Time Management - Marc Mancini
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120<br />
<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />
ily on you. Your breaks gravitate not toward socializing but into<br />
daydreaming, secondary priorities, or introspection. Be wary of<br />
such behavior; it can subvert work just as fiercely as too much<br />
socializing.<br />
<strong>Time</strong> Leak #2: Misplacing Things<br />
Next to socializing, misplacing things—according to the poll—<br />
was the greatest drain on productive time. One estimate: about<br />
three hours per week are wasted trying to find “lost” things.<br />
Of course, things don’t really get lost: they get misplaced.<br />
There’s a well-known prescription: “A place for everything, and<br />
everything in its place.” Indeed, several industries have turned<br />
that dictum into profits, among them: office-, closet-, and<br />
garage-organizer companies, Pendaflex, and Rubbermaid.<br />
Two work areas—when disorganized—seem especially<br />
prone to time leaks: your files and your desk. Filing is discussed<br />
more fully in Chapter 10. Here the discussion turns to that critical<br />
work region: the desk.<br />
It Was in the Last Place I Looked!<br />
Finding that missing file folder is no different from locating<br />
your misplaced keys. Where was the last place you remember<br />
having it?<br />
Most people panic when faced with the prospect of finding a misplaced<br />
and urgently needed item.These three most likely scenarios<br />
should give you a clue where to look:<br />
• You absent-mindedly set it down somewhere it doesn’t ordinarily<br />
belong. In this case, it’s most likely to be found on top of something<br />
else—unless, of course, you later set something down on top of it,<br />
which will make it most difficult to find.<br />
• Someone else moved it, in which case you need to think who might<br />
have had access to it.<br />
• You misfiled it or placed it near—rather than exactly—where it’s<br />
supposed to be, in which case you need to search in the immediate<br />
vicinity of where it belongs.