We all know that the five senses fo the human body are toucc, sight, hearing, taste and smell. But there is a sixth sense: sense of urgency. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how to harness this sixth sense to be better mobile home park buyers and operators.
Episode 326: Harnessing The Sixth Sense Transcript
Everyone knows the five basic senses. There's the sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but are you aware there's a sixth sense, which is just, or more important? This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about that sixth sense, and that is the sense of urgency, the sense of fight or flight that has made humans be able to march across the globe in times of famine, saved you from fights, saved you from all kinds of extinction, and still rest inside of all of us. It's a very, very powerful driving force. And that sense of urgency, expends just beyond basic fight or flight. As we get smarter, more civilized, we realize that there's many, many opportunities that we can miss just because of this concept of time. And even worse as we all have a biological clock and it's ticking, and so ultimately we'll be dead.
So our time is not endless. It's in fact finite. So it's very, very important that all of us understand and harnessed this sixth sense, this sense of urgency. So the bottom line is how do you basically maximize your time? Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to acknowledge that time is finite and how you approach it can either reduce or expand your opportunities. So we can't really deal with the problem. It's like an alcoholic who can't deal with alcoholism before they acknowledge that they've got the problem. You have to acknowledge that we all have finite time. No one has yet learned how to last forever. People have tried, I read an article recently by people who are spending giant amounts of money trying to stave off death until they reach maybe 100 or 120. But that's still extremely finite. That means that you still will not even live as long as the average tortoise, which lives often to 200 years, even koi fish live over 100 years.
And they do it with ease and without putting money into it. So the bottom line is based on actuarial tables, we all are going to last less than 100 years. And so every minute of all of that time, which is actually very small amount of time in a world perspective, we've got to use that intelligently. Also, we have to acknowledge that we are at the whim of the time that we live in. We can only work with the cards that we are dealt. If you wanted to be the early pioneer in development of Manhattan, New York, you would've had to live at the time of John Jacob Astor, way back in the early 1800s. That's when he bought up most of Manhattan and later started his development. You missed it. You can't do it today. It's not possible. That property is no longer available.
So you have to work with what comes your way. What is around in your moment in time right now. What do you have out there available as far as mobile home parks or single family homes to live in? Because that's all that you can work with. So if we all agree that we're kind of behind the eight ball when it comes to time, then we need to harness that time. We need to say, okay, I'm gonna draw a line in the sand. I'm gonna make the best use of my time today. So the first basic skill would be just time planning. So every day you need to lay out your time. So there's absolutely no waste. Now, what I like to do, and you don't have to do what I do, I'm a paper and pen person. I'm not like an internet modern person who likes using the computer and store things in the Cloud.
I just like things in pen and paper. So every day I take a sheet of paper and I write on the top tomorrow's date, and then I have two columns what I need to physically do and calls I need to make. So that's how I organize my day. And it's already pre-planned. I know precisely every call and meeting I have throughout the day and everything I have to achieve. So when that morning starts, when my time clock gets going, I am already boots on the ground getting the job done as best I can. And every night I then review what got done. I have a blue marker and I cross through everything successfully accomplished with the blue marker. And then look at the stuff that I didn't get the blue marker through and say, okay, well that tells me what I have to do tomorrow.
Now if you get all those things done as a super high priority, 'cause those are old business I didn't get to, and then I'm gonna start my new business for the next day and start making that list, and I know it sounds like a lot of work and boring making all those lists. I have those lists all the way back to the 1980s. So I have 40 years of lists like that, and I still look at them periodically. I even have lists of life goals. I look back through the list and say, okay, have I ticked that one off yet? Should I get the blue marker or not? But it helps me harness my time because I know precisely what I need to do. There's no wasted time. I don't think when the morning starts, okay, what am I doing today?
I don't start making that list when the morning starts because that's the time I need to be taking action. So just planning out your day will help you a lot. The next item is understanding just how much time you really have. Even though time is finite, we all typically live to your age of maybe 80, maybe longer if you're lucky, but we have so much time in between those things. If you read old books like I do on business, you'll frequently see in these books, it talks about what people do with their time and their time off, and they didn't have any real time off back in, let's say the 1920s, the average workday for most people was typically about 10 or 12 hours, and they were doing that every day of the week, except Sunday. They were working so many more hours than we do today that it's crazy.
They were easily putting in 60 hours or more a week. Whereas today, we think 40 hours is more appropriate. So if you look at how much time you have other than sleep, in a typical seven-day week, you have what, 56 hours of total sleep and then you take out 40 hours of work, but you've got a huge amount of recreational time and that doesn't even include your work time. So we all have more time than we care to accept. Why do people do that? Well, they end up expanding things into the time that doesn't really get you anywhere. Television's probably one of the worst inventions in American history because it entertains you. But as though your time is valueless, it's okay to watch television if you're in a doctor's office waiting for an appointment. It's okay to watch television if you're sitting in your seat on the Southwest Airlines plane.
But seeing that as a good use of your time is not good. If that is a sole focus, that needs to be more of a distraction on some other action than it needs to be what your goal was to begin with. So understand that you can't say to yourself, I don't have the time to do that. You definitely have the time to do that. Your ancestors, they may not have. Somebody who was working in a mine somewhere 12 hours a day, six days a week, okay? They probably didn't. When you tacked on the time required to go to sleep, to have the energy to do it the next day and perhaps take a shower, they didn't have time. You do have time. People in the modern world have enormous amounts of time, and that amount of time you're getting keeps expanding with technology.
If I wanna go out and look at a mobile home park, you know I can do that right now. I can go look at it on street view, or I could have someone go do an HD video of it. If I wanna go meet with a manager at a park to go through a home that's just been brought in to be rehabbed, I can go to FaceTime. Right there on my smartphone. I don't have to go out there. I can be transported like Star Trek to that property within five seconds. Just call up the the manager. Say, Hey, put me on FaceTime. Bam, I'm already there. Hey, let's walk down to unit number 14. Bam, we're at Unit 14. We go right in the door. So our ability to use our time has never been more effective than it is right now in all of world history.
We've never had more time, nor have we ever had the ability to do more with our time. So I would urge you, as we approach the new year to really ponder in 2024 more about time, what you're gonna do with your time. There are so many opportunities out there as long as you use your time appropriately. Also, don't forget that how you use your time will somewhat mold your destiny. People typically work towards getting what they want. I know it's an unpopular theory in today's world, but work typically yields results. Work yields rewards. The more type of work you do, the more time you spend and how smart you are about that use of time, the greater your odds of success in finding that mobile home park or turning that mobile home park around or even finding an old used home to fill a vacant lot. The bottom line to it is that everyone has the time to get what they want in life. I know we feel in America today, that's all we're a victim's world. Everyone's a victim. They were held back. No one is held back. Everyone has the time and the freedom to do whatever they want, but they've got to put in the time to get there. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoy this. Talk to you again soon.