"It's time for Time."

— John Lennon (as a cartoon character) in the movie Yellow Submarine (1968)

AN UNHURRIED LOOK AT TIME MANAGEMENT

© 1995, 2008 by Grady McAllister. All Rights Reserved.

By Grady McAllister

Past, Present, and Future

Presented December 10, 1995
The University of Houston
College of Technology

This paper was written by Grady McAllister. It was completed as a research project for a class in Occupational Technology at the University of Houston. The ideas expressed do not represent the views of the University of Houston or the College of Technology.

This material is a presentation of The Vasthead.

"Get your attitude straight, 'Cos it's all in your mind
And it's never too late to get a new design
And if you wanna compete you gotta visualize
Flash those teeth, come on open those eyes
Think visual!"

—The Kinks, from the album, Think Visual, 1986.

In today's competitive environment, there are all sorts of materials on how to be successful. Some are about visualizing your way to success. Some are about selling your way to success. Some are about the body language of success. Some are about arguing your way to success. Some are about networking your way to success. Some are about dressing for success.

Some are about success in general.

Any material that takes an overall approach to success has something to say about time management: It is only through time that any kind of success can be achieved.

In his book The 100% Solution, Mark McCormack points to excessive time with a newspaper as a symbol for all wasted time:

There are moments when all of us do the equivalent of scanning the newspaper rather than create some news of our own. This could be time spent as a couch potato in front of the television, when blessed silence would be more soothing or constructive. It could be a whole morning waiting for someone…Or minutes wasted standing in line…

We should ask ourselves whether better planning would cut back on those hours that add up astonishingly. Remember, these moments are our "prime time" that we can never recapture. And we have only ourselves to blame.

Robert Ringer, author of Million Dollar Habits, says:

I believe that the source of most people’s frustration is that there are only 24 hours in a day, and we can never really seem to find the time to work on the really important things, the things that take creativity.

Ringer advocates the "self-discipline" to devote at least four hours a day to "quite, creative thought." He tells people in any career to "learn to do it religiously if you aspire to rise above mediocrity."

And then, there are the time management trainers. Rather than just a slice of advice, they offer an entire system to help capture time.

THE BUSINESS OF BUSY-NESS: THE GHOST OF WORKPLACE PRESENT

When Alan Lakein published his classic book, How To Get Control Of Your Time and Your Life (1973), he claimed to operate "the only company in the country devoted exclusively to time management." Nothing like that is true today. Time management experts are superabundant.

Recent time management authors Merrill and Donna Douglas have seen interest in their subject swell as time itself seems to shrink:

Although time management has always been important, it is only in recent years that large numbers of people have devoted much attention to it. Forty years ago there were no books and only an occasional article. Even twenty years ago there were only two or three books and a handful of articles. Few companies were teaching time management in the 1970’s. Now there are hundreds of books and thousands of articles, and every major company teaches it.

They suggest three reasons for the new interest:

• Ever higher expectations on the job. "Very seldom do people report that this year their organization expects less of them than last year!"
  
  
• A rising complexity in the work environment. Some of the elements are foreign competition, total quality management, self-directed work teams, and technology.
  
  
• When the pace of change becomes greater than an individual’s ability to cope with it, problems develop. Most of these problems revolve around time issues.

Because time management really means the control of events, it can be tied to many other professional development topics. These include communications, mission statements, team building, continuous learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

In his discussion of time management, Mark McCormack says that decision-making has become captive to today’s rapid pace:

Slow decisions are usually better than fast ones. No decisions are better than wrong ones.

The world prefers fast decisions to slow ones, wrong ones to none at all…In an accelerated age, where people put a premium on speed and hyper-efficiency…you have to fight like mad against the impulse to rush a decision…

Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t deal with that…And so they importune us for snap decisions. They make us supply the answers as quickly as they ask the questions.

And that is a dangerous way to work.

High technology is one of the reasons for this rush to decide:

Word processors smother us with documents, seducing us into believing we are adequately informed. FAX machines make even the most trivial request seem urgent. Overnight deliveries force us to respond in kind: We make decisions overnight…

McCormack believes that modern office technology may be "prodding us too quickly to make decisions that need far more thought."

Sometimes people push up the pace just to appear busy. A. Roger Merrill, co-author of First Things First (1994), writes about an R&D division in which he was expected to teach time management. Before offering any training, Merrill did some analysis:

As I was escorted from one office to another, I became increasingly intrigued to see the identical scene over and over again. In each office, a somewhat frazzled man or woman--one hand on the phone, another on the computer, desk literally piled with papers--would look and say, "just a minute! I’ll be right with you."

