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Time management is really life management, personal management.
productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly more than the average person and are much happier as a result.
The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something.
potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important a task really is to
evaluating the sig...
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a “long time perspective” is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America.
attitude toward time, your “time horizon,” has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take a long-term view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.
Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.
Rule: Future intent influences and often determines present actions.
Successful people are those who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term.
“Losers try to escape from their fears and drudgery with activities that are tension-relieving. Winners are motivated by their desires toward activities that are goal-achieving.”
coming into work earlier, reading regularly in your field, taking courses to improve your skills, and focusing on high-value tasks in your work will all combine to have an enormous positive impact on your future.
Motivation requires motive.
time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you are going to end up at the end of the weeks and months that pass.
Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”
When you’re running out of time and know that the consequences of not completing a key task or project can be really serious, you always seem to find the time to get it done, often at the very last minute. You start early, you stay late, and you drive yourself to complete the job rather than face the unpleasantness that would follow if you didn’t complete it within the time limit.
Rule: There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do.
you will never be caught up. Get that wishful idea out of your mind. All you can hope for is to be on top of your most important responsibilities. The others will just have to wait.
Under the pressure of deadlines, often self-created through procrastination, people suffer greater stress, make more mistakes, and have to redo more tasks than under any other conditions.
However much time you think a task will take, add on another 20 percent or more as insurance.
“What are my highest-value activities?”
“What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?”
“What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”
Goethe said, “The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”
Review your list of tasks, activities, and projects regularly. Continually ask yourself, “Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive consequences in my work or personal life?” 2. Determine the most important thing you could be doing every hour of every day, and then discipline yourself to work continually on the most valuable use of your time. What is this for you right now? Whatever it is that can help you the most, set it as a goal, make a plan to achieve it, and go to work on your plan immediately. Remember the wonderful
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you can’t do everything that you have to do. You have to procrastinate on something. Therefore, deliberately and consciously procrastinate on small tasks.
procrastinate on low-value activities. Decide to procrastinate on, outsource, delegate, and eliminate those activities that don’t make much of a contribution to your life in any case.
priority is something that you do more of and sooner, while a posteriority is something that you do less of and later, if at all.
Rule: You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.
just say no to everything that is not absolutely vital to me at the moment.”
you have no spare time.
to do something new, you must complete or stop doing something old.
Creative procrastination is the act of thoughtfully and deliberately deciding upon the exact things you are not...
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I were not doing this already, knowing what I now know, would I start doing it again today?”
The first law of success is concentration—to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. WILLIAM MATHEWS
The more thought you invest in planning and setting priorities before you begin, the more important things you will do and the faster you will get them done once you get started. The more important and valuable a task is to you, the more likely you will be motivated to overcome procrastination and launch yourself into the job.
item is defined as something that is very important, something that you must do. This is a task that will have serious positive or negative consequences if you do it or fail to do it,
“C” task is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not.
“D” task is defined as something you can delegate to someone else.
“E” task is defined as something that you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t make any real difference. This may be a task that was important at one time but is no longer relevant to you or anyone else. Often it is something you continue to do out of habit or because you enjoy it.
Review your work list right now and put an A, B, C, D, or E next to each task or activity. Select your A-1 job or project and begin on it immediately. Discipline yourself to do nothing else until this one job is complete. 2. Practice this ABCDE Method every day for the next month on every work or project list before you begin work. After a month, you will have developed the habit of setting and working on your highest-priority tasks, and your future will be assured!
you are not crystal clear about why you are on the payroll and what results you have been hired to accomplish, it is very hard for you to perform at your best, get paid more, and get promoted faster.
Your job can be broken down into about five to seven key result areas,
results that you absolutely, positively have to get to fulfill your responsibilities and make your maximum contribution to your organization.
key result area is defined as something for which you are completely responsible. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. A key result area is an activity that is under your control. It produces an output that become...
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key result areas of management are planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting.
Clarity Is Essential The starting point of high performance
Give Yourself a Grade Once you have determined your key result areas, the second step is for you to grade yourself on a scale of one to ten (with one being the lowest and ten being the highest) in each of those areas.
Rule: Your weakest key result area sets the height at which you can use all your other skills and abilities.
delegating is a key result area for a manager. This skill is the key leverage point that enables a manager to manage and to get results through others. A manager who cannot delegate properly is held back from using all his or her other skills at the maximum levels of effectiveness. Poor delegation skills alone can lead to failure in the job.
