10.05.2017 Views

Time Management - Marc Mancini

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

84<br />

<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />

is not the most critical day of the year), then maybe you<br />

should say no.<br />

How to Say No<br />

Psychologists have identified a four-step procedure that makes<br />

saying no safe, diplomatic, and effective:<br />

• Give a reason. To simply decline to do something seems<br />

arbitrary, lazy, or irresponsible. If you give a good, solid reason<br />

for your decision, it will show that you’re reasonable.<br />

• Be diplomatic. Saying no can hurt, upset, or even anger<br />

the person to whom you’re saying it. Tact is essential<br />

when turning down anything.<br />

Say No to Information Overload<br />

We live in an age of information overload. But you can<br />

control how you receive and process information by<br />

focusing on what you need and rejecting what you don’t. Here are a<br />

few tips:<br />

• When reading a report, read the executive summary first. Skim what<br />

follows only to sift out necessary details. If you can influence the<br />

people creating reports, insist that they have executive summaries.<br />

• Subscribe to publications that summarize facts, books, articles, etc. A<br />

few examples:<br />

Executive Book Summaries<br />

Wellness Letter (UC Berkeley)<br />

Kiplinger Washington Letter<br />

• Avoid real-time TV viewing. Tape TV shows and fast-forward past commercials.<br />

• Use the bookmark feature on your Internet browser to store information<br />

sites you use frequently.<br />

• Get a voice-mail system that limits messages to one minute and doesn’t<br />

record hang-ups. Whether or not you have a limiting feature on<br />

your equipment, warn callers in your outgoing message that they<br />

have 60 seconds to state their message. (Yes, they may call back and<br />

leave a continuation of their message, but the second attempt will<br />

be far more compact than the first.)

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!