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Time Shift: Managing Time to Create a Life You Love

by Eugene Dupuis; co-published with The Achievement Institute

171 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0362; ISBN 1-55212-960-8; US$19.50, C$23.95, EUR15.60, £10.80

A comprehensive personal time management resource full of ideas, insights, techniques, stategies and exercises that empower readers to create a life they love.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      table of contents      catalogue info

About the Book You do have enough time! You have all the time there is. You have the same 1440 minutes today that everyone else has. What you don't have are the skills of managing yourself through that time. This book covers the tricks, tips and techniques you need to take charge of your time. When you truly commit to learning, you can master anything you put your mind to. You must accept complete resonsibility for learning waht it takes to manage your time. This book shows you how to learn. Many people have an idea of what they would like out of their lives, but don't effectively work towards accomplishing it. They wander around their world aimlessly, wondering why they don't get what they want. You're just a dreamer unless you use your time to accomlish meaningful goals. This book covers effective goal setting and accomplishment. It's all about habits. Most good time management techniques run counter to personal habit patterns. To make progress, you have to look squarely at your own work habits and systems and be willing to improve them. Unlearning old habits and learning new ones is difficult - but essential. This book introduces powerful new work skills and techniques and shows you how to turn them into habits. Accept personal responsibility. It is particularly difficult for some people to accept the reality that they themselves are to blame for many of their time problems. Instead, we find it much easier to blame drop-in visitors, paperwork, telephone interruptions and crises of one form or another. This book enables you to take responsibility and shows you how to manage the people and things in your life that waste time. Time Management is Self Management. Time Management is not about time in the abstract; it's about what we can accomplish with time. We cannot manage our time, we can only manage ourselves in relation to time. We cannot control how much time we have, we can only control what we do with it. Time management is self management. It's not easy ... however it is worth the effort, for the benefits are profound. We have more time for family, reduced stress, improved personal productivity, and the realization of our goals. This book will help you make it happen.

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About the Author Eugene Dupuis is founder and principal of The Achievement Institute, and a respected subject matter expert. He's a scholar, author, trainer and mentor who uses a practical mix of success skills and inspirational guidance to develop executives across Canada. His interest in personal development began at the age of 13 while reading Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, and Dale Carnegie. He's studied and applied the teachings of Wayne Dyer, Zig Zigler, Brian Tracy, Deepak Chopra, Tom Peters, Stephen Covey and many others to transform individuals and organizations. The former Director of Sales and Marketing for TORSTAR Newspaper Group's six Toronto suburban newspapers. Eugene has worked with executives in some of the country's most prestigious private and public organizations, including TORSTAR, Southam Newspaper Group, Sun Media Corporations, Toronto Life Magazine, The Canadian International Development Agency, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and Human Resources Development Canada. Time and Self Management; The Masters Program has been nominated for Ontario's top training award as recognized by the Ontario Society for Training and Development. As well as coaching The Masters Program, Eugene also conducts powerful group workshops and inspiring keynote presentations.

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Sample Excerpt

"Finish each day and be done with it. you have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in - forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals."
Dan Kennedy
No B.S. Time Management

Action Lists
All great managers of time work from action lists every day. They discipline themselves to write things down. Every assignment, every call they have to make, every communication that's required, every appointment, every name and every phone number. They write down everything that is important.

Success isn't so much a mystery ... it's a reflection of what you are doing with your time. Highly successful people are massive action takers. They don't just try one solution to a problem, they come at it from many different directions and use action lists to record and track their efforts.

Those who do not use lists forget things ... as much as they contend not to. They cannot prioritize properly, they can't find important things to accomplish during small windows of time. They respond to the urgent instead of the important. People who rely on memory feel stressed, tired and fatigued. At the end of a day, they're unsure of what they've actually accomplished to bring them closer to their goals.

List users are more organized all day long and get the most important things done each day. They are in control of their time and their lives, on top of their work each day, move closer to their goals each day, and have a sense of accomplishment.

There's never enough time to do everything, but there's always enough time to do the important things. When action lists are written down and prioritized you can tell at-a-glance what you should do next ... you'll know right away what the most valuable use of your time is right now.

Prioritizing your action list
Martin Taylor, Vice Chairman of Hanson Trust, claims: "The greatest test of time management is making your priority choices". It can be hard to decide which of several jobs, all demanding urgent attention, should be tackled first. You're not alone ... a survey of 1300 managers showed poor priority setting was a common weakness.

