you could exercise both mind and body simultaneously, and enjoy
a glorious multitasking moment.
Some of you need to impose strict order on your work space—a
place for everything and everything in its place, with neat files, a clean
desktop, a floor you can actually walk on. Others are in the compost
heap school of desktop management, and don’t mind hurdling the piles
of files and books and periodicals that inevitably collect on the floor.
I even found support for the slovenly workplace. In How to Put
More Time in Your Life, Dru Scott extols “the secret pleasures” of
clutter, calling messy folks “divergent thinkers” (which, you have
to admit, sounds much better than “messy slob”).
The point is—the classic rules of time management don’t work
for everyone. You have to find your own way through the sugges-
tions and exercises that follow. You may not be able to control
some elements of your life, and you may not want to.
There are lots of things none of us can control, like traffic.
If you drive a car anywhere more populous than the outback of
Australia, you’re going to get stuck in traffic. Manage the flow of
traffic? You might as well try to manage the current of the river in
which you swim.
If you make an appointment, somebody’s going to keep you
waiting. A phone solicitor will interrupt your dinner. Your boss will
dump a last-minute assignment on you. Your child will get sick the
same day you have to make that mega-presentation before the board.
It happens. The only thing you can do is anticipate and adjust.
So That’s Where the Time Really Goes!
Efficiency expert Michael Fortino offers the following dismal sce-
nario for the average life lived in these United States. In your life-
time you will spend:
seven years in the bathroom,
six years eating,C A N Y O U R E A L LY M A N A G E T I M E?