The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management / Edition 4

by Alec Mackenzie, Pat Nickerson

Overview

The Time Trap has shown countless readers how to squeeze the optimal efficiency—and satisfaction—out of their work day.

This much-needed guide provides the quick solutions you need be more effective with your time and avoid and escape the so-called “time savers” that don’t really work. Backed by decades of research with businesspeople around the world, authors Pat Nickerson and Alec Mackenzie explain how to:

• set realistic goals and make commitments they can keep;
• juggle multiple demands;
• estimate time needed on new tasks;
• pinpoint and combat the most tenacious time wasters;
• protect priorities;
• and upgrade personal productivity for professional success.

Plus, the fourth edition has been extensively revised to include technology-based solutions to the challenges and opportunities we all face in the virtual world.

Filled with smart tactics, revealing interviews, and handy time management tools, The Time Trap is your go-to resource for leveraging twenty-first century opportunities and overcoming challenges to maximizing your work time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814413388
Publisher:	AMACOM
Publication date:	06/17/2009
Edition description:	Fourth Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alec Mackenzie was an internationally known speaker, consultant, and expert on time management.

Pat Nickerson (San Diego, CA), founder and president of EBI, Inc., is the author of Managing Multiple Bosses (978-08144-7025-1). A corporate trainer, she has trained more than 180,000 managers and professionals in time management.

Read an Excerpt

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION ACKNOWLEDGING ALEC MACKENZIE When AMACOM Senior Editor Jacquie Flynn invited me to write this new edition of The Time Trap, I felt honored to help keep Alec Mackenzie’s groundbreaking ideas current. A longtime hero to me, Alec was instrumental in the early success of EBI, Inc., our family-held training company— though he didn’t know it until years later. Why The Time Trap Inspired Us In our first decade in business, based in London, our company came up against stiff competition from the hundreds of organizations flooding the hungry training market there. Our edge? We were marketing the best of American engineering know-how at a time when the British government had mandated training for engineers. But very soon, political upheaval in Britain caused wildcat strikes that shut down electric power for weeks on end. The next year, the gas industry went out—then the railways. Finally, the Post Office shut down for more than three months, cutting off both direct mail and telephone service— isolating every business in those days before smartphones and laptops. These catastrophes shook everyone . . . our customers, our competitors, ourselves. Working like demons whenever we could get power for lights and office machinery, we used newspaper ads instead of direct mail advertising. Like every business, we labored to stay afloat. In our own case, forced by circumstance, we opened EBI partnerships in other European countries— not part of our original plan at all. Those excellent partners taught us that a crisis can sometimes hide a blessing. During those challenging times, we read Alec Mackenzie’s first edition of The Time Trap. It gave us new energy, new ideas, new tools and, above all, encouragement to persevere. Recovery took us five years; success took eight. Thanking Alec Mackenzie “Live” Well into recovery, with our business going steady at last, my husband and I traveled to Schenectady, New York, to attend a Mackenzie seminar on Team Time Management. Walking across the campus with Alec that day, we thanked him warmly for the helpful influence he had long been in our lives. He was modest and unassuming in accepting our thanks. In person, as in his books and seminars, he stayed totally focused on helping all of us escape from our time traps. To influence so many, so well, he drew on his deep ethical sense for answers that were as pertinent then as they will always be. MANY VOICES In this edition, when you read suggestions from “us,” or when “we” tell war stories and offer solutions, the messages will be coming from both Alec Mackenzie and me. For this new edition, you’ll also glean ideas from dozens of managers and specialists from every walk of business who have escaped their time traps. Of course, you are invited to interact, too, by sending questions and your own ideas for future editions to us at [e-mail]. HOW TO USE THIS EDITION This is a not a book of light reading hints. Many people tell us they have tried for years to apply “helpful hints” gathered from here and there, only to find themselves ensnared again—out of time, out of resources, drowning in a flood of demands. With that in mind, the opening chapters help you focus first on those human habits that sabotage everyone’s best efforts. If you can examine your day-to-day work habits with some humor and compassion, you’ll construct a more dependable escape from whatever practices are keeping you ensnared. Why We Stay Trapped In Part I we unravel the tangled pressures that drive us—the many demands imposed by our culture, our workplace, and ourselves. If you read these five chapters thoughtfully, you’ll derive a uniquely personal view and build a more reliable exit strategy. 1. Why Time Still Baffles the Best of Us 2. Time Traps We’ve Been Taught 3. How to Connect Goals, Objectives, Priorities 4. How to Set Priorities and Hold

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

PART ONE

Time Management for the Twenty-First Century

1 Why Time Still Baffles the Best of Us

2 Time Traps We’ve Been Taught

3 How to Connect Goals, Objectives, and Priorities

4 How to Set Priorities and Hold Them

5 How to Tame the Time Log

PART TWO

The New Time Traps and Escapes

6 Management by Crisis

7 Inadequate Planning

8 Inability to Say No

9 Poor Communication

10 Poorly Run Meetings

11 The World Gone Virtual

12 E-Mail Mania

13 The Untamed Telephone

14 Information Overload and the Paper Chase

15 Confused Responsibility and Authority

16 Poor Delegation and Training

17 Procrastination and Leaving Tasks Unfinished

18 Socializing and Drop-In Visitors

19 Attempting Too Much

PART THREE

Parting Advice

20 Life Lessons in Time Management

21 Where Do We Go from Here?

PART FOUR

Quick Solutions Summaries for the New Time Traps

Trap 1: Management By Crisis

Trap 2: Inadequate Planning

Trap 3: Inability to Say No

Trap 4: Communication

Trap 5: Poorly Run Meetings

Trap 6: The World Gone Virtual

Trap 7: E-Mail Mania

Trap 8: The Untamed Telephone

Trap 9: Incomplete Information and the Paper Chase

Trap 10: Confused Responsibility and Authority

Trap 11: Poor Delegation and Training

Trap 12: Procrastination and Leaving Tasks Unfinished

Trap 13: Socializing and Drop-In Visitors

Trap 14: Attempting Too Much

Index