After hurriedly completing some task or phone conversation, the person would sigh, take a quick look at the clock, and push papers aside long enough to tell me how incredibly busy they were and how there was literally more to do than could possibly be done.

When walking between offices, they rushed down the halls. They increased their pace whenever they walked in front of someone else’s door.

There was "a sense of gushing energy and panic everywhere." These people, Merrill decided, did not want time management. The wanted to look overwhelmed. Their business was busy-ness.

Merrill returned to the manager of the division:

I said, "These people love urgency. They’re out there trying to convince each other and themselves that they have more to do than anybody else. This is where they’re getting their security. Urgency dominates the culture. I suspect that the real problem is that nobody really knows what the priorities are."

She sighed, "That’s right. There’s a big power struggle between the vice-presidents in terms of what R&D is supposed to do. Each one has a following. Frankly we’re at odds with each other. There’s not a clear set of signals. We don’t know how long it's going to last, but one of these days things are going to come unglued."

The employees were keeping frantically busy in order to maintain their identity and security in the organization. They wanted to seem as if they were really needed. Shortly thereafter, the big shakeup came and many lost their jobs anyway. Merrill writes:

Before their reorganization we could have taught traditional time management till we were blue in the face. The core problem was a lack of a shared vision.

Whether or not it is always productive, the breakneck pace will only increase in the years ahead.

FUTURE SHOCK REVISITED: THE GHOST OF WORKPLACE TO COME

David Ricardo (1772-1823) was one of the first economists to recognize that the time it takes to make an item is an important part of its value. In Power Shift (1990), Alvin Toffler portrays a future in which the value of time is far more critical than ever before. It is a world in which entire nations are either "fast" or "slow":

Their pace is determined be the speed of transactions, the time needed to make decisions, the speed with which new ideas are created in laboratories, the rate at which they are brought to market, the velocity of capital flows, and above all the speed with which data, information, and knowledge pulse through the economic system.

According to Toffler, the rapid pace of the American economy is starting to bring back some jobs that had been farmed out to slower, cheap labor countries: "These shifts can be traced, in part, to the rising importance of time in economics." More than a matter of technology, home-based operations increase the speed with which decision can be implemented, controlled, and changed.

Time becomes a ghost in the economic machine, a spirit that feeds on itself:

In due course, the entire wealth creation cycle will be monitored as it happens…making each unit of time more valuable than the last…a positive feedback that accelerates the acceleration. The consequences of this, in turn, will not be merely evolutionary, but revolutionary, because real-time work, management, and finance will be radically different from even today’s most advanced methods.

BACK TO THE CANCELED FUTURE: THE GHOST OF WORKPLACE PAST

Time, like a precious metal, seems to become more scarce even as it increases in value. For many workers, this can translate into longer days for smaller prizes.

A generation ago, the future seemed to offer something very different. Robert Half, founder of the personnel recruiting agency, Robert Half International, recalls that:

Back in the 1950's, when the economy was booming, housing was plentiful and cheap, and jobs were easily available…there was a growing emphasis on leisure time. It wasn't a negative thing; it didn't represent a generation lazier than the previous one. A recurring time management topic of that era was what to do with the increasing abundance of leisure time that was sure to come. It was widely hoped that this new time ownership would mean more time for intellectual growth and the betterment of society. The editors of Life proclaimed that the United States was on the edge of "golden age" in which an American would be: Freer and bolder than the Greeks, more just and powerful than the Romans, wiser than the Confucian, saner than the French, more responsible than the Victorian, and happier than all of them together.

As late as 1967, expert testimony before a Senate subcommittee predicted that by 1985 we would be able to choose between a 22-hour workweek, a 27-week work year, and retirement at age 38.

BACK TO REALITY

By 1989, the world looked very different. The paucity of time (the reality) had reached a point where it rated a cover story in Time (the magazine). Nancy Gibbs wrote in the April 24 issue:

These are the days of the time famine. Time that once seemed free and elastic has grown tight and elusive, and so our measure of it’s worth has dramatically changed. One of the factors cutting into free time was the need for constant training and retraining: The pace of change and the explosion mean that professionals are swamped with too many facts to absorb. Meanwhile, the drill press operator discovers that the drill comes with a computer attached to it. Workers find that it takes all of their energy to remain qualified for their jobs, much less acquire new skills that might allow for a promotion.

