The Michael Masterson Journal

Issue No. 19 - $1.91	Saturday, December 5, 2009
"I don't need another time-management system. I need more time!" I understood how he felt. For more than 20 years, I had the same feeling. There was so much I wanted to do, and never enough time to do it. I'd get to work early in the morning, motivated to have a super-productive day. But then, the moment I sat down, the phone would start ringing and my e-mail inbox would be blinking at me. And then a torrent of urgencies would bury me for the rest of the day. Does that happen to you? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by urgent tasks that you can't accomplish on time? Do you find yourself working longer than you'd like? Are you constantly under stress? Does it seem like the workload never gets any lighter? "You don't need more hours," I told him. "If you had more, you'd be just as busy and stressed as you are now. And you would still be behind the curve." That shut him up. He and I both knew he was the least productive member of his team. That's why I was teaching him how to organize his time. Not to give him yet another task to complete. I was trying to save his job. With real unemployment around 16 percent today, you don't want to have the reputation of being unproductive. To be safe, you should make sure your boss views you as one of the most productive people in the company. Coming in early and working late makes a good initial impression. But over the long run, what matters to your boss is how much useful work you get done. And there is no question in my mind: The amount of useful work you do is directly related to how organized you are. In the old days, I would slip into a mental fog every time the words organization or management were uttered. But that changed when I started writing ETR. I began to practice the techniques I was writing about. And, lo and behold, they worked! The time-management techniques I use now are responsible for at least a million dollars of extra income, 25 pounds of lost weight, six bestselling books, the production of four low-budget films, and a collection of short stories and more than 500 poems. I'm a convert. And I want to make a convert out of you, too. So here's my iron-clad guarantee: If you implement at least two of the three techniques described below and don't get wealthier, healthier, and happier in 30 days, I'll shine your shoes. I mean it. Here are my three most important time-management techniques: 1. Set yearly and monthly goals, weekly objectives, and daily tasks. First you set your yearly goals. Your break those down into monthly goals. Then you break your monthly goals into weekly objectives. And you break those objectives into daily tasks. A good system for coming up with a daily task list was developed in the 1980s by David Allen. He says you ask yourself four questions about each of your weekly objectives: What do I need to do to take the next step? Do I need to gather more information? Do I need to take or delegate some specific action? Or do I need to do nothing for a certain period of time? 2. Prioritize your task list. The best method for prioritizing was developed by the Franklin Covey organization. The idea is to put each task on your list into one of four categories: important and urgent important but not urgent not important but urgent not important and not urgent You should give top priority to the important-but-not-urgent tasks. Why? Because those are usually the ones that will help you accomplish your long-term goals -- the goals that will have the greatest impact on your life. And if you don't give them priority, they will never get done. 3. Get up an hour earlier every day. That extra hour is yours. It is sacred. Use it to work on a task related to your most important long-term goal. Do not do anything else during that hour. Do NOT open your e-mail. Do NOT read the newspaper. Do NOT look at your inbox. Just sit down and start working on that life-changing goal. There lots of other ways to make your time serve you better. (One is to clump together all similar activities -- such as phone calls or e-mails -- on your schedule.) But the above three are the ones that have had the greatest effect on my personal productivity. Number One Son called from L.A. to ask my advice. He said he was thinking of investing in rental real estate. He had put aside some money and had identified some duplexes and quadruplexes that are selling "pretty cheap," and wondered if I thought they made economic sense. "I could give you some complicated math to do," I told him, "but it would be simpler if you just follow my rule of thumb." "What's that?" "I won't pay more than eight times gross rent." He was quiet for a moment. I could almost hear his mental calculator reviewing the properties he was looking at. "Eight times rent?" he asked, skeptically. "Yes, eight times rent." "So, let me get this straight," he said. "I pay $3,000 a month to rent the house I live in. (It is a cute, two-bedroom, two-bath ranch in a reasonably nice neighborhood in Hollywood Hills.) Are you saying I shouldn't pay more than $240,000 for this?" "Not if you want to use it as a rental property." "But it's worth $900,000!" he exclaimed. "Maybe to its owner. But only a fool would pay that much for it as an investment." I went on to explain that I am getting eight-to-one yields on houses all over South Florida. If I pay cash, I'm generally making about 6 percent on my money, net-net (300 percent better than the best long-term CD) and not counting appreciation. If I finance the deal at 80 percent, I can still get some monthly cash out of the deal and leverage my investment by buying several more similar properties. "That's what you should do," I told my son. I am buying real estate again, but I'm not buying real estate stocks. That's because there is still, as I've said, plenty of bad news waiting to come out of the real estate market. Single family homes –-- especially entry-level homes -- are an exception. The inventory of new