Personal Development for Smart People^TM

“Time Management” is a new article I just posted to the free articles section.

Time management is a subject I’ve investigated extensively, and this article explores my most recent thoughts about it.  When I first began seriously studying time management in 1992, I learned a myriad of low-level tactics that allowed me to increase my personal productivity.  Graduating college in three semesters was one significant result of this tactical approach to time management.

Recently, however, I’ve been taking a more strategic approach to time management, meaning that I’m more concerned with making correct decisions than with optimizing the specific implementation details.  This article takes a fresh look at time management from this strategic perspective.

Time management systems like David Allen’s GTD, Tony Robbins’ OPM, or Franklin-Covey’s system require that you prioritize your tasks in some way, and this means you need to label some tasks as more important than others.  But exactly how do you determine which task is the most important one?  What’s the criteria?  I believe the key factor in effective time management is accuracy.  When you have an accurate model of reality, then the difference between the important and the unimportant becomes clear in a meaningful sense.

The real gains in time management are realized at the top, not the bottom.  If your high-level strategic decisions are based on an inaccurate understanding of reality, then your mission, goals, projects, and actions will be virtually meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  All of your accomplishments will be little more than busywork.  This article presents a way to resolve this situation and to know whether or not you’re setting the right goals to begin with.

Enjoy the article:  Time Management

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Career & Work, Getting Things Done, Goals & Goal Setting, Productivity, Purpose, Time Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.