and an hour later I'm still finishing up and go, oh no, I missed my workout. Yeah. Thing. And so see we're good. And so. So I find I have to do it in the morning, otherwise it doesn't happen and I'm okay with that.

Yeah. And otherwise I skipped my workout, which does save me time, I guess. But

Speaker 2: it's not worth it. Well, yeah.

Speaker: Okay, another thing I just have, I have very few notifications that go off in my life. Like, for example, I don't have email notifications. That's just not something I do. You'll have to adjust that.

'Cause I just. I, I think I read, I think it was four hour work week, way back in the day. This was pre-kids. And he talked about shutting all that stuff off, and I did and has been a game changer for me. Hmm. So I have very few apps that actually gimme notifications. Most of 'em are communication stuff in a,

Speaker 3: I need like a gauge.

So in an average day, like 24 hour period.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker 3: How many notifications would pop up on your watch phone or computer? Are we talking like two or are we talking like 30?

Speaker: You know, I'm trying to think from my phone today and on my watch, I one came through.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Speaker: And it was a lead that we got,

Speaker 3: which is great.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 3: It's not like I, this news alert, just blah.

Speaker: Yeah. I zero news alerts. And that's not, and that today was a very low day, to be honest. Hmm. But I mean, it's less than 20. Interesting throughout the day. Now, obviously if it's a phone call, I guess technically, I don't know, is that, does we're gonna count that as a notification?

Speaker 3: Mm, I I wouldn't More, more, it's like

Speaker: text message, which I didn't get any today. It was kinda a weird day. So

Speaker 3: you didn't get any text today? Well, I guess I got, I

Speaker: got the one from you, which I didn't see that notification you had to tell me about it. Weird. 'Cause I wasn't checking. Yeah. Super weird. I'm just like, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3: So what is it? Is it texts or emails or like. When you, 'cause stuff pops up on your watch, what is that?

Speaker: Usually gonna be a text message of some sort. Okay. Or like a slack message from someone at work. Oh, okay. Someone's working and you're

Speaker 3: getting Yeah. You're in the loop.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Or the latest hot news items.

Interesting.

Speaker 3: See, this is helpful to me because I, I don't know, I, in my brain, I was always like, what is he looking at? Like, is that some sports notification or some like. Breaking news.

Speaker: No, I don't get any of that.

Speaker 3: Apple is now releasing the whatever, whatever. Ah,

Speaker: well yeah, I get that. No, I don't get those either.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. I don't, yeah, it's all gonna be communication type stuff.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: I have no idea how many notifications they annoy me. I turn them off calendar, calendar

Speaker: events. I guess I'll get notifications for calendar events,

Speaker 3: which I feel like

Speaker: is important to get.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

That's important. Yeah. And also not necessarily disruptive if you're like, yeah, I knew I had a meeting. Like, I would like to know when that starts. Yeah. So that I will be there.

Speaker: Yes. Another thing, I am currently in progress for this one. Mm-hmm. I've always been striving for inbox zero. Whoa. I'm giving that up and instead I am going for inbox.

Never.

Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. That's ama you're giving your control up to somebody else. This is a

Speaker: classic buyback your time type of thing. Yeah. So letting someone else do it. She is fully taken over one of my inboxes. We're working on another one, and we haven't even touched the third one yet. Gosh. So

Speaker 3: see, to me that sounds like it either sounds like you have this like political.

I don't know. You, you have a, a. Assistant, what is the term for that? Where, where it's like they do all of your communication? Like a, like a publicist, PR or pr, like it sounds super fancy. Ah, it's not, or, or it seems like you're like royalty who's like, oh yes. Oh, I don't talk with the commoners. Like I just, I have my scribe pin.

That for me, you know, I don't know. That, to me it feels like, oh, that's. Fancy. Yeah. And it

Speaker: really only works if you're a business owner. 'cause if you're an employee, like, sorry man, you're stuck with it. But that's one of the ways that I, that I that I save time is, oh man, I do a lot less emails now. I wonder

Speaker 3: if I could get away with that.

Speaker: Yeah. There's a training process though, so that takes more time. But

Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that, that one seems to me like it's, it's got a huge benefit once you figure it out.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 3: But. The learning curve to get to that point is like, 'cause you want them to do the initial response as if you were doing it or? Yeah.

