Minimizing wasted time essential in mortgage industry

However, mortgage staff members have the same amount of time that is available to everyone else.

Effective time management decreases anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction, procrastination, guilt over tasks left undone and the feeling of working hard but getting nowhere. Employing sound time-management skills increases confidence, creativity, decisiveness, productivity, energy levels, the sense of achievement and peace of mind.

Three simple, easy-to-apply time-management techniques remain the most popular for team members in a mortgage institution.

1. Take care of yourself. If you are unable to work due to poor health, you will not have your job for long. Eat lunch. Maintain your nutritional health and fitness.

Take time for relaxation, recreation, family and friends. Live a balanced life physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually.

2. Prioritize using goal-setting techniques. Determine the mission and objectives of the mortgage company. Make sure that your job duties and goals are based upon the organization’s vision. Devise a detailed action plan for each objective, including a daily to-do list. Be sure to perform the most important and urgent tasks first, the important but not urgent next, and the unimportant but urgent last. Seriously consider eliminating all the tasks you perform that are not important or urgent.

3. Stop wasting time. This is perhaps most important of all. Create systems to avoid nonconformance. Study and streamline processes.

Complete and analyze time logs. Determine time wasters and time imbalances and compare them to your priorities. Remain open to shortcuts.

There are several issues to consider when cutting down wasted time:

• Unnecessary perfectionism is a time waster. For example, after finishing a report, do not make nit-picky modifications that do not affect or improve upon the content, message or outcome.

• Get organized. Arrange your workspace for minimal movements. Keep only what you need in sight and group the rest elsewhere. Establish and maintain a filing system. Strive to touch each piece of paper once. Plan your day first thing in the morning, but remain flexible to allow for the unexpected.

• Minimize interruptions. Some issues have little to no value. To ascertain the priority of interruptions from your perspective, analyze each in terms of the topic, the individual involved and the amount of your time consumed by the conversation.

• Don’t be a firefighter. Maintain a log and develop an action plan to resolve the root problems causing the fires.

• Don’t keep too much on your mind. Retain scratch paper everywhere, document ideas and tasks that must be completed, and transfer each to your official to-do list.

As you implement a time-management idea, monitor your progress in managing time. Decide what is working and what is not. Reward yourself for success and begin to better enjoy your job and your life.

Lynne Haggerman is president/owner of Haggerman & Associates, a firm specializing in management training, retained search, outplacement and human resource consulting. She can be reached at lynne@haggermanandassociates.com.