Sometimes we're so busy that we can't see that we're working harder, not smarter. The problem is that being busy can often get in the way of achieving our goals.

I remember when I purchased my first apartment building I was spending an inordinate amount of time managing my property manager. I was spending hours PER WEEK dealing with tenant issues, going to court, trying to get final numbers to complete that months' P&L report, and trying to understand why a unit wasn't filled yet.

After a while it dawned on me that I was so busy I wasn't able to focus on growing the business, which was to raise more money and do more deals.

For some of my students, their full-time job gets in the way. They tell me they want to get started with apartment building investing so that they can achieve financial freedom in 5 years but then they don't invest the time to actually do anything about it because they're too busy working a 10-hour per day job.

Occasionally we have to evaluate our situation and the direction we're traveling in and ask ourselves, “am I headed in the direction I want to?”. The challenge is that we can only ask that kind of question if we slow down occasionally. And we can only do something about the ANSWER to that question if we aren't too busy.

Being too busy prevents us from reflecting and changing our life.

Here are the 3 steps to make sure you're not too busy to succeed:

Read the complete article on the Bigger Pockets.