Speaker: So what we'll do is if she knows what to do, she'll just do it.

But if she doesn't, which at first was all of them. Mm-hmm. She's like, I don't know what to do. We have a folder for that. Or it's like, what do I do? And then when we meet, we run through those emails and I essentially, I like, I'll bullet point or just tell her, Hey, here's here's what I would say, here's the reply.

Yeah. And then she drafts it and then I check it and give feedback. Okay. And then eventually she learns. She doesn't need to ask. This is the response. She does the draft. Yeah. And then I still check that and go, oh, okay, you gotta add this or that. Interesting. And then she learns for certain things, like, oh, these are a receipt email.

Like, I forward that on to the accountant. Mm-hmm. Or. Whatever. These are newsletter emails, those go in the newsletter box. I don't have very many of those, but but that's, that's the process.

Speaker 3: Is, is there like a I don't know, like a beginner version of something like this where I'm, I'm thinking like this person, they're, they're essentially gonna go through your inbox and delete anything you don't care about, unsubscribe from stuff that you got signed up for, and then.

Essentially organize Yeah. Into those folders. Yeah. Eventually, I think

Speaker: AI's gonna do it all. Whoa. Yeah, it's gonna get there and learn your patterns for you.

Speaker 3: That'd be cool.

Speaker: And make drafts and stuff. Which it kind

Speaker 3: of like Gmail kind of does that a little bit and they're like, these ones are priority, these ones are spam, these are, you know, a little

Speaker: bit.

No, I think the big hack is don't check your email all the time. Find two slots throughout the day and commit to like, and they don't, they don't have to be forever, like oh and a half hour where you go for this half hour chunk. It's like I have a meeting with me in my email and I'm just gonna work through email, however hard you get, and that's all that you do.

And ideally you, you group them together with like, types of emails. You're not just going top to bottom. You're, you're like, oh, this is from this group. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna, or this type or whatever. 'Cause apparently like the problem with email besides there just being a lot of it is you're constantly doing context switching mm-hmm.

Throughout each email. And it is genuinely exhausting. Yeah. And so the trick, the, so you wanna reduce that. And then the problem with, if you're checking it all the time is you never actually give yourself the bandwidth to reply to emails. Mm-hmm. And so they're just in the back of your mind, just like, oh yeah, I gotta respond to this, I gotta do this.

You're thinking of a response and it just, and now you're using brain power for not answering emails. Mm-hmm. Instead of what you're working on. So if you're gonna do email yourself really, really, really as hard as you can. Pick like a morning and an afternoon slot. Mm-hmm. And just like, yep, this is when I'm responding to emails.

Mm-hmm. And, and then like, but have it be a focused time where you do it and you actually be pretty shocked. You know, at first it's gonna take you a while to get through it. Mm-hmm. But then if you stick to that schedule, like you'll get to a point where you go, yeah, you know what, I only gotta spend like 10 minutes each time doing it 'cause I'm already caught up.

Speaker 3: That seems like a more realistic. Time saving tip then than getting to inbox. Never. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I understand what I'm doing. The other thing you can do is don't use your inbox as your to-do list.

Speaker 3: Ooh, yeah. Okay. So

Speaker: like what, what the, what the really smart people do, we'll put Cal Newport in this camp is he'll take an email and he might copy and paste that entire email into his to-do box.

Hmm. And then so he has the context of the email, but now it sits on his to-do list.

Speaker 3: Interesting. And email so he doesnt go back to the email. Yeah,

Speaker: and and you can, depending on your software, you can link to that email. You can grab the link to it so that you can then later click reply to it. But for him, then what he can do is once he's processed the inbox, the inbox is now empty, but he didn't reply to anything yet, then he can go back and say, okay, I'm gonna group these together.

And I'm gonna think through the replies. I'm gonna do whatever work needs to be done to do the reply. Interesting. I'm gonna schedule a time to reply to this email or do whatever the thing is. Mm-hmm. And now it sits on his to-do list and on his calendar.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Not in his inbox. And then when he is ready, he can open it up, write his reply, whatever, and then click that link, open an email, copy and paste the reply in, then boom, you're off to the race.

Off to the next one.

Speaker 4: Alright.

