Time Management - Marc Mancini
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54<br />
<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />
Five Minutes<br />
What can you accomplish in five minutes? Sometimes,<br />
important things:<br />
• Return an e-mail.<br />
• Make an appointment.<br />
• Leave a voicemail message.<br />
• Write a page of text.<br />
• Create an agenda for a meeting.<br />
• Research a point.<br />
• Write a thank-you note.<br />
• Locate a missing source.<br />
• Ask a colleague a question you need the answer to.<br />
• Read a short message.<br />
• Clarify something you were unclear about.<br />
Often, if you can promise yourself to devote the next five minutes<br />
to a task, you’ll find that it stretches into 10 or 15 minutes and you<br />
accomplish more than you thought you might when you began.<br />
It’s hard to overcome cramming. You must convince yourself<br />
that cramming is dangerous. And you must try all of the<br />
strategies mentioned earlier—flowcharting, the measles<br />
approach, dividing and conquering, and so on—to aid you in<br />
your efforts.<br />
Conclusion<br />
One final thought. Procrastination can be profitable—for others.<br />
Federal Express, fax machines, belated greeting cards, and<br />
extended preholiday store hours are all examples of products or<br />
services that make some of their money from procrastinators.<br />
So, if procrastination is so common that businesses depend on<br />
it for profit, it’s almost certain that you—if you’re not abnormal—tend<br />
to procrastinate in some situations, at least. If you<br />
can learn to control this very common tendency, you’ll have<br />
taken a very large step toward using your time more effectively.