When I wrote the book, I assumed a few things about you, dear reader:
✓ You want to use your time better. You expect to gain more time with your loved ones, you want to ramp up your success at work, or you’re looking for a little of both.
✓ You know that effective time management isn’t a one‐stop fix; it’s a comprehensive effort that requires looking at all time‐draining culprits. You’re willing to invest the effort needed to develop your time‐management skills (or create them if they don’t currently exist!).
✓ You’re willing to be patient with yourself throughout the difficult process of self‐betterment, knowing that in the end, all your efforts will pay off.
There is much more information available from your author, and from the Dummies brand, for your learning pleasure. Check out these resources to learn more about the art of successful time management:
Find the Dummies Cheat Sheet for this book at
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/successfultimemanagement. The cheat sheet gives you a quick reference to help you manage your time and stay on track.
Extra online content can be found at
http://www.dummies.com/extras/successfultimemanagement. Here, you can find short articles on ways to trim down wasted time. From how to plan a trip to getting your yard work done, you’ll find these articles helpful.
In this book, I use the classic For Dummies fashion: You have easy access to the precise information you need when you need it. You can start at Page 1 and read through, or you can hop around, targeting the areas you need the most help with first. Keep this book close by to help you wring the most you can out of life in the scant 24 hours you have each day.
Part I is a good place to start because it helps you deal with the mental barriers to time management that can seem to form an unscalable wall. After that, you may want to pick topics that cause you the most challenge or frustration. For instance, you can check out Chapter 16 for ways to beat procrastination or see Chapter 18 so you can get a handle on upcoming meetings. On the other hand, if you feel you have your time strategy pretty much under control but are looking for a tune‐up, you may go right to Part V first. There, I address how to take time management to the highest level through customized plans for your job or job title.
The truth is that no matter where you take your first plunge, the water’s fine. You can find plenty of valuable information that you can use to increase your performance without increasing your hours at work.
Part I
Beginning the Revolution: Simple Steps to Start With
In this part …
✓ Learn how to remove key barriers from your life to encourage greater productivity. Assess where you stand in terms of time management.
✓ Create an organizational planning and implementation process, and discover the importance of setting up a system.
✓ Discover how the habits of tidiness and orderliness can save you hundreds of lost hours annually [md] imagine life without always looking for lost stuff!
✓ Understand that time is money; learn how you can calculate the value of your time.
Chapter 1
The Essence of Good Time Management: Organizing Yourself
In This Chapter
Time management boils down to a mindset of focusing on your priorities, goals, and objectives for a specific time period – a week, a day, or even an hour. It’s the awareness that you are the one who lays claim to your success with the allotment of time you have for today.
Time management is a set of skills that are learned over time. The skills taught in this book – for example, of time blocking, single handling, controlling interruptions, and others – don’t provide you with overnight success, nor can you implement or perfect them quickly. They require patience to fail, adjust, proceed, and then repeat the process many times. But by sticking with it, you can accomplish what needs to be done without too much stress and panic, and maybe have a little extra time left over.
This book is about taking control of the time you have in each day. Effective time management requires a little introspection, some good habits and organizational skills, and a handful of logistical and tactical tools. So take some time and get ready to learn how to manage it successfully.
The planning process for a project, your workday, or even a vacation is more vexing than the execution. Many people invest countless hours planning that perfect vacation to Hawaii. They research the different island options, review recreation activities, lodging, air travel, dining options, the list is endless. But few people plan their day or week with such zeal.
You have to fall in love with advance planning. You are likely faced each day with tasks you would rather not do, but frequently they seem to be high priorities. For example, most salespeople don’t wake up each morning saying, “How exciting today; I get to call people I don’t know and ask for their business!” Most moms don’t get up and say in an excited tone, “I get to remind my seventh‐grade son ten times to make sure he packs his homework before he goes to school!”
This is where advance planning brings big dividends to your life. Before your day begins – maybe the night before – plan to do the toughest but most important things first. Usually tough tasks become more challenging to complete throughout the day as more projects, deadlines, and emergency items crop up. So a good rule is to clear out the tough tasks first.
The sheer act of planning is the key to unlock your creativity, problem solving, mental strength, and clarity. It also increases your mental and physical energy because you see the pathway to a productive day.
The better you use planning strategies and techniques, the more you can avoid procrastinating away what you don’t want to do. At its base level, planning is simply creating a list. You increase your productivity by more than 25 percent by simply writing down what you need to accomplish. The advantages of creating a list are as follows.
Achieving peace of mind
Create your life as you wind down for the day so that you’re ready to take on tomorrow. You likely are able to rest and relax more, knowing that your following day is planned. You sleep better when you don’t have unresolved issues weighing heavy