Speaker: And so that saves you time. And cognitive, cognitive powers email. There are certain things that I do not intrinsically enjoy. Mm-hmm. One of which is mowing yards. And so for us, we hired a yard guy. Mm-hmm. And it genuinely saves a lot of time. And like we get, like, we love it every single time we go.

Yes. He mowed it. You may enjoy mowing the lawn. Great. Awesome. But like, is there something dear listener that, that you don't like Yeah. You can pay to have someone do it. Sure. The general rule of thumb. Is if it costs less than half of what you make per hour, hire it out. That's the interesting, that's the general rule.

So if you make 50 bucks an hour, you should be willing to pay someone $25 an hour to do something for you, huh? Just to get it done.

Speaker 4: All right.

Speaker: Even if you're salaried and it's not like you can work extra hours and make it up, it's not worth it. Hired out. So if you hate doing dishes or whatever, household chores, you can do it.

And some guys take this to the extreme. Yeah, they hire a house manager who does all the stuff. They do the dishes, the laundry. Clean up. They fill the cars with gas, they get them washed. Yeah. They do lawn like food. They do. Yeah. Yeah. So like that's, some people go to that extreme. Interesting. We're not there.

But that's, but in certain areas.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker: But the question is what's this thing that might be taking time that you don't love? Again, if you love mow the lawn, great. Have fun, treat it as relaxed time. Awesome. But if not, dude. Just hire someone. Save the time. Ours was the yard. I love it. One thing that I is, this is a semi recent change that I made, well, semi recent.

So I now use Calendly, no, no, no, sorry. I do use that, but I use Fantastic Cal on my Mac. Oh. Along with to-do list.

Speaker 3: I haven't heard of Fantastical

Speaker: Doist. Yeah. It's very similar to Todoist. Todoist t to-do list. Todoist. D-O-I-S-T. Doist. Yes. I use that as a to-do list, and then Fantastical is a calendar.

Okay. But what's cool about it is you can they, the two of 'em work together. Mm-hmm. So I can create a to-do list, give it a date and a time, and it will show up. On my calendar as a block.

Speaker 4: That's nice.

Speaker: Yes. And so I now have those two things together. I used, they used to be separate apps.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: And then what I used to work was I didn't work on it until it was on my calendar.

Mm-hmm. Like if it's in my, and I literally had. An extra calendar. That was like things to do, and it was always brown because I don't know, that was my color and, and so I would add such to my calendar, and then I knew to do it, but I used to have another to-do list where it was just my dumping ground of like, okay, things I need to do, but I don't have it scheduled yet, so I'm just, it's just holding there.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Now those two things are one of the same. It's awesome. 'cause what I used to have to do was if I finished a task on my calendar, I would delete that item and then I would go over to my to-do list and check that off.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. You had to go to both

Speaker: and it was like I had two sources of truth. It was hard.

Huh? Now I just have the one source of truth because I can see, this is making

Speaker 3: me think of like, what do, what do I do exactly.

Speaker: You use the Reminders app.

Speaker 3: I use the Reminders app,

Speaker: which I think is insane, but even if

Speaker 3: there's, if I'm having a meeting with someone. That goes in my calendar.

Speaker: Right. Me too.

Speaker 3: But if I, if it's just a task, I don't schedule it on my calendar, there's not a particular time that I would do it.

That, and that's what, when I, when I do my weekly look at things, I do look at the to-do list, and that's where I plug things in to like, okay, this one I'm gonna do this day.

Speaker: Yeah. When, how do you track that?

Speaker 3: I, I use, a actual sheet of paper. Oh. That has the days on it. Like a planner. Yeah. Yeah. That works.

Because I, I don't know, for me, the tactile being able to cross things off Okay. And put an arrow and

Speaker: Yeah. I don't do any of that. I love that. Mine's all streamlined system. Mm-hmm. All integrated. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. Mm-hmm. So that's what I do. I find not only just helps, I have a single source of truth, but I can see everything together.

And in general, it's my to-do list is part of my calendar. It's, I gotta schedule it so I know here's why I'm doing it. And I can run into problems where if I'm working on a project, like, here's an example. I was working on something two days ago and I blocked out four hours to get it done. Mm-hmm. And it took me nine ah, man.

