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Time management: It's a martial art.

If you're being jumped in the alley all the time, you won't have fun with it...If you start developingpowerful skills for dealing with these "attacks", it's not necessarily FUN, but you feel more confident and

energized around it.

We've allowed it, but it FEELS LIKE it's "coming at us"

You don't manage time... you can't "manage" 5 minutes and come up with six. You can't manage

information... it's a specific segment of self-management.... You're managing ACTION and PROJECTS...

Information management isn't the issue; if it were, you'd walk into a library and die. It's the information

about which you've got to DO something that's the issue.

How many things have you let come across the transom?

SS: How does one go about evaluating their effectiveness right now?

DA: It's an inside-out assessment. Here's a subtle criterion: If my head is empty, there's nothingdistracting me, I'm okay. If not, there's more to do.

SS: What are signs people need improvement?

DA: GSA: Gnawing Sense of Anxiety... there's something they feel they should be doing... a feeling in the

pit of the stomach that the most important thing isn't being done... You won't know how much you have

until you start getting rid of it.

SS: What makes a personal TM system work?

DA: Externalize what you've got going on in your head. Psychic RAM has limited space and it's a terrible

office... you've got post-its around your mind. It doesn't solve everything, but it's an a priori condition forgetting it under control.

SS: How do you go about that?

DA: Weekly review. Not your life purpose. Just the stuff that's out there in your head... The commitmentsand ideas you've had... Then you can walk away from it and go have a beer... rather than the beer you have

to run away from the mess.

We feel best the week before our vacation. You can only feel good about what you're not doing when you

know what you're not doing.

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5-Phase Process to managing the things that are actionable

I. Collect the things that are actionable.Low-tech to high-tech... Manage your in-basket. People say "if it's not that important, it's not that

important" but if it's in your head, it will keep banging on your mind and exhausting you. Get itout onto a big list. Dump it out of your head. Do it anywhere, as long as it's into one place. What

around your office is NOT supplies, decoration, equipment... (permanent)? We pick up the papers

and non-permanent things and put them in an in-basket. Then we clean out the brain. It takes upto six hours for the typical professional. Just dump it all out. Don't analyze it. This is just the

start... you'll do that later.

Dump out every single thing you're holding on to....

What you really need to capture is every single thing you think is incomplete... from world hunger

to the plant that died last week that you walk by every day and think "somebody oughta water that

thing!"

II. Clarify whether it's actionable or not...If it's not permanent in your office, decide whether to toss, file, DO, or tickle.

Make a clear distinction between things that are actionable and not. Toss, Tickle or File. If you're

a pack-rat, keep expanding your hard disk, and there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the biggest bottle-necks for execs is a good, accessible system... purge it once a year... you

can keep all you want, so long as it's organized. It drains no attention from you. It's just a library,

it's not action-oriented. There are no shoulds in there.

If It is Unactionable:

1. Throw it away. - don't need it now, never will.2. File it. - reference - I may want to see this later, but I won't have to take action on it, ever.3. Tickle yourself with it later - there might be action later, I need it to resurface

automatically... hold and review... "someday maybe".. let me see it later. In-basket - put it on

the list to do soon.

III. When there IS action on this, ask yourself: Does this signify some outcome that I have acommitment on? Does this require action now?

IV. What does this actionable thing represent? Anything on your desk... Focus on one specificthing that doesn't belong there permanently.... What would be the VERY NEXT action on this? Is

it a phone call? A purchase? An e-mail? Answer the question very granularly.

Assuming it's something I have to take action on....

V. 4Ds: Dump it or do it?How long would it take to do it? If it's less than two minutes, do it right NOW, even if it's low-

priority... It'll take it longer to stack it and track it than to take care of it. Can it be delegated? Areyou the person who should be doing it? If not, you want to hand it off immediately. You can

track THEIR action, but delegate it. If it's more than two minutes and you can't delegate, THEN

you organize it, put it in some sort of list that reflects the actions you need to take. That's thereminder list to work off.

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If you did that whole drill of gathering all your actionables, then put it into the system... most people have

300-500 hours worth of work, and 20-50 projects. That's the gist of your action reminder system.

What's creating the GSA is that people have not put their objectives into a bulletproof system... we feeloverwhelmed by all the stuff.

Ask yourself if you have a flashlight with dead batteries. Sure... Your mind tells you about that at the deadbattery, though, NOT at the batteries in the store.

Your mind is a great servant but a terrible master.

Ask yourself, since you woke up, have you thought of anything you needed to do that you still haven't

done? That's a total waste of time. Not only are you wasting energy thinking about it, you're sending toxic

chemicals into your system from the stress syndrome.

We're giving our mind a task it can't handle very well... sort of half-way... that part of psychic ram we put

this into, it has no sense of past and future. It forgets immediately after reminding you of something.

Ultimately, this is SOP about how you handle things for the rest of your life.

If you haven't done this yet... put up a firewall and get on it, maybe in sneakers and jeans, in non-work

time. You probably won't be able to sufficiently shut the world out during work hours.

Let me ask you: Hiring someone... what's the next action? What is she going to do on Monday when she

comes in... A job description, what we expect, and what she can expect... Do you need to gather anything

before you create that list, or could you do it right now? How long would it take you? I would draft

something on the computer. It would go on my "at computer" list... I'd have Monday as the deadline onthat. As a safety-net. The only time I'd double-enter something would be if I needed to jerk my chain to

trigger "have I done this yet?"

That's only one action amongst the rest of the actions you could do. What are all the options of the actions

I could do this afternoon? What are all the phone calls? All the at-computer things? Look at things youCOULD do in the office. NOT home stuff, not errands...

No matter how important something is.... put it in CONTEXT. If the phone isn't working, don't worry

about it....

1st Criterion: Context: Where am I? What things can I do right here?

2nd Criterion: Time: How much time do I have to do this stuff right now?

3rd Criterion: Energy: Are you fresh or are you toast? You can change your context and

change your state, but only to a certain extent. When you're in dummy condition

4th Criterion: Priority: Where do you get the most value, given options... it's intuitive. That's aspiritual question.

ABC priorities don't work. Where ever youare time/space/energy wise, you want to have options that willmake you optimally efficient GIVEN your context.

Now I have the kind of energy I had when I had a widget job... those are so psychologically healthy.

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If my life or my habits or my standards let me know to do something, it doesn't go on the list. But if it's

something my brain would have to remind me to do, I'll write it down. I write on anything handy, even

napkins or a legal pad... I have my "evening module" (wallet) with a pen and paper. I have a Sony dictating

thing... I don't like to use it; it's inefficient. I'd rather write it.

My Palm III is a better organizer than collection tool.

Bring things into the IN file, then divide between actionable and file-able.

It's absolutely appropriate to send yourself voice-mails so you'll remember. That's exactly right.

Q: Phone calls or people showing up at your desk... how do you integrate those?

DA: That's the fun, elegance, and interest of what people are doing... We're not doing the outside things,

and that's what adds insult to injury. The lists hold places for the things that have longer outcomes. When

you've externalized and organized that and your head is empty, THEN you can be present and peaceful

with the people who walk in and phone calls that come in. Actions come up from conversations... we can

put THOSE into the system. Do those things discretely; immediately.

THE 5 PHASES OF MANAGING ACTION

1. Collecting - externalize the to-dos, the incompletions2. Processing3. Organize - organize so you can review4. Review - what do I need to see as a trigger? When? How often? What will die if I don't do it

today? Review the calendar several times today. If you have discretionary time, you look at theaction list. The weekly review puts your eyes on everything once a week.

5. Do - a good choice about what to do now.TICKLER:

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