Put on the Pressure
Here’s another technique that you can use for setting priori-
ties: Make up your daily list of activities and then ask your-
self, “If I were called out of town for a month, starting
tomorrow, what activities on this list would I want to be sure
to complete before I left town?”
The greatest enemy of time management and personal
productivity today is “majoring in minors.” Because of the
natural tendency for each person to follow the path of least
resistance and to settle into a comfort zone, it is normal
and natural for people to begin with small, easy, fun, enjoy-
able, and usually unimportant tasks and activities at the
beginning of the day.
But alas, whatever you start doing at the beginning of
the day quickly becomes the pattern that you will follow in
the hours ahead. By the end of the day, you may find that
you have spent all of your time on small and meaningless
tasks, and you will have accomplished nothing of real value.
Get More Important Things Done
Another technique you can use is to imagine that you come
into work on Monday morning and your boss approaches
you with a dilemma. He has just won a fully paid vacation
for two people, with first-class airfare, to a beautiful resort.
His problem is that he is too busy to take advantage of this
prize, but it is time dated. It must be used starting first thing
tomorrow morning.
Your boss makes you a deal. If you can get all of your
most important work done by the end of Monday, he will
42 TIME MANAGEMENT