Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 23

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Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 23
http://www.zerald.com

By Tom St. Louis

"The Shortest Distance Between You And Greater
Profits(tm)"
August 9, 2002
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World’s Most Concise Time Management Course
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Did you know that we are all bombarded by, depending
on which research study you believe, between 3,000
and 20,000 messages daily?

All the technological advances of the past 40 years
were supposed to make life easier for all of us.
Instead, they have only increased the demands on all
of us. Yesterday, I personally answered about 30
E-mails in the morning. And then at the end of the
day, I had to do it again.

This sheer volume of communication was unheard of in
the history of the world until a few years ago. Now
it’s situation normal.

I was recently reading Herodotus, the "father of
history". I had a chuckle when I read of Croesus,
the Lydian king, who was considering attacking a
certain neighboring Persian kingdom. Before setting
his plan into action, he decided to consult the
oracles at Delphi. So he sent a contingent with the
following instructions: “Go to Delphi. On the
hundredth day of your journey, ask the oracle
these two questions and then hang around for a
while and come back and give me the answer.”

Suffice it to say, the world moved at a much slower
pace in those days. In order to be able to navigate
our daily tsunami or missives, demands, priorities,
objectives, requests, etc., it is absolutely crucial
to master your own time.

The following is the shortest time management course
you will ever take. If you take these principles to
heart, I promise you that on the first day, your
productivity will soar. You will ask yourself what
you have been doing all day long all these years.

But a word of caution. Your behavior will not
magically and instantly change. It will take
persistence to shift your habits so that following
these steps is automatic. But nothing could be more
important to your continued success. Follow these
steps for a week and you’ll never be the same.

The World’s Most Concise Time Management System

1) Change the way you talk to yourself about time.
Stop saying you have no time. Everyone has the same
amount. Some people get more done than you, but have
no stress. How do you think THEY think about time?
Popular metaphysical author Stuart Wilde likes to
say, “I have all the time in the world”. Try that
thought at the beginning of the day when are about
to tell yourself that there’s no way you’ll be able
to get it all done.

Eat the Frog. This comes from an old Mark Twain
essay. He said that if you have to eat a frog, eat
it at the beginning of the day and get it out of the
way as soon as possible. The most important time
management habit you can establish is to always
tackle the thorniest task FIRST every day. This
will ensure that every day is a success. Eat the
Frog and you will feel great about yourself and
you will be propelled into the less taxing tasks
with a full head of steam.

3) Always decide in advance how long a task should
take. Have you ever heard that the time it takes
to do a task always expands to the time allotted?
(Or beyond!) If you don’t know how long a task
will take, it will take a long time. But if you
decide that you will get it done in an hour and
ONLY focus on that one thing, you will find to
your surprise that your focus is better and that
you will come in right on time – most of the time.
The bonus is that your quality will improve, not
decline. Don’t tell me I’m crazy. Try it for a
week and you will see. If you have not been
restricting the time you allot for the most
important tasks, you simply have not been using
your brain to its full capacity.

4) Restrict the number of tasks you take on.
Right now you probably have huge to do lists and
the constant feeling of not being productive. Try
this: at the beginning of the day, pick four or
five or six tasks and allocate the time to do them.
Leave buffer time for messages, e-mail and
contingencies. Get all of them done, and the next
day, make a new list. It sounds obvious, but right
now you are probably pecking at a whole bunch of
tasks and making little progress.

5) Be merciless with distractions. If you have
something you choose to focus on, don’t allow
anything to interrupt. Turn off the phone, lock
your door, and absolutely finish your important
task before checking your messages. The most
important principle in time management is to
recognize that you can make decisions and stick
to them. The only way to take a vacation is to
decide – and then book it! It’s also true for your
most important daily tasks.

If something is important to you, decide to do it,
book off the time, decide how much time you can
allocate to it, stick to your schedule.

6) Restrict your use of E-mail. A corporate executive
recently said, “E-mail is the biggest threat to
business in the 21st century.” I’m sure he wasn’t
joking. Some of us can’t ignore our "In Box" long
enough to get anything done. One productivity study
showed that when our focus is interrupted, it takes
45 minutes to get back to level of focus we were at
before the interruptions. If that is true, then the
average person’s work habits cannot produce maximum
productivity. It’s impossible because the state of
flow can never be reached.

If you only take one suggestion from this mini
course, curtail your e-mail use to specific times.
You will feel a lot better and your productivity will
soar.

That’s it. I wrote this in 37 minutes, instead of the
45 minutes I allocated for it. Not bad. Talk to you
next time.

Tom St. Louis

Go to issue #24
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TESTIMONIAL:
“I must confess that the newsletter “Marketing From
The Heart” is very useful for today’s management
professionals. I read the newsletter very carefully
and usually make several hard copies out of it to
distribute it to my colleagues in the industry.
Thank you very much and do keep up the good job”.
Sanjeev Karajgi, General Manager, Al-Farabi Pharmacy,
Muttrah, Sultanate of Oman
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GOING, GOING, … GONE!
Last time out, I offered a chance for my subscribers
to Participate in the research for Golden Rolodex
Process. There were so many responders, that instead
of restricting it to 10, I’ve decided to open it up
to anyone who wants to play. So, if you’d like to
work one-on-one with me to master referral systems
for your business, please let me know via return
e-mail, and I’ll add your name to the list. We’ll
be getting going next week.
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FORWARD it to them right away!
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