According to Harvard economics professor Juliet B. Schor, "From the end of the 1960’s to the present, Americans have increased the time spent at work by almost 160 hours--or nearly one month--per year. In The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1992), Schor says Americans work more hours than any other industrial country except Japan.

Even that difference, she says, is offset by the fact that Japan’s mostly male workers do nearly all of their work on the job and almost none in the home. The same can not be said of American workers, whether male or female.

Echoing Schor’s finding, a Lou Harris survey reports that leisure time has shrunk nearly 40 per cent since 1973. The average workweek has expanded from 40 to 47 hours, and in some professions 60 hour workweeks have become common.

Ralph Keys, author of Timelock (1991), writes:

From telegrams to faxes, one technological innovation after another has met our demands for a faster tempo, then speeded it up some more. Labor-saving devices eased the drudgery of our lives but added to the expense. So we become two-paycheck families, work overtime, and moonlight.

We’re time warriors who keep huge appointment calendars…buy gadgets that promise to save us time, give up such activities as reading as luxuries from the past, try to do everything just a bit faster and wonder why none of the above seems to ease time’s crushing pressure.

THE QUEST FOR THE PERFECT ORGANIZER

PART ONE: TIME IN A SEVEN-RING BINDER

In a quest to win back time, many people turn to time management tools to plan and record events. For pragmatic personalities, an organizer can seem like the perfect way to keep up with what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

Steven Covey calls this the "Magic Tool Approach" to time management. In First Things First he writes:

A person becomes like the frustrated photographer who believes that a highly programmed camera is necessary for a good photograph:

However, the typical organizer is a seven-ring binder with sheets that are half-letter size. The best known organizers are the Day-Timer, the Day-Runner, and the Franklin Day Planner.

Here are some elements that most organizers have in common:

• A place for recording personal goals and goals with an organization.
• A place to list all the tasks that need to be done.

• Calendars for weekly, monthly, and long-term planning.

• Calendars for daily planning.

• A place for frequently used telephone numbers.
• A way of organizing material according to the subject matter.
• An organizer may include tabbed divider sheets. Users can assign tabs to subjects that meet their specific needs. Examples include: values and goals lists, mission statements, ongoing projects, hobbies, persons spoken to on a regular basis, agenda for meetings, and favorite quotations
• A system for recording and retrieving information.

A simple retrieval system is to attach a paper clip or Post-It ™ to any page with important information. Another method is to look at the monthly calendars to get back to information on a daily page.

A more comprehensive approach is to create a summary index: List each day of the month and write a key word for each item on that date. Some people keep a card catalogue that records all the dates when a subject appears.

Any tool is only a tool; it is not the actual control of events. Yet, probably more than any other people in the world, Americans have always searched for methods to help assure success.

In working toward his doctorate, Steven Covey conducted a systematic study of American success literature since 1776. In The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People (1989) Covey writes:

The basic thrust of this literature was "quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communications skills, and positive attitudes."

A BOOK OF VIRTUES

One example of the early character-based advice is Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. In it, Franklin describes his thirteen "virtues," values that he worked to establish as permanent habits in his life:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling Conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e., Waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. Lose no Time.--Be always employ'd in something useful.--Cut off all unnecessary Actions.--

7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak; speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.

9. MODERATION. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Cloaths or Habitation.--

11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury or your own or another's Peace or Reputation.

13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin explains how he endeavored to make each virtue a reality:

I judg'd it would be well not to distract my Attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time, and when I should be Master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should have gone thro' the thirteen.

Franklin produced a book that contained a page for each virtue. At the top of each page was its name and its clarifying statement.

He divided each page into rows and columns. Along the left side of the page, he listed all thirteen virtues. Along the top, he wrote the days of the week. This layout created boxes for each virtue under each day of the week.

He put a black dot in a box for each time he violated a virtue, but he put his main effort on one virtue at a time:

I determined to give a Week's strict Attention to each of the Virtues successively. Thus in the first Week my great Guard was to avoid every the least Offense against Temperance, leaving my other Virtues to their ordinary Chance, only marking every Evening the Faults of the Day.

