Time Management

177 Pages·2003·2.395 MB·English

by  Marc Mancini

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Time
Management
Marc Mancini
McGraw-Hill
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DOI: 10.1036/0071425578
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Contents
Preface vii
1. Taming Time 1
Knowing Your Time Management Style 4
How You Relate to Time 8
Your Environment 9
Where Do the Hours Go? 11
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 1 12
2. A Few Myths About Managing Your Time 14
Myth 1: Time Management Is Just Another Label
for Obsessive Behavior 14
Myth 2: Time Management Extinguishes
Spontaneity and Joy 19
Myth 3: Maybe I Can Organize Myself,
but My Company Can Never Organize Itself 21
Myth 4: One Style Fits All 24
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 2 27
3. Lining Up Your Ducks: Prioritize! 29
The ABC System 30
The Index Card/Post-it® System 34
The Inventory System 35
The Payoff System 35
The Pareto Principle 39
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 3 41
4. Procrastination: The Thief of Time 42
What’s Behind Procrastination? 43
Why Do You Procrastinate? 45
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iv Contents
What Are You Procrastinating About? 46
The Eight Factors 46
Conclusion 54
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 4 55
5. Rocks, Blocks, Goals, and Clusters 56
Establishing Goals 57
Leave Me Alone! 60
Doing Nothing 62
Clustering 62
Discovering Patterns 64
What’s Your Clock? 65
A Few Hints 67
Conclusion 68
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 5 68
6. How to Delegate Effectively 69
To Whom Can You Delegate? 69
What Can You Delegate? 73
Why Is It Hard to Delegate? 73
The Key Steps of Delegation 74
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 6 80
7. Learning to Say No 81
What to Say No to 83
How to Say No 84
Dealing with Meetings and Committees 85
If You’re Not the Chairperson 89
Conclusion 90
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 7 91
8. The Art of Anticipating 93
How Well Do You Anticipate? 94
The Parking Meter Syndrome 95
The False Deadline Strategy 97
The Pack-Rat Approach 98
Gobbledygook 98
The Wallenda Effect 101
Bell’s Blessing (or Curse) 103
The Ultimate Setbacks 108
Conclusion 112
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 8 112
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Contents v
9. Plugging Time Leaks 113
Time Leak #1: Socializing 116
Time Leak #2: Misplacing Things 120
Time Leak #3: Forgetting Things 123
Time Leak #4: Commuting and Air Travel 124
Time Leak #5: Reading Time 127
Time Leak #6: Long-Winded People 128
Conclusion 130
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 9 131
10. Power Tools for Time Management 132
Five Essential Questions 133
The Basic Hardware 140
Soft Tools 150
The Ultimate Tool: Your Environment 153
Conclusion 156
Manager’s Checklist for Chapter 10 157
Index 158
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Preface
In the 1950s, as home and work chores became increasingly
mechanized and as the electronics revolution hinted at an
even more startling efficiency to come, futurists made a bold
prediction: by the year 2000, the average person would work
only 20 or 30 hours a week. There would be so much leisure
time that most of us wouldn’t know what to do with it.
We now know that these ’50s oracles were wrong—very
wrong. Electronics and automation have sped up life so greatly
that, to keep up with the swift flood of tasks and info-bits, most
of us work more than 40 hours, not fewer, and have seen our
leisure time shrink away. The computer chip didn’t free us. It
forced us to produce at its speed.
So, we’re on a responsibility overload. Faxes, Federal
Express, and e-mail demand instant action. Computers and
laser printers pour out 50 personalized letters in minutes—
something that once took a secretary all day to do. Conse-
quently, our mailboxes and in-bins overflow with all sorts of
materials that clamor for our attention.
All this communication and the ease of travel mean that the
network of people you deal with has grown exponentially.
Indeed, you meet more people in one year than your grandpar-
ents did in a lifetime. No wonder so many of us have trouble
remembering names.
To make matters worse, you may have turned to a book on
time management for help before, one that argued (as most do)
that you must erect great, logic-based ramparts to hold off the
disorganized barbarians or super-efficient competitors out there.
The author may have suggested that within those barriers you
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viii Preface
can reside in a cool, patterned, and neat little environment,
practicing the one true religion of time management.
If only it were so easy or true. But you know better.
More often, you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, defeated. You
probably even feel guilty taking the time to read one more book
on time management—this one. But there is hope. That’s what
this book is all about.
The Right Way and the Wrong Way—Maybe
Tiffany loves computers. She took to them like a duck to water.
So when she needs to shuffle among five documents, she finds
that the easiest, most effective way to do so is to open five win-
dows on her computer and click among them, going from one
document to another, then back again. She can edit them, copy
and paste sections from one to another, or combine them into a
single document, all with the simple click of a mouse.
Jim, on the other hand, is a pen-and-paper kind of guy. He
prefers to lay out hardcopies of the five documents on a work-
table and label sections of the various documents for change.
He makes notes and additions and repaginates by hand.
Sometimes, he even cuts and pastes them with tape into a new
sequence. Finally, he types his final draft—or, if he has the luxu-
ry, he sends it out to be retyped or edited by someone who real-
ly gets computer formatting.
Neither way is necessarily the “right” or “wrong” approach
to accomplish the task. Tiffany and Jim have each developed a
way of working that accomplishes what they need to do with the
least possible stress, in a manner that makes them feel confi-
dent and in control.
A good case could be made that using a computerized sys-
tem is inherently more time saving than a manual approach.
But if we require Jim to do his editing on the computer, we may,
at the same time, force him into thinking more about the way
the computer works than about the job. While Tiffany’s instinc-
tive and immediate grasp of the intricacies of word processing
enables her to do the job most efficiently, Jim’s lack of empathy
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Preface ix
with the way computer programs operate makes software an
“efficiency enemy” for him. Instead of struggling to work out
how to format a table, he finds it easier and more satisfying to
sketch the table by hand and leave the details of formatting to
later—or to someone better equipped for that job.
Of course, we might suggest to Jim that he take classes on
the use of the computer. In today’s work environment, there’s
almost no way to be efficient without computer skills. But, by
nature, Jim may never become a “natural” like Tiffany. He
should certainly try to sharpen his computer skills, but he may
never be completely comfortable with them.
And Jim’s major talent perhaps lies in a different area. He’s
most useful to his company not as a word processor but as a
business development manager. While he shuffles among those
five documents, the company really wants him focusing on their
content—not on cutting and pasting electronically while retain-
ing the correct format from one document to another.
It’s important to remember, then, while reading Time
Management, that not every single suggestion, strategy, or tech-
nique will work for you. There will be moments of insight when
you think, “Yes! Why didn’t I think of that?” There will be other
moments, however, when you conclude, “I couldn’t possibly do
that! In fact, I hate doing that!”
Be reassured. We are individuals. We learn differently, we
work differently, and we succeed using different combinations of
methods. Rarely is there a “right” or “wrong” way to organize
one’s life. Results are what matter.
There are, however, many ways to improve upon the sys-
tems you already have in place or to consider entirely fresh
ones that can make our life—and your job—easier, more pro-
ductive, and more stress-free. This book, we hope, will provide
some useful suggestions to accomplish that. It’s up to you to
select which strategies are best suited to your particular style of
working and which, when incorporated into your routines, will
make you more confident in your ability to get the job done—on
time, accurately, and with the fewest possible hassles.