While chatting with a friend a few days ago I revealed the reality that we don’t particularly care for a certain, yet popular, time management book.
The problem with this particular is simply because the time management system it propounds is so complicated and hard to use that ultimately, it costs salespeople sales!
Interested to learn more, I did a Google search on the book title to see what others had to say about it, and what I learned really worried me – I sure hope YOU are not one of these people!
Here’s what most who also hated the book wrote:
“I didn’t like this time management system. I also tried Book X and System Y and finally chose System Z – that one is great!”
WHOA!!! This is total chaos – readers are not only fooling away countless time by using needlessly complex time management systems that do nothing but LOSE time, on top of that they’re going through book after system…
No wonder why they’re not making enough sales!
The fascination with time management programs reminds me a ton of the “lead sorting” tradition I saw daily in sales departments in the late nineties before salesmen all had notebook computers and customer relationship management software.
Other reps I worked with would arrive in the forenoon, coffee, and then proceed to waste an hour or more “sorting” their sales leads – they’d keep going through the stack of cards, sorting them out into categories of who they’d call first, and so on.
Huh?
Yes, they “sorted” the lead cards all day, rather than simply going to work and contacting people!
Nowadays everything is digital and customer relationship management centric but I’m sure the same silliness continues today, but in a different way.
Fooling about with endless time management methods and sorting your leads both happen to be symptoms of the same disease: PROCRASTINATION!
I’ve looked into time management books in the past myself, and I chose a very simple method: As I begin my morning, I grab a blank sheet of paper and a marker, I compile a list of tasks to be done that day, and I go down the list and cross each off as I complete them.
My advice to you is to give up the “time management” fascination and simply start working each day. Make a list – keep it SIMPLE like I do – whether your list is on paper, on a whiteboard, or in a document on your computer. You’ll not only find your days getting easier and your checks getting bigger, but soon you’ll be working less hours and finishing your work earlier every day, probably the most rewarding gift of them all!