single-family homes has fallen to its lowest level since 1982, according to The Wall Street Journal. But commercial real estate, some apartment complexes, and most condominiums are still in for a lot more deflation. Consider these facts: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have taken in more than $100 billion from the government. Yet they still own more than $40 billion worth of overpriced apartment buildings. And the loans on those properties account for half the delinquencies the institutions are dealing with. In the third quarter, almost 11 percent of all housing units (14.2 million) were unoccupied year round. And the homeowner vacancy rate, measuring the percentage of owned units, either empty or for sale, was 2.6 percent. That's an all-time high. Rental vacancies were up to 11 percent during the same period. That is almost double what they were just a year ago. Those are my reasons for being scared of real estate stocks generally. But IDE's Steve McDonald recently made an argument for buying REITs (real estate investment trusts), apartment REITs in particular, that's pretty clever. It's not a fundamental play, he told me, but one based on his expectation that the government isn't going to let Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae go belly up. Here's what Steve had to say: "The fundamental are there, but there is a much bigger reason why this section of the market will survive and in fact do very well, vote buying. "FNMA and Freddie Mac financed 80% of the affordable housing loans during the peak of the real estate market. The federal government cannot allow FNMA or Freddie Mac to default on loans that house so many low and middle income families, but more importantly, voters. It will never happen. "The fallout to the Democrats would be catastrophic. Add to the fact that some of the key people are already in trouble in congressional races and we have an almost iron clad guarantee that nothing will happen to these properties." To get more of Steve's take on this issue, go here. Don Hauptman, veteran copywriter, author, language expert, and featured columnist in Early to Rise, just clued me in to a re-re-release of what many movie critics consider to be a classic.It's We the Living, the film version of Ayn Rand's first book. We the Living is primarily a love story, set in the aftermath of the communist revolution in Russia. The protagonists struggle against an oppressive regime in a heroic effort to achieve their goals. It wasn't a Hollywood production. (In fact, the filmmakers didn't even have the rights to the book or permission from Rand.) It was made in fascist Italy during World War II, and was banned by Mussolini soon after its release. Its anti-totalitarian themes evidently hit a little too close to home. Fast-forward to 1988. The film was rediscovered, restored, and re-released in art houses worldwide to critical acclaim. That's where Don comes in. A self-described lifelong admirer of Rand, he saw a rough cut of the film, invested in it, and worked to spread the word about it. He's stayed in the loop all these years. And now, We the Living is back as a two-disc special edition DVD. You get the movie, Italian with English subtitles, plus several special features, including a making-of documentary. You can order it through Amazon here. Rand's name has been popping up everywhere lately, in part because of the economic crisis. She was an enthusiastic defender of capitalism and free markets. And many successful entrepreneurs cite her novels and ideas as a major influence. Even if you're not a Rand fan, you can enjoy this great piece of cinema history... or pass it on to a friend or family member during this holiday season. If you are falling asleep around 2:00 p.m. each day, you are not alone. Many, if not most, workers go through a period of post-lunch listlessness. When that happens, don't try to push yourself to keep working. You'll be wasting your time. It's better to perk yourself up by taking a short nap (if that works for you) or going outside and doing some exercise. Here are five things I do to avoid the afternoon blahs and keep my energy high all day: 1. Sometimes I skip lunch -- or at least skip the carbohydrates. I find that if I eat an eggs-only breakfast, I can go without lunch or make do with a can of sardines at my desk. 2. If I go out for lunch, I keep it light -- both in terms of total calories and carbohydrates. Usually, that means a mixed salad with a little chicken. 3. I like some caffeine around noon. A glass of iced tea or a shot of espresso does nicely. 4. Exercise helps. I do a half-hour of vigorous weightlifting or sprinting just before or after lunch. 5. If all else fails, I take a nap. I think of it as a little siesta. Ten or 15 minutes is enough to wake me up and get me going again. A touching note from a longtime reader and attendee of our recent Info-Marketing Bootcamp... "Hi Michael, "It was a pleasure meeting you at the ETR Bootcamp. Your essay today hit a chord with me. My wife of 54 years died a year and a half ago. In the past month, the spouses of three of my friends died. Since I live in an adult community, death is no stranger here. "After the death of my wife, I did a lot of introspection. I am thankful for the 54 years I had with her. I am thankful for all the friends I have who gave me support after my loss. I am thankful for my two wonderful children who continually support me. Prior to my wife's death, I didn't think much of what to be thankful for. "As for the denial of death, one cannot deny that it will eventually come. Until it does, we should make the best of the years we have left. I'm 77 now, and I am looking to live to 120. One of the reasons I went to Bootcamp was to be able to afford to live that long. "Thank you for giving me something else to think about." Hirsh Marantz [Ed. Note: Michael Masterson welcomes your questions and comments. Send him a message at AskMichael@ETRFeedback.com.]
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