20. Remove the Chairs 

    Why do you have chairs and a couch in your living room?    

You want people to feel welcome and to sit down of course. Then why in the hell do people have chairs and couches in there offices? 

I guess when people walk into to their office, they want them to feel at home, sit down, relax, have a coffee, and stay awhile.  

Drop by visitors, and people who stay too long after pre arranged business have been conducted are a huge drain on your time.  

These hanger oners, the ones who actually use your chairs and couches in people’s offices, can steal hundreds of hours yearly, hours you could use doing the things you need and want to do. 

No chairs in my office, if I want you to sit down, there is a chair in the closet I pull out for people to sit on; it’s put back in the closet when you leave. No, couch either.  

Depending upon your office set up and size, the chairs for people to use are in the reception area, lunchroom and in the conference room. 

21. Change Gears 

The best-laid plans can go astray when you cannot get untracked with a specific job or task. It happens, you want to do a specific task, have it set up, organized, time activated, but when it’s time for you to step up to the plate, nothing.  

For whatever the reason, you cannot get the wheels moving in that particular direction. Depending upon the urgency and the time sensitivity of that particular task, make a decision and make it fast.  

Don’t waffle; don’t beat yourself up about it, that’s the worse thing to do, just move that task, time slot and all to a different spot in your day.  

Move the bumped block of time into the one you are at now and plough ahead. I find that a change of activity can be all that is necessary to get you going.  

Sitting there trying to force an activity on yourself is just creating a stressful situation that in a lot of situations is avoidable. This switching of gears is only possible on activities that are not time sensitive or not too high of a priority.  

Only you can make this determination.  

Beware of this happening too often, if it does, there could be a problem with your prioritizing procedures. For now, use this technique to increase your productivity and reduce your stress levels. 

22. Power Hour  

We all have them, we may not recognize them as such, but we have them. Those times in the day when we are at our best, when we can fly through tasks and jobs, when we get the most out of ourselves and our time. 

We call them Power Hours. Recognize them and use them to your advantage. As you get on track and are using the PTS and all of its tricks of the trade, you will be identifying key priority tasks, you’re a tasks.  

You will also be Time Activated these key A tasks into you Day Planner. 

You want to be sure that you put your key A priorities into your Power Hour time slot/ slots.  

Remember, it is not the volume of work you accomplish; it is the quality of work accomplished that in the long run, makes the difference.  

By consistently getting your number I and 2 A priorities into your Power Hour time slots, you will be ensuring the best possible productivity for yourself.  

As they say in Poker, all you can do is get your money in with the best hand; the rest is up to Lady luck.  

Proper Time Management isn’t about luck but I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from. In the same vein, sometimes you get a spurt, when things are clicking for you and you are firing on all cylinders, switch from a lower ranked priority to a high ranked one and take advantage of how you are running.  

The reverse is true, not getting a lot done right now, switch out, do something that requires less effort, wait for an upturn in your energy level, enthusiasm. 

23. Identifying What You Hate To Do 

 You have to identify your enemy before you can defeat him. It’s never the things we like to do that gum up the works, we can usually be counted on to get those things done, it’s the things we hate to do that are the ones we keep putting to the back of the Time Management bus.  

What backs us into a corner, gets us behind and makes us stressful is the backlog of things we should have done last week that keep biting us in the butt. Once again, these task, jobs that are repeat offenders are just that, the same ones over and over again that get put off. 

Start by identifying the things that don’t get done on a regular basis. The tasks that routinely are left to the end and you force yourself to manage by crisis. The rush job on the last day of the month, a report that is always due on the last day of the month, the report you always have 30 days to complete, but never do.  

This report goes on your list. There will be others. I will not go into what to do with that list here, that is covered in the PTS. The fact that you are aware of this issue will help you to pay a little more attention to these sticking points and that will help in the process of paying more attention to them and perhaps helping you to get them done sooner.  

   24. Stress is a Massive Time Waster 

No one operates well under stress, despite what they may say. The very nature of stress makes what would normally be a simple chore, turn into a prolonged difficult chore because we are not operating under normal circumstances. Stress, if we allow it to, can virtually immobilize us into total inactivity.  

Stress waste time on a number of levels. When stress has reached a level where it is affecting our performance, it has been present for some time already. We do not just wake up and feel stressed out and anxious.  

We allow ourselves to be stressed out because over a period of time, we have allowed ourselves to feel out of control, have allowed other people and events to take the initiative in how we will spend the next few minutes, few hours.  

These are just a few of the situations where stress can be allowed to manifest itself. None of these situations can take place without your participation. In these cases, it’s more of a lack of participation but that is not our focus here. 

When we let, things slip out of control, this creates a stressful situation and we are not able to function like we would like.  

This creates stress and understandably so.  

This type of situation becomes a massive time waster when we allow ourselves to become unresponsive and this leaves to a loss of productivity. As the saying goes, it is difficult to remember the objective was to drain the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators.  

There are times when a sudden one-time event can cause stress but the majority of times, stress is the accumulation of activities, usually the same activities in the same situations. 

Look for reoccurring situations that make you feel stressed, anxious and under pressure.  

Work your way backward and start to head these events off before they are allowed to pile up and take control.  

Remember stress is a self-inflicted emotion. We allow ourselves to feel stressful by how we react and deal with the events around us.  

    25 The Telephone, It’s Okay Not To Answer It  

I don’t own a cell phone and believe it or not, I still can lead a full and satisfying life! This leads me to people’s obsession with their phones, cell and land-line.  

I don’t get the need to feel that unless you have a phone to your ear, your are some how not complete. 

Let’s forget for a moment the need to have a cell phone/ land-line phone presently attached to your ear. 

Let’s deal with the need to ALWAYS answer it. 

Phones get in the way of people actually accomplishing anything resembling a full day’s work Unless your job actually requires you to answer the phone as part of your job description; I can safely say you are answering your phone far too often. 

I recommend at least half of your working day to be phone free.  

I can hear the gasps from my office as you read this.  

That’s 50% of the time you should be phone free. When I say phone free, I mean you are not answering your phone during these phone free times. 

Give this some thought, try reducing the time people can reach you by phone and watch your productivity shoot up.  

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