The 80/20 rule applies to time management as well as it does anywhere. Diligent priority setting tells you the 20% of activities which generate 80% of your results, and has you do them before other less valuable tasks.

Priorities are determined by evaluating the importance and urgency of each item as it relates to reaching your goals and objectives. If it's both important and urgent, it's a top priority; if it is only one or the other, it's a medium priority; if it's neither, it's a low priority. With a little practice you can learn to discriminate quite quickly.

Here are some techniques you can use to help you prioritize: If you were called out of town for a week, what is the one thing you'd do? Write a number 1 beside it. If you could do two things, what would the second thing be, put a 2 beside it. Prioritize your list numerically.

If that doesn't work for you, use a lettering system; identify the critically important things you want to achieve tomorrow morning and put an A beside them. Put B's beside the next things you want to do but are less urgent or important. Put C's beside the actions you want to do later in the day, or which could be delayed if necessary. If you're really ambitious you can then numerically order each of you're A's, B's and C's in the order you want to complete them.

It doesn't matter how long your list is, or how you decide to prioritize it, the critical part is that they have to be prioritized. This allows you to concentrate on what you're doing while you're doing it, knowing that it's the most important thing you could be doing with your time right now. You won't be overwhelmed by everything you want or need to do each day. Instead, you can be completely present to what you're doing while your doing it. This is truly where joy and fulfillment exists.

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Table of Contents

"All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price."
Juvenal

1. Preliminary Reading
Introduction by Jim Rohrbach and Bill Blake · Overview · How to Get the Most our of This Book · Tall Tales on Time Management

2. Preliminary Exercises
Reader/Author Agreement · How Well do You Master Your Time? · Mastery Self-Analysis · Advance Avoidance Strategies · Identify Your Bad Habits · Performance Needs Analysis · Personal Profile Summary · Personal Achievement Objectives · Stretch Your Willpower

3. Self Management... Attitudes & Beliefs
How the World Works · Faith and Confidence · Success Factors · Achievement Drive · Learning to Learn · Self-Discipline
Exercises: Analyze Your Feelings · Adjust Your Feelings and Attitudes

Things to Do to Create an Effective Attitude

4. Self Management... Stress Control
Responsibility and Emotional Control · Stress Control · Focus, Concentration and Enjoying Each Moment· Flow · Flow and Achievement · On-a-Roll and Visualization · Relationship Building
Exercises: 60 Second Stress Test · The Saintly Relationship Challenge · Visualization Exercise

Things To Do to Control Your Stress

5. Self Management... Direction
Importance of Goals · Goal Setting Checklist · Developing Your Plan · Goal Commitment and Action
Exercises: Personal Legacy Statement · Priority Draw Sheets for Goals · Goal Achievement Worksheet · Set up Your Reward System

Things To Do for Direction

6. Time Management... Planning and Implementation
Action Lists · Prioritizing · Daily Planning and Organizing · How To Plan Your Day · How to Use Your Dayplanner · Maximizing Your Time · Effective Delegation
Exercises: Priority setting Exercise · Asking Exercise · How Well Do You Delegate?

Things To Do for Effective Planning and Implementation

7. Time Management... Personal Habits
How to Establish New Habits · Eliminate Procrastination · Powerful Listening · Positive Delay and Saying No · Effective Work Space · Pruning Mail and Office Clutter · Reduce Reading Time · Rapid Writing
Exercises: Do you Procrastinate? · Eliminate Your Procrastination Now · Perfectionism Test · Three Day Powerful Listening Exercise · Do You Have Trouble Saying No? · Are You and Your Workspace Organized? · Sped Reading Exercise

Things To Do to Develop Effective Habits

8. Time Management... Abuse of Your Time
Eliminate Email Overwhelm · Control Interruptions · Control The Telephone · Ten Telephone Sins · Reduce Time Wasted in Meetings · 18 Tips to Reduce Meeting Time · Fru Fru or Everything Left Over
Exercises: How Well Do You Use The Telephone · Do You Waste Time in Meetings?

Things To Do to Stop Abuse of Your Time

9. Completing Exercises
Post-Workbook Avoidance Strategies · Four Week Behavioural Contract

10. What Do I Do Now?

11. Resources

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Catalogue Information

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