Turn your smartphone into a productivity tool.

CRE Success Principle: Your phone can either be a time-saving asset or a time-wasting liability, depending on the standards you set and the limits you enforce.

In commercial real estate, time is one of your most valuable assets. And the smartphone is either helping us win back time or quietly taking it away.

I have become very conscious of this in my own routine, which is why I now track and limit my screen time. Because when you measure it, you realise just how much time can disappear into low-value activity.

Control The Distractions

One of the biggest productivity killers is notifications. Every alert pulls your attention away from meaningful work. By turning off most notifications, especially from social media, news sites and email, you immediately regain control of your focus.

Use Your Phone with Intent

Your phone can absolutely make you more productive, if you use it deliberately. Voice commands, efficiency tools, and apps that streamline repetitive tasks can save significant time throughout the day.

Equally important is setting limits on time-sucking apps. Creating friction, with something as simple as a lockout after a set period of time, can dramatically reduce mindless scrolling.

Create Space for Deep Work

When your phone is out of sight and on a focus setting, your ability to concentrate improves. That is when real progress happens. Pair this with structured deep work sessions, and it is proven that you will get more done in less time.

If your phone has become more of a distraction than a tool, it is time to reset how you use it.

Listen to episode 265 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership to learn all 10 strategies.

Episode transcript:

What's the biggest waste of time that exists in your life?

If you're anything like me or like most people in the world right now, it's probably the thing that I'm going to talk about today and help you find some more efficient ways to use it.

Hello, welcome to episode 265 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name is Darren Krakowiak.

This is a special series of episodes where we're talking about the topics of tools, productivity, and modern commercial real estate execution.

And today's episode is from way inside the vault, episode 89 was when this one was first released, but it's still relevant today talking about 10 ways that your phone can save you time in commercial real estate.

And actually, one thing, one standard that I've implemented since I recorded this episode is being very strict with my screen time.

So, I am only allowed to have an average of two hours of screen time, on average per day, every single week.

So, if I have a bad Wednesday and it goes for four or five hours, then I'm pretty… I'm actually… when I say obsessed, I'm very focused on making sure that I do not have more than an average of two hours of screen time per day.

So, if I have a blowout on one day, then I need to really cut back so the overall week's average is two hours.

What is the penalty if I don't meet that? Well, the way the standard works is, the following week I have to go under by the amount I went over.

And if I don't achieve that, then I need to go to grayscale for a couple of days on my phone, which basically makes your phone unbearable to look at and means that your screen time does definitely decline.

So, the reason why I'm ensuring that is because I think a lot of us probably are guilty of spending too much time on our phone. And I was.

When I had some bad results for my screen time, that is when I implemented that standard.

So, if that is something that you find is an issue for you, that your phone is more of a time suck than it is helping you with saving time, then I think today's episode as part of this special series is going to be the right one for you to be listening to.

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The question I want you to ask yourself is, how much time am I wasting on my smartphone?

Whether you like iPhone or Android, a lot of us spend too much time on our phones.

And I think we sometimes fool ourselves into believing that we are actually using our phones productively when actually we're taking ourselves away from more productive activities.

And if you've never done this before, it surprises me how many people haven't, but have a look in.

If you are an Apple user, you can go to screen time. I'm not sure what it's called in Android, but I'm guessing it's something similar. And you'll get the knack of what I'm talking about when I tell you how to do it on iPhone.

Go into screen time inside your settings and have a look at things like the total screen time that you spend every day or week just looking at your phone.

Have a look at how much time you're spending in each app. It will give you that information. It will also tell you the number of times that you pick up your phone every day.

And most people, when they look at that number, are a little bit shocked that they pick up their phone that many times, that they spend so much time on particular apps, or that they just spend that much time on their phone every single day.

So, I want to give you today 10 tips that will help you spend less time on your phone or will help you make the time that you are using your phone more efficient.

So, let's get right into the list.

Number one is to turn off most notifications.

Now, I would encourage you really to turn all of them off if you can. But if you can't turn all of them off, you want to still be able to get messages from your significant other, for example.

Or maybe you want to know whenever there's a charge going up on your credit card.

But definitely, you should be turning off social media notifications. You should be turning off notifications from news sites when they're trying to lure you into their clickbait. And definitely, you should be turning off the alerts for emails.

The number of people who have alerts coming in every time there's an email… I'm going to tell you a little secret: if it's that important, they'll call you.

And if your phone's buzzing at you 100 or more times a day, because most people receive at least a hundred emails a day, that kind of sounds a little bit stressful to me.

So number one is to turn off most, if not all, notifications.

Number two is to delete the apps that you don't need.

And I know my phone actually starts to delete them from the screen, or at least I've got to push a button to download them again if I haven't used them for a certain time. I think that's because I've got so little space left on my phone.

But if you notice that you're not using an app very often, then it's just taking up valuable real estate on your phone. So, you don't need it there.

So why not delete the apps that you don't use? Because if they're not being used, they're not useful, and that means that they don't need to be there and they have no opportunity to lure you back in the future.