So a bunch of stuff got bumped. Yeah. But I knew it and was like, and I made the conscious choice at the time when I hit the time to go, Nope, I need to just, I need to hunker down and just finish this thing. And and I knew the stuff that I was bumping back mm-hmm. And it was fine. Part of it was before I did that, I used to just, I, I have more to do than I can get done.

Mm-hmm. And I would go through this daily heartache of like, oh no, I'm not gonna get to everything. Now I have a lot less of that. I have the heartache all at once at the beginning part of the week. 'Cause I schedule it out and I go, dang, I have 20 things and I only have slots for six. Alright. Hmm. I'll figure this out.

Interesting. So so that's one of the things that, that I do. I also, for the most part, I monotask Yeah, I, I, I have a single monitor. It's just one thing at a time. Mm-hmm. That's for the most part, that's not a hundred percent true, but like I don't, again, I don't have my email just open waiting to see and check in.

Mm-hmm. I don't have my calendars kind of open. Whatever I'm working on, that's what I'm working on. I might have multiple windows related to that, but Sure. But it's that one project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very rarely do I listen to music. It kind of depends on the type of work I'm doing. I find sometimes it helps, I find, how about this for weird, if I'm doing creative projects, I actually like to have music.

Interesting. But if I am doing more, just like I just gotta hunker down and get this task done, like no music, just, just focus.

Speaker 3: The only thing I can have music playing for is if I'm doing some sort of like. I'm folding these pages in half or I'm like, I'm cutting these things out, or like, you know, mind list, see, almost no podcast

Speaker: if I'm doing that.

Yeah. So the other thing is meetings, scheduling meetings, going back and forth. Mm-hmm. I don't do any of that. I use Calendly. I literally give people a link, find a time, and there are only times that I've. Am willing to meet with people. Yeah. And as a general rule, they're all in the afternoon. Mm. I don't have any time slots in the morning.

'cause again, I, that's when you do your best work. That's my maker time. And so I try to protect it. It's not perfect. Yeah. But I'm like, yeah, I don't care. I will for the most part that's what I do. And but yeah, it helps with all the back and forth stuff, which I really like. And again, I try to push most of 'em to the afternoon.

If I'm not in a meeting, I oftentimes, the afternoon is the time for me to recharge and relax for the evening push. Mm-hmm. So but yeah, I mean, it's sometimes just straight up I take a nap mm-hmm. And I get it. It's like, that doesn't sound like saving time. It's like, yeah, I know I'm saving energy so that I can make the most of my time.

Yeah. Later on throughout the day. Also I thought, this is, I, I like to think this one's not on a lot of 'em. I chew gum in the afternoon. That helps pick up my energy levels and save me time.

Speaker 3: Really?

Speaker: Yeah. A hundred percent.

Speaker 3: It makes you work faster or more diligently. Uhhuh, I mean, yeah. We totally does.

When I were, when I was teaching, we used to give kids a piece of gum before they would take like standardized testing and things. 'cause it does, it, it stimulates your mind. See? And that little, I don't

Speaker: even know that. Yeah. Yeah. So I totally, that's my, let's work, that's my there's the, there's the secret hack.

If you struggle in the afternoon when you're starting to hit that slump, get something, some sugar free gum and just chomp on it and you'll be shocked at how well it works. And it stops you from snacking, which I also needed. That was the original reason why I started doing it. 'cause I would snack in the afternoon and I was like, dude, these are like just, yeah.

Ah, and they were not like, they weren't good calories. Yeah. It's just snacking. So I was like smacking. And I found if you're chewing a piece of gum. You don't want to chew any food. Yeah. 'cause it kind of solves that problem. But then I also found like, dang, like I like it keeps me awake. I'm awake. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So chew some gum. That's my secret tip. Didn't see that coming, did you? Yeah. Here's something I relatively new that I've started, which is doing a shutdown checklist.

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. And

Speaker: so. This really is coming down to like managing energy, not time, but that's okay. Yeah. So in the evening I'll do things like, I'll stretch, I'll log my calories because it's important.

I'll take a look at my goals and then I'll look at tomorrow's events and tasks that I have to do. Mm-hmm. And I find for me when I consistently do that and I'll admit, I've, like, I'm not always consistent, but when I consistently do it it just helps me relax in the evening to know. Mm-hmm.

