6 Ryan Serhant Time Management Tips Anyone Can Adopt to Be More Successful and Happy

Ryan Serhant is an actor turned real estate big shot, author, and reality TV star. Apart from starring in Bravo's Million Dollar Listing and Netflix's Owning Manhattan, he is also one of the world’s most successful and well-known real estate brokers, closing billions of dollars in sales over the course of his career.

His biggest wealth secrets include ruthless time management. Serhant is obsessive about squeezing every ounce of productivity out of his time, and it’s earned him millions.

Even if you’re not as extreme as Serhant, you can use his productivity hacks to get more out of your life every day.

Serhant started his acting career as many actors do: He moved to New York and took any small acting gig he could get.

Serhant starred in 19 episodes of “As The World Turns” and became a hand model. However, Serhant needed a day job to pay the bills while he broke into the acting world.

Wanting something that allowed him to work around auditions, he became a real estate agent.

Eventually, he built his own real estate team and auditioned for “Million Dollar Listing New York” in 2010. The synergy of his acting and real estate experience merged, and he has been a star ever since.

He now devotes time to speaking engagements and a cross-platform presence that teaches other entrepreneurs how to be successful.

Here are some of the tips Serhant suggests for those looking to lead a more successful and happy life.

This principle draws on the fact that all humans have 24 hours in a day — no more, no less. That’s 1,440 minutes to use as you wish. Once you subtract time for sleep and meals, you are left with around 1,000 minutes.

Serhant is hyper-focused on optimizing those 1,000 minutes, chopping them into manageable 15-minute chunks. He believes each of those segments should tie back to and further his meta-level goals.

This ensures he works toward his highest priorities and doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of everyday decisions.

Serhant realizes that it’s impossible to be 100% efficient with his time, and he doesn’t let a snag in his plan ruin his entire day.

Imagine those 1,000 minutes as dollars. You want to get the most productivity for your buck, but how many of us really know how we spend our time dollars?

Serhant kept a detailed, down-to-the-minute diary of everything he spent his time on during a week. He categorizes his expenditures as business, family, or personal (which includes activities such as eating or exercising).

This tool helps show you the holes in your day where precious time leaks out. Armed with that knowledge, you can plug the holes and align your time management with your greatest priorities.

We can’t manufacture more minutes in a day, but we can buy back our time by using conveniences or delegating low-level tasks.

For instance, Serhant hires a driver so he can take care of work calls and emails on his commute. He also has a dedicated assistant for helping with emails.

Like the emergency room, Serhant has a triage system for categorizing tasks based on their urgency.

Tasks that are urgent and top priority go into the first category, “Spend your minutes here now.” For Serhant, this might be returning a call to a VIP client.

Tasks where Serhant feels he offers no inherent value — such as bookkeeping or answering emails — are in the second category, “Spend zero minutes here.”

“Nice to do” tasks that can be completed when you have time are in the third category, “Spend your bonus minutes later.” These are essentially bonus minutes or “found” time periods, such as a meeting that ends early.

Mark Twain once advised that if you have to “eat two frogs,” you shouldn’t eat the smaller one first. Serhant agrees. His advice is to tackle the biggest frog — your hardest task — first thing in the morning.

By getting the worst part of your day out of the way, you free yourself up mentally and build momentum through the rest of the workday. 

Whether it’s Facebook or Candy Crush, we all have apps on our phones that cause us to waste time.

Serhant’s stance is that if those apps aren’t there to tempt you, you can use those precious minutes on your highest priorities rather than wasting time scrolling through cat videos.

Each of Serhant’s strategies follows a common theme: build wealth by maximizing the efficiency with which you use your time.

This will look different for an actor and real estate agent than it will for you, but the basic principles are the same.

For example, a time audit can help an accountant free up valuable time to follow up with clients, or a teacher to prep lessons in advance. Parents can buy back time with their children by occasionally outsourcing chores such as cooking or cleaning to others.

Whether you use your newfound minutes to make money or memories, being more efficient with your time can mean getting more out of life.