Time Management Ain't Sexy; It's Vital

Telling people I work in the time management field produces the same result as telling people I was once a lawyer. They make a polite remark about my choice of endeavors and move on to another, more interesting subject. The only difference is that no one has ever felt compelled to tell me their favorite time management joke.

There’s a blessing in that last bit.

Seriously, though, I know speaking on time management doesn’t sound exciting. It pales in comparison to things like, “I do product design for Apple.” or “I’m in marketing at Nike.” I get that, but unfortunately I possess a driving need to find better, faster ways of getting things done. In the bio I provide those tasked with introducing me at speaking engagements it says that at age thirteen I found the quickest way to vacuum the family store so I could spend more time fly fishing. It’s true. I’m afflicted. I’m okay with that. Let me tell you why.

What is Time?

In conversations about QuietSpacing® – my time management methodology – and the related programs I conduct, I often explain to people that the overarching principle of all my work is this:

Time is a limited, non-renewal source with an undisclosed expiration date for each of us.

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Taming The Beast – Making E-mail Work For You – Part 3 of 3

The first installment of this series focused on the Pavlovian response we’ve developed with e-mail – the constant need to check it – and recommended that we turn off the new message alerts and regularly batch process our e-mail in the same fashion that we process our postal mail.  The second installment drilled down into how to better craft our e-mails.  Specifically, we found that placing only one subject in each e-mail we send greatly reduces the risk of miscommunication (and it’s cousin – wasted time) and increases the ability to find and file individual e-mails.  We also concluded that writing strong, clear and communicative subjects in the Subject field of each e-mail sped up processing time and facilitated filing and retrieval.

This third and final installment will address another pesky behavior we’ve developed with e-mail and we’ll learn a nifty feature in Microsoft Outlook which many of my clients say is the best trick they’ve every learned about Outlook.

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