Living by the Clock (or How to Keep Time from Killing You)
Hello fellow legonites its been a long long time but i have something to share, from a mail i had from simpleology.com asite i had subscribed to and these are some stuffs that really hit me and i'll like to share.Its by Daniel Markovtz read on on its straight from the source.
By: Daniel Markovitz

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Don't let time management be such a burden. A Japanese manufacturer may have decided to produce the Jumbo Twin Bell Alarm Clock--which stands at about 18 inches, weighs over five pounds, and costs about $91--to poke fun at people who can't keep track of the hours.


Fact: the amount of work you have to do is infinite. Even if you were physically able to work 24 hours a day, everyday, you'd never get to the bottom of your to-do list (or your email inbox). There will always be one more meeting to attend, one more problem to solve, one more email to write.

Fact: the time you have to do this infinite amount of work is quite clearly finite. Whether you work 40, 50, or 110 hours per week, there's a limit to how much you can accomplish each week. Just as there's a physical limit to the throughput on a manufacturing line, and a limit to how many jets can take off from LaGuardia airport each hour, there's a limit to how much work you can do each week.

With that said, I've listed a few tips to help you make the most out of the time you have:

1. Treat your time like your money.

Given this reality, you have to treat your time like you treat your money: as a limited resource that must be budgeted. And just as you first budget money for the essential things in life--food, shelter, Oreos - you've got to budget time for your most important work.

The thing is, you can't properly allocate time to your really important stuff if you only capture your work in a to-do list. A to-do list doesn't capture or display the vital bit of information you need: how long will each task take? And the corollary: how much time do you have available?

If you can't answer the said questions, you can't intelligently decide whether you can afford to spend time redesigning the website, or revamping the product introduction matrix, or doing trust falls and ropes courses at the executive team-building retreat. Until you can see the time required to do X, you can't assess the opportunity cost of doing it. Because when you're doing X, you're quite clearly not doing Y.

So what's the answer? How do you track all your work and ensure that you're getting the right stuff done?


2. Make meetings with yourself.

I call it "living in your calendar." That means taking all the tasks that are on your to-do list, estimating how much time each of those tasks is going to consume, and transferring them to your calendar. Don't forget to leave time to process your email. And leave some empty space (an hour or two) each day to deal with the inevitable crises that crop up. In essence, you're making meetings with yourself to do your work. It doesn't matter what calendar application you use, even an old-school paper calendar, as long as you're diligent about using something.

It's an eye-opening exercise: you'll probably find that it's tough - if not impossible - to find a place for everything. But this is the reality of your life. You've simply used the calendar to paint a true picture of the time commitments you have on your plate. And whether or not you make these commitments visible, they're there. My feeling is that if you're going to be run over by a truck, you might as well get its license plate.

This exercise isn't designed to intimidate you with the amount of stuff you have to do. Making your work visible means that you can better determine whether or not you can (or should) say yes to a new project. And if you do say yes, you can better determine when you realistically might be able to get it done.


3. Learn to say, "No."

I know a lot of you will think, "My company/industry moves too fast. I can't say no to new projects." Or, "There's no way I could tell our CEO that I can't get this done by mid-October." But here's the thing: you can say no. In fact, I'd argue that you have to say no.

The CFO says no when the president wants to renovate the offices or hire new people, and the company can't afford it--that's part of her fiduciary responsibility. You have the same kind of responsibility--you have to set expectations about what can be accomplished with the amount of time you have available.


With these three tips, you can align the time you're spending with your real priorities. Sometimes you get so caught up in the minutiae of your daily work, or continue with well-established routines, that your time and energy is no longer targeted at the right things. Are you spending too much time doing instead of delegating and mentoring? Are you spending too much energy on an underperforming employee or a failing product, and too little time on the people and products that have real growth potential? Making your work visible shows you whether you're investing enough time in the right places--and whether you're doing the right things.

The author is the founder and president of TimeBack Management. As a trainer, he has worked with clients such as Merrill Lynch, American Express and Pfizer. He has written for theWall Street Journal, Industry Week, and theJournal of Accountancy. He is also a regular contributor to theNew York Enterprise Report.