The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Alec Mackenzie was an internationally known speaker, consultant, and expert on time management.

Pat Nickerson (San Diego, CA), founder and president of EBI, Inc., is the author of Managing Multiple Bosses (978-08144-7025-1). A corporate trainer, she has trained more than 180,000 managers and professionals in time management.

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Suffering from information overload? Being asked to do too much? Can’t say no? If you’re finding your days clogged with endless activities and responsibilities and your work life spinning out of control, it’s time to employ some practical, realistic solutions to the age-old problem of “too much to do and too little time.”

This new fourth edition of the classic book on time management gives you more powerful methods for both maximizing efficiency and getting the most satisfaction out of your workday. In The Time Trap you’ll find out how to:

• Avoid so-called “time savers” that don’t really work.

• Set realistic goals and make commitments you can keep.

• Juggle multiple demands.

• Accurately estimate time needed on new tasks.

• Pinpoint and combat the most tenacious time-wasters.

• Protect your priorities.

Based on decades of research and interviews with businesspeople around the world—and extensively revised to include technology-based solutions to the challenges we all face in the virtual world—The Time Trap is loaded with smart tactics and priceless time management tools. Let this proven guide boost your personal productivity and professional success when time is not on your side.

Praise for Previous Editions of The Time Trap

“Alec Mackenzie provides an invaluable tool to anyone who wants to become more efficient. Here is a concise guide to the causes of poor time management, with both clear and crea­tive methods for eliminating them.”

— Eleanor Brantley Schwartz, Chancellor, University of Missouri–Kansas City

“This edition is Dr. Alec Mackenzie’s best Time Trap book yet. He really understands the time traps that befall us all, and he provides answers that will make our lives more fruitful with less stress. I am delighted to be counted as a ‘disciple’ of his wisdom.”

— Jim Van Houten, General Manager, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Alec Mackenzie was an internationally known speaker, consultant, and expert on time management.

Pat Nickerson, President of EBI Inc., San Diego, is the author of Managing Multiple Bosses. Her seminars on time and priority management have attracted 180,000 managers and professionals—business, government, and military—worldwide.

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PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION ACKNOWLEDGING ALEC MACKENZIE When AMACOM Senior Editor Jacquie Flynn invited me to write this new edition of The Time Trap, I felt honored to help keep Alec Mackenzie’s groundbreaking ideas current. A longtime hero to me, Alec was instrumental in the early success of EBI, Inc., our family-held training company— though he didn’t know it until years later. Why The Time Trap Inspired Us In our first decade in business, based in London, our company came up against stiff competition from the hundreds of organizations flooding the hungry training market there. Our edge? We were marketing the best of American engineering know-how at a time when the British government had mandated training for engineers. But very soon, political upheaval in Britain caused wildcat strikes that shut down electric power for weeks on end. The next year, the gas industry went out—then the railways. Finally, the Post Office shut down for more than three months, cutting off both direct mail and telephone service— isolating every business in those days before smartphones and laptops. These catastrophes shook everyone . . . our customers, our competitors, ourselves. Working like demons whenever we could get power for lights and office machinery, we used newspaper ads instead of direct mail advertising. Like every business, we labored to stay afloat. In our own case, forced by circumstance, we opened EBI partnerships in other European countries— not part of our original plan at all. Those excellent partners taught us that a crisis can sometimes hide a blessing. During those challenging times, we read Alec Mackenzie’s first edition of The Time Trap. It gave us new energy, new ideas, new tools and, above all, encouragement to persevere. Recovery took us five years; success took eight. Thanking Alec Mackenzie “Live” Well into recovery, with our business going steady at last, my husband and I traveled to Schenectady, New York, to attend a Mackenzie seminar on Team Time Management. Walking across the campus with Alec that day, we thanked him warmly for the helpful influence he had long been in our lives. He was modest and unassuming in accepting our thanks. In person, as in his books and seminars, he stayed totally focused on helping all of us escape from our time traps. To influence so many, so well, he drew on his deep ethical sense for answers that were as pertinent then as they will always be. MANY VOICES In this edition, when you read suggestions from “us,” or when “we” tell war stories and offer solutions, the messages will be coming from both Alec Mackenzie and me. For this new edition, you’ll also glean ideas from dozens of managers and specialists from every walk of business who have escaped their time traps. Of course, you are invited to interact, too, by sending questions and your own ideas for future editions to us at timetamer@sbcglobal.net. HOW TO USE THIS EDITION This is a not a book of light reading hints. Many people tell us they have tried for years to apply “helpful hints” gathered from here and there, only to find themselves ensnared again—out of time, out of resources, drowning in a flood of demands. With that in mind, the opening chapters help you focus first on those human habits that sabotage everyone’s best efforts. If you can examine your day-to-day work habits with some humor and compassion, you’ll construct a more dependable escape from whatever practices are keeping you ensnared. Why We Stay Trapped In Part I we unravel the tangled pressures that drive us—the many demands imposed by our culture, our workplace, and ourselves. If you read these five chapters thoughtfully, you’ll derive a uniquely personal view and build a more reliable exit strategy. 1. Why Time Still Baffles the Best of Us 2. Time Traps We’ve Been Taught 3. How to Connect Goals, Objectives, Priorities 4. How to Set Priorities and Hold