The Ultimate 3-Step System for Managing Renovations

TLDR

Managing renovations without a system wrecks your personal life. A simple three step approach, capture, process, review, lets you run multiple projects and shut your brain off at the end of the day. It is software agnostic.

Table of Contents

• Why Your Brain Is Not the System
• Step 1: Capture Everything
• Step 2: Process Into Folders
• Project Folders, Vendor Folders, Self Folders
• The Snooze System That Changed My Life
• Step 3: Review Daily, Weekly, Monthly
• Advanced Tips: Time Blocking and Checklists
• FAQ
• Related

Why Your Brain Is Not the System

Managing renovation projects for real estate investments wrecks your personal life. It is a total bandwidth thief and without the right systems you have no ability to scale past one or two stress inducing projects. Even those projects steal the clarity for you to enjoy your life beyond flipping houses.

You know that feeling. Stuff in your head. Forgetting something. Itch in the back of your head. I had that for a decade flipping houses until I ran into Getting Things Done by David Allen. It is a personal productivity system, and I have adapted it to project management for flip and rental rehabs.

Before I get started, I can already hear some of you thinking you do not want to learn a new software. This system is totally software agnostic. It works for any software you use. You do not have to buy anything. I am going to prove it to you using an old school filing cabinet.

Step 1: Capture Everything

The first thing you have to do is capture all the stuff in your head.

What is stuff? Anything that comes up in a project.

There is all kinds of crap that comes up every day. You need a way to capture it.

The whole game is to offload stuff out of your head into a system you trust.

Capture with a physical inbox tray and paper. Or use software. Here are the ones I have used.

I have tried everything under the sun, even the ones where you pay big money for a system that is already built. It is not about the software. It is about the underlying system.

Step 2: Process Into Folders

Now that you have everything in your inbox, what do you do with it? Three main sections of folders.

Projects. 123 Main Street. 456 Broad Street. One folder per active project.

Vendors. Contractors, lenders, real estate agents. People you deal with regularly.

Self or crew. If you DIY or manage a labor crew, you treat yourself as a vendor for the work you do on site.

Inside project folders there are a few consistent subfolders.

Project Folders, Vendor Folders, Self Folders

Vendor folders are where you track ongoing conversations with contractors, lenders, and agents. Keep folders for the ones you deal with regularly. An “others” folder for the people you talk to once in a blue moon.

Inside each vendor folder, three subfolders.

Agenda. Things you need to bring up next time you talk to them. Jeff wants more money for 456 Broad. That goes in Jeff’s agenda.

Pending. Work they are doing that is in progress. You wait on them. You check in weekly.

Done. Completed items you might reference later.

Self or crew is the same structure if you are the one doing the work. You are almost two different people. You are the investor managing the project, and you are the self or crew leader doing the labor. Treat yourself like a vendor in the self folder.

The Snooze System That Changed My Life

Some tasks you can do right now. Some you need to hand to a vendor. Some you need to put on the calendar. And some you need to defer. That is the snooze.

Set up folders 1 through 31 for every day of the month. And folders for every month of the year, January through December.

Real example. The budget for electrical at 123 Main Street needs to increase by 10,000 because of an ordinance violation fine. I do not want to deal with it right now. I set a paper note in folder 21. When the 21st rolls around, the snooze folder surfaces it. I handle it.

Could snooze all the way to March if the project timeline allows it.

Calendars are sacred. Only put things on the calendar that are actually locked in on a specific time and date. “Maybe I might get to it on Thursday” does not go on the calendar. That goes in the snooze or the to do list. I have heard calendars called the hardscape of your life. Everything else works around it. Only the hardscape goes on it.

Pro Tip

When a contractor promises you a timeline, put a snooze on the day after they promised. If the work is not done, surface the agenda item and have the ultimatum conversation. The snooze keeps you from forgetting, and it keeps you from calling them too early and being the squeaky wheel.

Step 3: Review Daily, Weekly, Monthly

The system only works if you review it.

Daily. Process your inbox and file things where they go. Process communications: email, phone, text, Slack, whatever. Review the calendar for the day. Review the snooze folder for the day.

Weekly. Review all pending items across vendor folders. Things should not be exceedingly beyond timelines. Review project notes. Review financials. Review the job boards.

Monthly. Deep clean. Keep the system lean so the things in it are usable for you. If stuff piles up and gets stale, you stop trusting the system. Review the upcoming calendar. Review next month’s snooze. Iterate the process based on what you have learned.

Key Concept

Review is the whole game. A captured task is useless if you never look at it. The discipline that makes this system work is the review cadence, not the folder structure.

Advanced Tips: Time Blocking and Checklists

Once you have the base running, layer these on top.

Time block for vendors. The contractors I deal with most often get a weekly time block. Every Monday I remind myself to talk to Fred. I look through his agenda, his pending items. Once a week I time block the “others” folder to make sure I am not missing anything with less frequent contacts.

Checklists. The common processes you do over and over need to live as checklists. Every time you buy a property you secure it, put on lockboxes, do X, Y, Z. Every time you sell you do the same moves. Build the playbook. When the play comes up, pull the checklist, generate the tasks, file them accordingly.

Expand. Not the business. The system. So you can rest easy at the end of the day. Or so you can scale to 100 flips a year if that is what you want.

Here is the quote that hit me: the man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble. Figure out your principles. For me it is family first. I want this system so I can shut it down at the end of the day. But maybe for you the principle is growth. That is fine too.

A buddy of mine once said that being physically present is not the same as being mentally present. That is when I realized that even though I had become extremely productive, I was not necessarily focused on the things that really matter.

The point of the system is not more work. The point is to shut it off cleanly.

FAQ

Does this work if I am a one person business with only one project?

Yes. Especially then. When you have one project, you think you can track it in your head. You cannot. You still forget the gutter quote, the permit deadline, the ordinance fine, the lender draw. A simple system with a single project folder, a vendor folder, and a snooze is enough to offload all of it.

What software do you use personally?

Todoist is my primary to do app. Apple Calendar for the hardscape. Files and folders for project docs. The software matters less than having a structure you actually use. Pick the thing you will open every day.

How long does it take to set this up?

A couple hours for the initial structure. Then it compounds. The longer you run the system, the less time it takes to process an inbox item because the folders are clear. The first week feels clunky. By week three it feels automatic.

What if I get behind on processing for a week or two?

Block two hours and do a bulk process session. Do not let it get further behind. The system only works if the inbox is close to empty at the end of each processing session. An inbox with 200 items is a system you no longer trust.

Is this going to help me scale or just stay sane?

Both. I scaled to 100 flips a year at one point using a system like this. And I have also used it to shut down at 6:30 every night when the kids are up. Whichever direction you want to run it, the foundation is the same.