To help satisfy his desire for "Order," he created a schedule for all of his regular activities. Franklin admits that he had trouble actually following his schedule. His reason is one that most people could relate to today: "tho' it might be practicable where a Man's Business was such as to leave him the Disposition of his Time" it became difficult when someone "must mix with the World, and often receive People of Business at their own Hours."

American literature also offers example of people who try to plan their day--often with ironic results.

We find two examples in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). Gatsby is an ambitious entrepreneur who has quickly made a fortune as a bootlegger. He buys a mansion on Long Island to be close to a former lover, Daisy. She is a society woman who has since married a rich husband, Tom Buchanan.

Meanwhile, Tom has acquired a mistress, Myrtle Wilson. In a scene early in the novel, Myrtle lists her planned activities:

Although Gatsby had conducted lavish parties, involving hundreds of revelers, only two appear for his funeral. Gatsby’s father, Mr. Gatz, arrives shortly before the burial. Gatz is met by Nick Caraway who serves as narrator in the novel.

Mr. Gatz shows Carraway a book which Gatsby had owned as a boy. It includes a daily schedule with an exact time for such activities as "practice elocution, poise and how to attain it," and "study needed inventions." It also includes a list of goals ("resolves") such as "bath every other day" and "read one improving book or magazine per week."

Caraway describes the scene this way:

In a prologue to the story, Hawthorne describes how Colonel Pyncheon, a Puritan leader in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, had erected the House of the Seven Gables. The Colonel acquired the land by having the original owner, Matthew Maule, tried and hanged for witchcraft. The wizard aims these last words at the Colonel: "God will give him blood to drink!"

The Colonel builds his mansion on Maule’s property and schedules a grand reception. When the Colonel fails to appear, his guests find him seated in his chair with blood on his beard--dead at the moment of his greatest triumph.

Nearly 200 years later, one of the colonel’s descendants, Judge Jeffrey Pyncheon, sits in the very same chair in the very same house. He is like the original patriarch in appearance, temperament, and ambition.

The judge is waiting to speak to his cousin Clifford. The cousin has just emerged from prison, having served 30 years for a murder he did not commit. The judge, who played a role in Clifford’s confinement, hopes to blackmail him for information on a vast tract of land. Should Clifford fail to provide the information, the judge will have him declared a lunatic and put him away for a second time.

The judge allots only 30 minute for his business with Clifford. Using a very simple time management tool, a list on the back of one of his business cards, the judge has planned many activities for the day.

Yet, two hours pass and the judge continues to wait in the ancestral chair. In his narrative, Hawthorne chides the normally punctual judge for his sudden "sluggishness":

As the time of day progresses, the narrative details each action that the judge had planned. Each item is sardonically described as if he was still capable of accomplishing it. The list includes buying a new horse, visiting his doctor, replacing a broken gravestone for his late wife ("better, at least, than if she had never needed any!"), and attending a banquet at which he is to be hand-picked as the next governor.

With macabre irony, the author exhorts him again and again to rise up and attend to his schedule. As the judge continues his silent vigil, the day fades into night and the night fades into the following day. The morning reveals a fly buzzing around the judge’s open eyes. Hawthorne concludes:

CHARLES R. HOBBS:
THE PYRAMID PRINCIPLE

Charles R. Hobbs is perhaps the most influential time management trainer of the 1970's & 1980's. Yet I have never seen anything about him on the web. The following paragraphs will help to address that gap.

During the 1980’s, Charles R. Hobbs helped popularize value-based time management training.

Hobbs received his doctorate from Teacher’s college at Columbia University. In 1974, he left his position as Associate Director of the Teacher Development Program and spent the next eighteen months developing his Time Power system. Hobbs sees his curriculum as the logical outgrowth of his "life career question": "How can a teacher bring about change in the lives of people through group instruction?"

Hobbs decided that existing time management training was "mechanical and disconnected." Hobbs writes:

Hobbs says you should determine what ideas make up your personal value system and write each of them as an action statement. These are very general statements that represent the "highest priorities in life." Hobbs calls these statements "unifying principles." They can form the basis for setting goals and making other decisions.

Examples include: Commit to a more excellent way. Earn the good will of others. Be honest. Be a leader. Believe in people. Grow intellectually. Have personal integrity. Hobbs states:

Religious persons would go to the inspirational literature of their religions to help them form their unifying principles. Hobbs says many secular sources, such as Shakespeare and other classic literature, may also include the "highest truths." Hobbs found his own best treatment of "humility" in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales . He also recommends biographies for generating ideas on unifying principles. He advises against relying on the field of psychology, since much of it is "theory" that has not yet "stood the test of time."

