T I m e m a n a g e m e n t

Put on the Pressure
Here’s another technique that you can use for setting priori-
ties: Make up your daily list of activities and then ask your-
self, “If I were called out of town for a month, starting
tomorrow, what activities on this list would I want to be sure
to complete before I left town?”
The greatest enemy of time management and personal
productivity today is “majoring in minors.” Because of the
natural tendency for each person to follow the path of least
resistance and to settle into a comfort zone, it is normal
and natural for people to begin with small, easy, fun, enjoy-
able, and usually unimportant tasks and activities at the
beginning of the day. 
But alas, whatever you start doing at the beginning of
the day quickly becomes the pattern that you will follow in
the hours ahead. By the end of the day, you may find that
you have spent all of your time on small and meaningless
tasks, and you will have accomplished nothing of real value.
Get More Important Things Done
Another technique you can use is to imagine that you come
into work on Monday morning and your boss approaches
you with a dilemma. He has just won a fully paid vacation
for two people, with first-class airfare, to a beautiful resort.
His problem is that he is too busy to take advantage of this
prize, but it is time dated. It must be used starting first thing
tomorrow morning.
Your boss makes you a deal. If you can get all of your
most important work done by the end of Monday, he will
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T I M E M A N A G E M E N T
American Management Association / www.amanet.org

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give you and your spouse this wonderful, all-expenses-
paid vacation.
If you had this kind of incentive or motivation, what
would you do? You would probably be astonished at how
much work you could get done in that single day. You would
probably complete the top 20 percent of the tasks that you
had planned for the entire week.
With that kind of an incentive, you would not waste a
single minute. You would have no time at all for idle conver-
sation with your coworkers. You would start early and im-
mediately work through coffee breaks and lunch and
concentrate single-mindedly on clearing your desk by com-
pleting your most important tasks. You would become one
of the most productive people in your organization, virtu-
ally overnight.
This is a great exercise for you to practice on yourself.
This exercise just illustrates the fact that your efficiency
and effectiveness is largely a matter of choice. With a suffi-
cient incentive, you would be astonished at how productive
you could be, virtually in a few minutes. With a sufficient
incentive, and a decision on your part, you would almost
immediately become one of the most valuable people in
your organization.