Number three is the reverse of this, which is to download the apps that you do need to use a lot of.

So, if you find yourself logging into certain platforms, using certain websites—for example, if there's a coffee shop that you go to every day and they can process your order through an app rather than through Safari or through your browser—you can use the app, and that's going to be much faster than typing in your credit card details every day.

So, to save you time logging in through the browser every single day, find if there's an app that can make that faster.

So yes, use your phone apps when it's faster to do something, because your phone can help you be more productive.

Alright, let's move on to number four. It is to set limits for those time-suck apps.

So, on my phone, every single day, if I've spent more than 30 minutes in combined time on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, it will then lock me out of those apps, and then I'll need to ask permission from the phone gods to give me another five… I think it's 15 minutes more, and then you can unlock it for the whole day if you need to.

But that creates some friction in the process, which means that I'm more inclined to not spend more time than I already have spent wasting time scrolling through social media apps.

So, whatever the time suck is for you, when you go back and you realize, “Hey, I spent a lot of time on this app,” you can then set some sort of warning or lockout setting in your phone so you are not spending so much time in there. So set time limits for apps that you're spending a lot of time on.

Number five is to keep your phone out of sight in meetings.

Now, this is not so much about wasting time on your phone, but it's going to help you save time and be more efficient and effective because when your phone is out of sight, it is out of mind.

And you are less likely to be thinking about notifications, emails, or things that are going on in your phone when you can't see it.

You'll be more focused on the person who you are speaking to. You'll be more present in that moment.

It's also polite to just put your phone out of sight when you're in a meeting, so put it out of sight and actually turn off the notifications or put it on a profile that you can't then be distracted with.

Have you ever been in a meeting and your phone's going off in your pocket, vibrating at you? It's pretty distracting, right?

So, if you put it out of sight and also turn it on a setting where it can't notify you of anything, it won't cause you to be distracted or lose focus from what you are doing.

Number six is to use the Focus profile at certain times of the day or while you want to do deep work.

So, what is deep work? That is the work that you are doing, uninterrupted, so you can maintain your focus.

If you go back to season two, episode three or four with Steve Glaveski, we talk a lot about these efficiency tips.

When you're doing deep work, when you're in the zone, you are getting more work done within a period of time than it would usually take if you were interrupted.

A great way to help you do this is, one, put your phone on a certain profile setting where it cannot interrupt you, but also you can set an alarm on your phone so that after you've done your one-hour sprint of deep work, you'll then know that it's time to come out of that and move on to the next thing.

Number seven, and someone taught me this recently, is to ask Siri questions that it is quicker for Siri to answer than you could figure out for yourself.

A great example I got was: ask Siri or Alexa, or whatever your phone has, “What is the date 90 days from now?”

For example, if you're in a meeting and we're doing a 90-day closing, or we've got a 90-day agreement or contract, what is the effective date that this agreement closes?

Well, it's 90 days from now. Which month has 31 days? 30? Brain damage, right? Just ask your phone. Can you give me the date 90 days from now? And it will give it to you. That's faster than trying to figure it out yourself.

Figure out some voice commands that actually help you save time. Voice commands are great.

And that brings me to number eight, which is to use dictation to draft emails or to send texts on the go.

I was in a cab in Brisbane recently on the way to the airport from the hotel, and the cab driver received a text message.

He turned around and said, “Do you mind if I use my voice command to answer this message?” And I said, “Be my guest.” And he did.

It was a job from somebody who was a regular customer, and he was commanding Siri to receive, read the text message to him, and then send the message back.

That allowed him to safely respond to his potential customer while he was still driving. So dictation for emails or text messages is all possible. I think voice really is the way of the future, and that's going to help you be more efficient and also safer using your phone while you are driving.

Number nine is to listen to podcasts and educational material like CRE Success: The podcast.

But also audiobooks—things that help you learn and grow. I remember Brian Tracy, who I've talked about a couple of times on the podcast, who was really the first personal and professional development mentor that I had from afar in my life.

One of the things he used to talk about was the use of, and this is back in the day when you could only get CDs, but getting audiobooks on CD or tapes—turning your car into a mobile university was (I think the term he used is a university on wheels) be productive at all times.

So, when you are on the go, you can still be learning by listening to content, which helps you grow.

Number ten is something not to do—don't check your phone first thing in the morning.

Don't let somebody else determine where your mind and focus goes in the morning.

I do some of my best thinking in the shower, and it's about things that are important to me because I haven't yet checked my phone.

I've finally trained myself not to check my phone first thing in the morning because there are only other people's priorities in there, as I said.

So don't check your phone first thing in the morning. Use it as an alarm if you want. Turn the alarm off and then don't look at it.

Wait some time. Let your brain go to where it wants to go, and that will help you get more of the things that are important done. It will help you think about what's important today, prioritize, and so forth.

I hope that you will implement some of the ideas that we've got about saving time with your smartphone from today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.