All other goals build on these "unifying principles." From that point, planning goes to goals that are increasingly specific. Long-range goals build upon the unifying principles. Intermediate goals build upon the long-range goals. Daily goals include actions that help achieve the intermediate goals.

Hobbs calls this the "productivity pyramid." It is illustrated as a pyramid with the unifying principles at the base and daily actions at the top.

Hobbs recommends a 15-minute planning session every day to maintain continuity in the planning process.

The daily plan, goals, and unifying principles all go into a Day-Timer organizer. The format he recommends has a two-page spread for each day of the month. Available from Day-Timers, Inc., in Allentown, Pennsylvania, they come in sizes ranging from pocket-size to full letter-size.

Regardless of the size selected, Hobbs says you must carry the Day-Timer everywhere you go. The idea is to keep all of planning materials constantly available and to have a place to write incoming data. You must limit yourself to only one Day-Timer: If you use more than one, you’ll be "flitting back and forth" between them trying to find information.

The use of the Day-Timer builds upon Hobbs’ "theory of accessibility," developed in his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. The theory states: "If a goal is meaningfully, directly, and continually visible, your chances of achieving it increase." By keeping their values, goals, and planning in the Day-Timer, people will be more likely to perform in the ways they had intended.

The system includes a series of questions to help select and prioritize the unifying principles, personal life goals, goals with an organization, and items on a daily action list.

Time Power also includes "productivity goals." These are ongoing goals that emphasize time management itself. Their purpose is to help keep people focused on the need for time management and to help them succeed with the system.

Here are some examples of productivity goals:

• Do the most vital task now.
• Limit TV programs to the vital few--if any.
• Be sensitive to the vital priorities of others.
• Clean my desk every afternoon before leaving work.
• Never seek a solution to a problem until it is clearly defined.
• When talking with someone, take 100% of the responsibility for seeing that communication is achieved.
• Never say in 100 words what can be better said in ten.

Hobbs suggests that you place a list of productivity goals in the Day-Timer and re-write two or three of them on each daily action list.

HYRUM SMITH:
INTIMIDATE THY NEIGHBOR

Day-Timers now down-plays Time Power in favor of its new 4-D program. They no longer offer Hobbs’ tapes to the public.

However, the Franklin Quest Company in Salt Lake City offers a remarkably similar program. The company CEO Hyrum Smith has written two books and recorded several audio cassettes that capture his TimeQuest seminar. Like Time Power, he bases his program on a "productivity pyramid." The seminar parallels many of Hobbs’ key points and uses many of the same anecdotes and illustrations.

Franklin Quest offers the Day Planner, an organizer comparable to the Day-Timer Two-Page-Per-Day Reference Edition.

Less academic than Hobbs, Smith can often turn a phrase in a way likely to be remembered. Here are a few of Smith’s observations:

On "not having enough time ":

The note refers him to a page four months earlier. That page tells him that the man is a prospect for his seminar and gives some details about their discussion. Smith is now ready to speak intelligently with someone whom he did not ever remember just a few minutes earlier. The time is 5:30 A.M., Salt Lake City time. The conversation goes like this:

Hyrum: Good morning, Bill, this is Hyrum Smith. What time is it now in New York?

Bill: Damn.

Hyrum: You may recall we had a conversation on January 14 at 4:30 in the afternoon. We spent twelve minutes on the phone. Do you remember that conversation?

Bill: Damn.

Like Hobbs, Smith tells people to carry their organizer everywhere. In his book, The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Management (1994), he writes:

For people who won’t carry the Franklin Day Planner everywhere, the company offers "satellite" filler pages. These are pocket-sized sheets that can be added later to the main organizer book.

The Day Planner comes with divider sheets. Printed tabs create sections for addresses and telephone numbers, values and goals, finances, key personal information, reference materials, and long-term planning. There are also six numbered tabs for tracking specific people and projects.

Despite the light-hearted tone of the program, Smith adds just enough philosophy to put all in a meaningful context. Toward the end of the seminar, he gives his personal definition of "character." It is "the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the emotion of making that decision has passed."

He asks the participants to give the program a "serious shot" for 21 days. If they will, he promises "a major reduction in stress." You reduce stress, he says, as you gain a greater sense of control.

Smith gives the participants an assignment. Using the Day Planner, they must schedule a letter that they will write to him 21 days later. At that time, they will report how they are doing with their organizer and with their productivity pyramid.

