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trust
our experience
to manage your business |
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| If
your use of time is unbalanced, a time revolution is required.
You don’t need to organize yourself better or alter your
time allocation at the margins; you need to transform how
you spend your time. You probably also need to change the
way you think about time itself. What you need should not,
however, be confused with time management. Time management
originated in Denmark as a training device to help busy
executives organize their time more effectively. It has
now become a $1 billion industry operating throughout the
world. The key characteristic of the time management industry
now is not so much the training, but more the sale of ‘time
managers’, executive personal organizers, both of the traditional
paper-based type and now increasingly electronic. Time management
also often, comes with a strong evangelical pitch: the fastest
growing corporation in the industry, Franklin, has deep
Mormon roots. Time management is not a fad, since its users
are usually highly appreciative of the systems used and
they generally say that their productivity has risen by
15–25 per cent as a result. But time management aims to
fit a litre into a pint pot. It is about speeding up. It
is specifically aimed at business people pressured by too
many demands on their time. The idea is that better planning
of each tiny segment of the day win help executives act
more efficiently. Time management also advocates the establishment
of clear priorities, to escape the tyranny of daily events
that, although very urgent, may not be all that important.
Time management implicitly assumes that we know what is
and is not a good use of our time. If the 80/20 Principle
holds, this is not a safe assumption. In any case, if we
knew what was important, we’d be doing it already. Time
management often advises people to categorize their list
of ‘to do’ activities into A, B, C or D priorities. In practice,
most people end up classifying 60–70 per cent of their activities
as A or B priorities. They conclude that what they are really
short of is time. This is why they were interested in time
management to start with. So they end up with better planning,
longer working hours, greater earnestness and usually greater
frustration too. They become addicted to time management,
but it doesn’t fundamentally change what they do, or significantly
lower their level of guilt that they are not doing enough.
The name time management gives the game away. It implies
that time can be managed more efficiently; that it is a
valuable and scarce resource and that we must dance to its
tune. We must be parsimonious with time. Given half a chance,
it will escape from us. Time lost, the time management evangelists
say, can never be regained. We now live in an age of busyness.
The long-predicted age of leisure is taking an age to arrive,
except for the unemployed. |
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