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Time Management For The Time Poor

By Jim Symcox on Apr 29, 2008 in Randy Pausch, time management

Do you run out of working day before the work you’ve got on today’s to-do list?

Maybe you find that you’re simply rushing through the office to your next appointment and you don’t see any of your staff. You don’t see the employee who you wanted to congratulate for a piece of work they did. Or the employee who’s just had a new addition to the family. What about your colleagues who are lining up to speak to you as you promised you would.

You’ve no time!

Of course the reality is you have the same number of hours as everyone else. The difference is that at the moment you’re letting your must urgent task overtake the hours you have. And that means you’re letting yourself, your company and quite possibly your life down.

The next question is how do we get round it?

Better Time Management Is Possible

There are so many, many books that give you hints on time management. In my previous life as a project manager I bought, read and applied so many techniques and methods of managing time that I’ve found many ways to make managing time better. I’ll give you a couple of book references later.

In the meantime, there’s a professor called Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University in the USA (remember I blogged about his Last Lecture yesterday?).

He’s got some quite succinct things to say on time management. The video is great as a reminder. And hey, maybe some of these principles are new to you!

There’s also a write-up of the time management principles detailed on the video.

Enjoy the video, there are a few further things to help help you manage time and I’ll cover those in a later post.

Update, Friday 25th July 2008: ABC in America has said Randy died from the pancreatic cancer today

LiveJournal tags: Time management, time poor, time poverty, time stress, Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University, Last Lecture