Smith says, "We have a whole division of people who do nothing but respond to these letters." He personally sees many of the letters and finds it "wonderful to see what has happened in people’s lives in that short 21 day period. It is almost scary."

According to Smith, the key to their success is the time spent on the productivity pyramid:

Smith concludes with a poem by an unknown author. At least 100 years old, the words appear on a sundial at Wellesley College:

STEVEN R. COVEY:
THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES

During the aftermath of the Democratic Party election defeats of 1994, Steven R. Covey visited President Bill Clinton at Camp David. On the PBS television program, The McLaughlin Group , host John McLaughlin showed a video clip of the meeting and asked his panelists to comment.

The participants are print media writers who represent a variety of political viewpoints. They tend to disagree often and very loudly.

Yet, on the subject of Covey’s visit their opinion was unanimous: The fact that Clinton would turn to a motivational "guru" was a sign of desperation. The session with Covey had lowered the president’s stock for the week.

To further the derision, McLaughlin juxtaposed the Covey shot with one of Anthony Robins walking on hot coals. While still in his twenties, Robins achieved fame as the motivational "boy wonder" for his Unlimited Power book and tapes.

Covey--Robin--it was all the same thing to the McLaughlin commentators. It was all so much "snake oil."

It is not just cynical reporters who question the self-improvement movement. As the recent FAA training scandals have shown, the push to reform people can turn into indoctrination and even brainwashing.

Sometimes organizations force-feed ideas that may or may not be popular.

In Covey’s case, Harvard Professor Ronald A. Heifetz sees a "kind of maladaptive response" in his popularity. "There’s something real about the yearning" that his work brings out. "The question is whether people are doing the right thing to satisfy it."

Fortune magazine summed up Covey’s critics:

Obviously, there are few motivational speakers who see themselves in such sinister terms. However, even when viewed in their most favorable light, motivational materials seem to reach a point of diminishing returns. They start to repeat the same stories and oft-heard quotations. They generate a limited range of intellectual challenges.

Yet some motivational wares outlast all expectations. Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People (1936), was derided in its time, and its title is still a running joke among some people. Nonetheless, it continues to sell forty years after the author’s death. Carnegie is also a standard for comparing new self-help authors.

So it was no small endorsement when USA Today called Covey "the hottest self-improvement consultant to hit U.S. business since Dale Carnegie."

No doubt Steven Covey is in vogue. He has made People magazine. Their editors remarked that Covey’s maxims "sound like Gump with an MBA. But their bite-size simplicity, as well as their emphasis on principled behavior, is part of the draw."

And he draws many kinds of people. In the bookstore, Covey’s books sit near the ones about "re-engineering" and "re-inventing" corporations. Browsers also find them in the "self-help" section near 101 Lies Men Tell Women.

The Covey phenomenon began in 1989 with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It was quickly followed by Principle-Centered Leadership . Covey’s latest book, First Things First, looks at the management of time. Each of the books is available on audio cassette. The Seven Habits has been recorded in Spanish. There is even a Seven Habits screen saver; it allows Covey’s maxims to flash on a computer monitor all day long.

In short, Covey is one of the most successful authors of all time. To understand Covey in perspective, it may be helpful to look at all three books.

Briefly, here are Covey’s Seven Habits :

Habit One: Be Proactive . Take the initiative and choose your own response.

Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind . Covey states, "If you are the programmer, write the program. Decide what you’re going to do with the time, talent, and tools you have to work with…"

Habit Three: Put First Things First. This is the "endowment of willpower." Covey explains:

Habit Seven: Sharpen the Saw . This habit is to beef up your "PC" or "production capability." It means "renewing the four dimensions of your nature--physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional." It includes things like reading and exercise.

In Principle-Centered Leadership, Covey tells how to make principles the foundation for leading groups and organizations. He says these are absolute laws that govern people:

They provide vision and direction for groups of people. With leadership based on principles, groups discover long-term solutions to their problems. This happens on four levels: the "organizational, managerial, interpersonal, and personal."

The organization weds its mission and values to its strategy, structures, and systems. The approach considers the customers, suppliers, competitors, and other "stakeholders."

