Work Smarter not Harder
You’ve probably heard of the saying work smarter not harder, and while I know that hard work most definitely pays off, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve before putting all your energy and time into the process- you’ll just burn out. There are methods and strategies to ensure that you’re working smarter. The common thread with this is to use your planning, strategising, and thinking skills to ensure that your time is used wisely and managed to effectively achieve your goals more efficiently, minimizing any extra steps that you might’ve taken and not needed to.
Where are you running to?
I see it all the time where people seem to be running fast, but they don’t know where to, if you don’t know your outcome, how can you know your inputs and where to put your time and energy into? Another way of looking at it is- if you don’t know what you want to achieve, how do you know what you need to do day-to-day to get there? If you’ve been reflecting over the past year or few and not seen as much improvement or achievements as you’d have liked to, maybe it’s time to reconsider your approach to setting and achieving your goals.
Set SMART property goals
Something that I like to use that might help you with this- is the acronym of setting SMART goals:
S – Specific goals
M – Measurable goals
A – Achievable goals
R – Relevant goals
T – Time to achieve your goals
Your goals need to be specific so that you can focus your effort and energy on achieving them, to help with this, consider: What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you want to achieve this? Who is involved in making it happen? Where is the goal? Which resources will you need to have and use?
For example, a specific goal might be ‘I’m just starting as a UK property investor, my goal is to use my self-sourced industry knowledge and financial savings to buy 3 investment properties of my own to start building my property portfolio to then go on expanding it in the future.’
Measurable goals allow you to track your progress and make sure that you’re constantly edging closer to where you want to be at the end. Assessing your progress also keeps you motivated and keeps you focused.