Even in the digital age, there is immense value in tangible reminders
Welcome to The Thing: a new, recurring feature that we invite you all to take part in. Each edition of The Thing will examine one adjustment made by U.S. mortgage professionals during their careers that instantly made work more efficient, more profitable or simply more enjoyable; one of those changes that made you think, “Man, why didn’t someone tell me about this years ago?”
This is an opportunity for the mortgage community to share strategies and tactics that make everyone’s lives easier, including your clients’. We encourage all mortgage pros – servicers, managers, originators, execs – who want to take part in what is a very painless (and absolutely free) process to message our senior writer, Clay Jarvis, directly at [email protected].
The mortgage world is filled with type-A personalities – ambitious and competitive go-getters known for being organized and acutely, sometimes painfully, aware of time constraints. One of those people is Barrett Financial Group’s Jeremy Boillot.
Boillot is the kind of originator who can’t rest, quite literally, if there’s a task left undone. With the million things he gets thrown at him during the day, Boillot found that while he was still keeping on top of his duties, his anxiety levels at the end of the day would still be high because he wasn’t keeping the kind of tangible record of everything he had accomplished.
His solution was as impactful as it was simple.
“It’s going to sound ridiculous,” he says, “but write things down.”
Boillot is not referring to tapping duties into a phone’s calendar, a process that can often result in losing valuable minutes to the day’s incessant online noise. Instead, he turns to his trusty notebook. Every Sunday, Boillot physically writes out what needs to be accomplished for the week. Each morning, he adds the tasks, both personal and professional, that need to be sorted before day’s end.
“They are literally non-negotiables,” he says.
All that scribbling can make for an unintelligible mess by the end of the week – “If somebody were to look at my piece of paper, they’d be like, ‘What the heck is this?’ Boillot says – but there is a payoff for the extra effort.
“It sounds extremely minute, but it’s literally changed my life, professionally and personally,” he says. “I feel like I sleep better. I feel like I get more accomplished. I feel much better about my business process.”
Part of the reason Boillot has had such success with writing things down is that he’s not only making a to-do list; he’s setting his goals for the week, so every item checked off the list represents another win. That daily sense of accomplishment is highly motivating, and physically crossing out an item on the list means there’s one less thing for Boillot to worry about.
“I never have to think before going to bed, ‘Did I do this? Did I do this?’” he says.
Boillot first got serious about keeping a physical record of goals and accomplishments about five years ago. His rise to being one of Arizona’s top originators soon followed.
“Once you’re in the routine, it becomes second nature. For me, I don’t even think about it,” he says. “If I write it down and I know it’s a goal that needs to get done, I’m going to do it.”