In the past, organizations have tried leadership based on fairness, kindness, and efficiency. Covey adds "effectiveness" to the other three elements. Effective organizations recognize the "spiritual" needs of everyone involved:

• Pathfinding means "creating an exciting vision of how to reach a worthy end." Covey emphasizes that "a worthy end cannot be reached with an unworthy means." A worthy means encompasses and reflects all the stakeholders.
• Empowerment is teaching people to "become relatively independent and part of interdependent, self-managing teams." Empowerment is the result of trust and win-win performance agreements.
• Team building means involving people in activities that improve the team's productivity and cooperation.

The book’s cover shows a compass superimposed over a clock. The point is that effectiveness requires "true north" principles rather than an efficiency based on the clock. Covey writes:

1) The First Generation involves using simple "reminders." You keep track of things you want to do with notes and checklists. Beyond that, you just "go with the flow."

2) The Second Generation brings in "planning and controlling." Calendars and appointment books enter the picture.

3) The Third Generation adds prioritizing and controlling. People set goals based on their personal values.

Covey says that these generations have made people more effective up to a point. Yet none of them present a complete "paradigm." The result is like trying to drive somewhere using the wrong map: "Changing our behavior and attitude won’t help us if we have the wrong map ." According to Covey, "traditional" time management theory includes these fallacies:

• "We are in control…" The fact is, control is an illusion. The method ignores an essential reality: Most of our time is spent living and working with other people, who can not be controlled.
• "Efficiency above all…" The underlying assumption is that "more" and "faster" is better. But if you’re headed south down the California coast… and your destination is New York City…you’re not being very effective.
• "Plug in your VALUES"…Values are critically important. They drive our choices and actions. But…just because we value something does not necessarily mean it will create quality of life. When what we value is in opposition to the natural laws that govern peace of mind and quality of life, we set ourselves up for failure.
• "The clock tells the truth…" The clock dictates the rhythm of our lives. But is this idea of time an adequate framework for all of human experience? We think not. Just as some things are more important than others, some moments are more important than others.

• "Competence is king…" The idea is that if you can develop competencies, you can create quality of life. But personal effectiveness is a function of both competence and character. We can not truncate what we do from who we are.
• "Management cures all ills…" Time management is a form of management, as opposed to leadership. Management works within a paradigm. Leadership creates new paradigms. Management works within the system. Leadership works on the system… Before we consider the question, "Am I doing things right?" we must first ask ourselves "Am I doing the right things?"

To illustrate the difference between urgency and importance. Covey provides an "activity matrix" which is divided into four quadrants.

Quadrant I activities are both urgent and important. Examples include handling an irate client, meeting a deadline, and repairing a broken machine. They demand immediate action; we all have to spend some of our time in Quadrant I.

Quadrant II activities are important, but not urgent. This quadrant can involve long-range planning, anticipating and preventing problems, "empowering others," reading, professional development activities, preparing for future activities, and investing "in relationships through sincere effort and deep, honest listening." Neglecting Quadrant II leads to "stress, burnout, and deeper crises" in Quadrant I. By investing time in this quadrant you shrink the amount of time in Quadrant I.

Quadrant III is the "phantom of Quadrant I." It includes things that are urgent, but not important. Because of its urgency, it creates the illusion of importance. Examples include unimportant phone calls and meetings.

Quadrant IV activities are neither urgent nor important. The reading of pulp novels, mindless TV viewing, and gossiping are examples of Quadrant IV time wasters. Covey states:

Covey suggests that you plan on a weekly basis, including Quadrant II activities into your schedule:

The program also brings "roles" into the planning process:

At work, one job may include several roles, such as "administrator, marketer, personnel officer, and long-term planner."

To help implement the system, the Covey Leadership Center markets a Seven Habits Organizer. Also available from Day-Timers, the organizer provides a two-page spread for planning each week.

Along the left side of the spread are boxes for the name of each role. There is also space for writing goals for the week that contribute to each role.

Besides the weekly planning space, each role receives a tab section within the organizer. The user receives instructions to record information behind the role tabs, rather than chronologically. Each role gets its own goal sheet, activities checklist form, telephone and address page, and note page.

The organizer also has places for planning and recording "sharpening the saw" (Habit Seven) activities.

Because of its popularity, First Things First is bringing time management theory to many people for the first time. A few comments may be in order.

Although the Covey Leadership Center has obtained a trademark for "Quadrant II Time Management," the idea is not new. Most other well-known time management trainers are careful to distinguish between the terms "important" and "urgent." Charles Hobbs included an importance/urgency matrix with his 1983 audio program "Insight on Time Management." So it may be questionable whether Covey’s emphasis on "importance" really constitutes a new "generation" in time management.

