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

C O N C E N T R AT I O N A N D
single-handling are essential
requirements for all great achievement. Concentration
means that once you start on your most important task,
you resolve to persevere without diversion or distraction.
Your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most
important use of your time is the number-one requirement
for success.
You could meet every other requirement with intelli-
gence, ability, and creativity, but if you cannot concentrate
on one thing at a time, then you cannot be successful. You
need to do first things first, one thing at a time, and second
things not at all. If you do not discipline yourself to concen-
trate single-mindedly, you will invariably find yourself work-
ing on low-priority tasks.
American Management Association / www.amanet.org

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Always allow enough time for your top priorities. Figure
out how much time it is going to take to do the job and then
add 30 percent as a cushion, to take into account unex-
pected interruptions, emergencies, and responsibilities.
With a 30 percent cushion, you will probably be quite close
to correct in your estimate of the time necessary to do the
work. This is one of the secrets to achieving high levels of
productivity in your work.
Earl Nightingale said that “every great accomplishment
in life has been preceded by a long, sustained period of
concentration.”
Practice Single-Handling
Single-handling is one of the most important of all time
management techniques and life management principles.
Once you start a task, you stay with it until it is 100 percent
complete. Single-handling requires that you do not con-
tinue picking up and putting down the same task, over and
over, going off to something else and then coming back.
With single-handling, once you pick up a task and begin on
it, you discipline yourself to bring it to completion before
you go on to the next task.
Apply single-handling to your mail and correspondence.
Deselect unimportant items immediately and then deal
with the important documents only once, either by filing or
responding to them right away.
The principle of single-handling—made famous by time
management expert Alan Lakein—comes from time and
C O N C E N T R A T E S I N G L E - M I N D E D LY
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American Management Association / www.amanet.org

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motion studies comparing the output of people who con-
centrated single-mindedly vs. the output of people who
went back and forth on a task, going away and returning to
that task many times in the course of task completion. What
these studies found was that each time you put down a task
and turn to something else, you lose momentum and
rhythm, and you lose track of where you were in doing that
job. When you come back to the task, you have no choice
but to review your previous work, catch up to the point
where you were when you broke off, and then begin again.
This process turns out to require as much as 500 percent of
the amount of time otherwise necessary to complete a task
if you had started with it and stayed with it until it was 100
percent complete.
In simple terms, single-handling can reduce the time
you spend completing an important task by as much as 80
percent, and dramatically increase the quality of the fin-
ished work.