Everything's gonna be fine in the morning. Yeah. It's all taken care of. I can, I can act, I can genuinely get to bed, sleep sleeper faster. I can get to sleep faster and which then keeps me rested. Mm-hmm. Which then lets me wake up earlier, save time, and make the most outta my time.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker: And I find some people will do it at the end of their workday.

And you know, it's before they head home from their job, they'll spend that last 15 minutes. Like, okay, let me process all this stuff, make sure everything's in its place. I got a plan for tomorrow, and then I can shut down and then go home and be fully present. Mm-hmm. That's kinda the idea. I do mine at the end of the day, but

Speaker 3: that's what I do with work things.

Yeah. I don't, which is fine, necessarily have one for personal items like

Speaker: interwoven that. Right. It's, it's hard to, hard to undo 'em. Okay. Last thing that I do. Is that right? Yes. The last thing that I do that I think saves me a ton of time, I'm a checklist guy.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: I love checklists. Yeah. And anything that can be a checklist probably is a checklist.

All the business stuff, right? If we're moving in a new tenant, moving out of tenant, have a maintenance thing, I got checklist for all that, so I don't even have to think about it. We're just boom, boom, boom. We're rolling through it. For these podcasts, I got like, for all of it. I got a checklist.

Yeah. I mean, I am gonna have a checklist that says record discussion. But afterwards I will check off and and anytime someone's like, well, what do I do next? I'm like, go look at the checklist. That saves a ton of time. Mm-hmm. I even have stuff, so my morning and evening routines. Mm-hmm. Guess what?

Checklist. I have a checklist, you know, I know like, oh, I'm gonna open my iPad. And actually, so, okay. Bonus thing on an iPhone, you can set different focuses, foci. And so for mine, from five to seven is I have a screen where it's just the apps that I use for my morning routine. Really that's it, that's on the screen.

Nothing else shows up until seven o'clock. And so I know like, I'm gonna tap this app and then this app. Then this app and the fourth app is the one where I is the checklist where I go, yeah, cool. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Did a bunch of stuff. 'cause I want to like, you know, I get momentum going into it.

Mm-hmm. But yeah, I do checklist. That's, that is, that's a big deal. I use Clickup for a lot of the business stuff. And then you know, whatever other stuff. 'cause because you can create templates. Right? That, that was okay. Yeah. That's the thing that I wanted. Right. 'Cause I wanted to repeat every single day.

Yeah. You use

Speaker 3: the same checklist if it's. Same, it's just the same task in a different circumstance. Correct.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I think like Apple's reminders works pretty well 'cause you can have it repeat every single day. Mm-hmm. And you can kind of treat that as a, as a checklisty type of thing. Mm-hmm. So any,

Speaker 3: yeah, I have certain things.

Repeat that. I'm like, okay, did that, did that, did that,

Speaker: yeah. Yeah. You and I, we have our, our weekly meeting of life where we go over stuff and we go, you know, we've got our checklist. Here are the things. Yeah. You know, we don't. All, we, we don't necessarily do everything on the list. Mm-hmm. But we at least want that reminder of like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Let's look at this thing together. So yeah, do checklist. That saves me, takes a little work checklist, set it up. But once it's set up. Not only does it just like you can go fast 'cause you're going through it, but it just frees up your mind. Yeah. 'cause you're not trying to remember all the stuff.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker: And it's super helpful for training leader.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Which is

Speaker: what I'm experiencing now, which is awesome. Yep. So that's what I do. That's how I actually save time every single week. As a real estate investor or just as a human I suppose. Hopefully. Found some of those helpful? I don't know, to be honest.

Yeah. Well, and

Speaker 3: really it is like save time, but in brackets Prioritize time. Well,

Speaker: yeah. Or just use your time. Well yeah, use your time well. Yeah. Is probably. Which ultimately does save the time. Yes. But Sure. And hopefully that's more useful than just the, the classic, you know, do time blocking. Yeah.

And palmero technique or whatever they call it. Give lion sleep. Yeah. We all know these things. Some actual examples. Yeah. So that's how I do it. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up wherever and I'm happy to share more about how it is that I do it. If you're like, man, James has so much free time, no wonder he finds great deals.

I wanna know more about those great deals that he has. Yeah. You can check out our great deals. At furlo.com. Take all the time you want to check it out, so there you go again, hopefully that was helpful and have a great day.