What Covey does do well is to bring a fresh perspective to some old ideas.

For example, other time management trainers tell people to set goals for different areas of their lives. The result is goals for the family and for the different responsibilities at work. So, "roles" have been covered before even if the trainer never mentions the word.

Likewise, other programs tell you to set up sections in an organizer for different responsibilities and people. So, again, roles have been covered before.

What is unique in First Things First is its emphasis on the roles themselves. The earlier programs simply tell you to set goals for each important area of your life. What Covey is saying is that you should think deeply about the underlying roles and integrate them into your week. By looking at goals from that perspective, a person might set some that might have been overlooked.

In its discussion of principles, First Things First gets into some slippery terrain. Covey states that "Third Generation" trainers (i.e., his competitors) tell people to become "a law unto themselves." This is because they tell people to write down their values according to their own belief systems. This is unacceptable, he says, unless you also bring natural law, or "true north" principles, into the picture.

However, it is not true that other trainers tell people that they can get away with anything they write as a value. They are simply acknowledging that different people will approach life differently because of their background and beliefs. The laws of human behavior are not always as clear as the rising and setting of the sun.

There must surely be a way to reconcile Covey with the other time management theorists. When he compares values to principles, all that Covey really seems to be saying is this: Be sure your values are the ones that really work. And that is a point worth keeping in mind--whether you’re an executive making a decision or Judge Pyncheon planning his day.

BRIAN TRACY:

RENAISSANCE MAN OF SUCCESS TRAINING

Brian Tracy is the speaker on countless Nightingale-Conant audio programs. The Canadian-born seminar leader seems to cover the entire personal and professional development field. His topics range from corporate strategic planning to coping with marital difficulties. Tracy studies existing materials and tries to bring together "only the best" of the available ideas.

Tracy talks about time management in several of his audio and video tapes. Here are some ideas that you can glean from the various Tracy materials:

1) Goals. The more goals you set the "more efficient you will become." Set goals consistent with "your highest aspirations and your innermost values and convictions."

When setting goals, concentrate on doing the right thing, rather than doing things right: "If it’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing right." Ask yourself: "What are you trying to do? How are you trying to do it?"

2) Organized plans of action. A plan answers the question, "How are you trying to do it?":

3) Analysis. Make a list:

4) Set priorities. Determine what is relevant and irrelevant. Ask: "What is the most valuable use of my time, right now? What impact will this have on the future?"

Also ask: "What is the limiting step that determines how quickly I can go from where I am to where I want to be. What is the bottleneck that determines the speed at which I get there?"

5) Concentrate: "Concentration means the ability to stay with a task until it is complete. Concentration means to work in a straight line from where you are to where you want to go, without diversion or distraction, without getting sidetracked into doing things of less importance."

6) Setting deadlines and rewards:

7) The time log: Tracy suggests that you set an alarm to go off every fifteen minutes:

This will bring your full attention to what you are doing. Tracy says, "All of life is the study of attention."

8) Procrastination: It can be either positive or negative. "You must learn to procrastinate creatively on the 80 per cent of things that you have to do that account for only 20 per cent of the value."

9) Delegate: "You should assign, delegate, or have someone else do any job that can be done at a wage less than what you earn or desire to earn."

10) Interruptions: Control the telephone and walk-in visitors. Tracy recommends a line from John Malloy, author of Dress for Success and How to Run the Competition into the Ground. Just say, "Back to work!"

11) Key result areas:

12) Batching Tasks: "When you do a group of similar tasks together, the amount of time it takes you to do each subsequent task declines."

13) Neatness: "Before you start to work clear your work space of everything except what you need to complete the highest priority task on hand."

14) Chunks of time: Allow time for important work. "It is not possible to accomplish meaningful tasks in less than 60 to 90 minutes." Be willing to come in early or stay late. To create uninterrupted time, work through the noon hour while everyone else is at lunch.

15) Transition time: Turn waiting time into learning time. According to Tracy, you can become "one of the best-educated persons in North America" simply by listening to audio cassettes in your car.

16) The telephone: Tracy says that anyone who picks up a telephone without something to write on "is a fool."

17) Punctuality: "Get a reputation for being on time."

18) Work simplification: "Systematize the work process."

19) Saying no: Say no "early and often." You should value all your time the same as your time at work: