Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and Technology - Softcover

Jasper, Jan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312243340 ISBN 13: 9780312243340

Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

TAMING THE PAPER TIGER for the 21st century: A successful organization consultant tells you how to clear out and organize your desk, your closet, your office, and most of all your time.

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Jan Jasper

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Take Back Your Time

How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and TechnologyBy Jan Jasper

St. Martin's Griffin

Copyright © 1999 Jan Jasper
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312243340

Take Back Your Time

1

Get Ready to Change Your Life

Our two greatest gifts are time and the freedom to choose—the power to direct our efforts in the use of that time.

—STEPHEN R. COVEY

 

 

A few decades ago, experts predicted that technological advances and higher worker productivity would bring us a four-hour workday. Studies were begun to prepare the nation to cope with an expected excess of leisure. Researchers worried that the surplus of free time would lead to widespread boredom. This is as quaint to us today as a 1950s science fiction movie. We’re feeling more time pressured than ever before, and it seems to keep getting worse. Complaints about not having enough time are as ubiquitous as gripes about traffic and the weather.

We are exhorted to recycle, exercise at least three times weekly for cardiovascular health, floss daily, choose the best long-distance phone company, and remember to use the discount florist coupons offered by our frequent-flyer plan. We can choose from an almost infinite number of TV channels and watch virtually any movie, new or old, in the comfort of our homes. We can have all types of cuisine prepared and delivered to our door. (Remember when your takeout choices were limited to pizza and Chinese?) We quickly get the latest information about health or investments from the Web.

In 1970 in his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler predicted that we would become slaves to an overabundance of choices, thereby inhibiting action, increasing anxiety, and creating a perception of less freedom and less time. If anything, he understated the truth. We have opened a Pandora’s box of too many choices, and we’re paying a big price. Economist Juliet Schor notes that smarter machines and better-educated people bring more options and higher expectations. New technology reduces the time it takes to do tasks but increases the number of things we expect to do and have. Schor calls us “rich in things but poor in time.”

Why Do We Feel So Stressed?

Author Jeff Davidson says that five factors are contributing to our feeling squeezed for time: population growth, the knowledge explosion, mass media and electronic addiction, the paper-trail culture, and an overabundance of choices. “Frequent-flyer programs, investments, long-distance telephone service, medical insurance, retirement options. The choices mount, the rules and regulations take longer to read, and are harder to understand.” He explains, “The faster we’re able to travel or to gain new information, the greater our expectations regarding what can and needs to be accomplished in our lives. We all seek to do more … . A day is still twenty-four hours, but it seems to shrink in the face of more to do or greater expectations about what has to be done.”

While women no longer spend hours doing laundry by hand and preparing meals from scratch as their grandmothers did, they now return from the office to a second shift at home, which may include caring for aging parents in addition to the children. Downsizing has led to increased workloads and stress for the survivors—often one worker ends up doing the work of two. Many people are forced to work two or more jobs to make ends meet.

 

Technology: The Good News and Bad News

Technology has proved to be a double-edged sword. It has brought flexibility unimagined even a decade ago. Laptop computers and fax machines enable many people to work at home a day or two a week, avoiding the commute. Yet the same technology has eroded our personal time. That daily commute offered transition time between home and work. Only doctors and firefighters were on call on the weekend. Now our commute is interrupted by the ringing of our cell phones, and the weekend is no longer a work-free zone due to pagers and laptops. Employers and clients know that we can stay in touch from anywhere, and many of them expect it. People used to go on vacation to get away. But now, even on an ocean cruise, you can’t get away—we have high-frequency radios that can send E-mail to the middle of the ocean. People on vacation in a foreign city find themselves looking for cybercafés to check their E-mail.

A March 1997 Money magazine survey found that, given the choice between taking cash or time off in exchange for working overtime, 64 percent of Americans would definitely choose the time. Americans are sleeping an average of six and a half hours per night, one full hour less than they feel they need. Many people cannot remember what it’s like to feel well rested.

If you can relate to this, if you never have enough time, this book is for you. If you’ve read lots of time-management books and attended numerous seminars but are still suffering, this book can help you. If you feel like you’re drowning, I understand. My clients often say this when they first call me for help. If you fear that your situation is worse than anything I’ve ever encountered, and that you’re truly hopeless—sorry, I disagree. After ten years of training busy people how to function more effectively, I don’t believe anyone is hopeless. If you’re willing to examine where your time is going, clarify your priorities, and apply the strategies in this book, relief is on the way!

Why Is Managing Life So Difficult?

Why do so many intelligent, successful people have trouble managing their time and organizing their lives? Partly because we are not taught how when we’re growing up, and what we are taught often backfires and causes more problems than it solves. For example, everyone has heard the maxim, “You should handle each piece of paper only once.” Sounds good. Only problem is that it’s dead wrong. Another myth: “Files should be arranged alphabetically.” Maybe, maybe not. An alphabetic filing system in some cases will cause serious problems. Another piece of common wisdom: “Neatness is important.” Not necessarily! People with neat desks often have ineffective work habits. The worst example of pointless tidiness I’ve ever seen is the method used in some offices to store incoming mail and faxes according to the date of arrival: Five folders for mail, one for each day Monday through Friday, and five more folders for faxes, again sorted by day of arrival. Standard wisdom? Yes. Effective? Far from it.

Another reason that intelligent, successful people have trouble managing their time and organizing their lives is that the world has gotten much more complicated. Even people with an innate knack for organization are hard-pressed to handle the complexity of life today. What worked ten years ago is not adequate now.

“You can always find time to do what you want to do—if you’re willing to give up something else. Life is a series of trade-offs.”

—Barbara Hemphill

Despite constant talk about how pressed everyone is for time, I contend that few people really live as if their time mattered. Most people spend more time planning their vacations than thinking...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312243340
• ISBN 13: 9780312243340
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 260
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar