CHAPTER 1
QUICK! LOOK OVER THERE!
 
 
Try saying these words, with some urgency, to a dog. Then point to the horizon. The odds are he’ll look at the end of your finger in the hopes that there’s food on it. Or he might jump around excitedly, knowing he is supposed to be looking somewhere, but not sure as to which direction that might be. He would certainly not think to follow the direction of your pointing finger, and could not begin to understand that there might be a reward for looking in that direction. For him, his sole interest in the pointing finger is the possibility that you might give him food. Once he sees that there is none, the finger holds no more attraction.
The solutions offered by traditional time management courses and books are very much like that: There’s a message there, and some real solutions, but they point to distant concepts and ignore immediate motivations. They place too much emphasis on agendas, prioritization, activity logs, and filing systems, and although these things do have a place in the overall plan, they are just tools, to be employed later, after we have dealt with the primary time management problem—people.
No agenda system, day planner, or mantra of any kind will work if the people who assign you the tasks and add to the pressure aren’t central to the solution. It’s like trying to organize a collection of feathers on a windy day. There’s no point in organizing and prioritizing things if we can’t do something about outside influences.
To add to that, time is not what it used to be. The information age has changed the traditional approaches to work, health, and life, and has replaced it with a confusing mix of priorities, pressures, and insecurities. People feel compelled to check their e-mail even when they’re on vacation. Their cars become mobile offices. If they eat at work, they eat over the keyboard. And by 10:30 a.m. another carefully planned day degenerates into chaos.
All of this happens even though there are more methods, products, and tools to manage one’s calendar than ever before.
The reason is very basic and very ancient. As human beings, our body type hasn’t changed much in terms of design in the last 50,000 years. Our mind, nervous system, and stomach still react as they did when making fire was big news. Though our collective knowledge has progressed enough to invent computers and nuclear power, our inner workings have not kept pace. We jump every time an e-mail arrives because it’s a new stimulus, just like a noise in the bushes. Similarly, in many parts of the world, we are collectively gaining too much weight because our innate need to store energy in case of future famine has not evolved to cope with fast food.
Thus, to handle time today—in the information age, the age of sensory overload—is to handle a new stage in our human history. We need a system that approaches things from the inside out—that is, by looking at what makes human beings tick, both as individuals and as part of a community. Only then can prioritization, work-life balance, productivity, and the other time management grails become achievable.
This book, Cool Time, helps you develop your system by drawing from three separate streams of established knowledge—(1) project management, (2) psychology, and (3) physiology—in a method that is easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to stick with.
This in turn will give you access to the three key tools of true time management success:
1. inventory,
2. influence, and
3. implementation.

THE THREE IʼS

In brief, inventory refers to understanding work flow—identifying the types of tasks you are likely to encounter in your future based on what you have encountered in your recent past—and then planning accordingly. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds; in fact, it is part of what makes project management a reliable and sound practice. Taking inventory will empower you to predict your day-to-day future, allotting time for regular work, crises, and opportunities, and giving you the strength to defend and spend your time on your terms.
Influence is how you communicate with the people around you—your colleagues, your customers, and your managers—and, more specifically, how you manage their expectations and condition their behavior so their self-interests will coexist with yours. You can influence everyone in your world—including your boss—and actually improve these relationships, while leaving you in greater control over your time and activities. Influence is not manipulation—it’s about increased communication and mutual satisfaction, and it has its roots in both project management and psychology.
Implementation is about successfully integrating these new habits in your life, slowly, carefully, and strategically, so that individual improvements and overall improvement become permanent, and so that victories are acknowledged along the way. Change does not happen overnight. The New Year’s Resolution graveyard is filled with earnest promises for quick self-improvement; however, the human body and mind are not designed for sudden, permanent change, and the same goes for your work community. We need to understand your physiology and that of your neighbors to ensure that new habits take root and thrive.
In short, Cool Time establishes the blueprint for effectively managing time in your workplace as well as in your non-work life.
Cool Time will help you experience:
• An increase in productivity and efficiency: Getting the right things done in the right way. A cool mind generates clear thoughts and maximizes abilities, both physical and mental. Your ability to focus, to think, to negotiate, and to get the right things done will increase. Through a combination of focus and your new ability to deflect distractions such as e-mail, drop-in visitors, even ambient noise, you will achieve more in less time.
• A reduction in mental and physical stress or, more precisely, distress. Distress occurs primarily when what we want to do and what is actually happening come into conflict. It manifests itself physically as discomfort, confusion, illness, and, ultimately, disease. Mental stress derails concentration and forces us to work at reduced capacity. Cool Time will help you reduce stress by reinstating control over activities, expectations, and situations.
• A healthy balance between work and life. We all know how important it is to counteract the stresses of the workday through exercise and rest, but who has the time for that? Access to these essential contributors to prime functioning and healthy living starts, as you will see, with the enormous benefit that results when we move from reaction to control.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND SESAME STREET

Daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 as an economic solution to the problem of living and working in the extended darkness of the winter months. Its acceptance marks a significant development in the relationship between humans and time, since it allowed us to adjust the clocks to suit the needs of business, rather than adjusting business to follow the available daylight.
The introduction of the electric light bulb cemented that dominance over time, and since then, especially within the last fifty years, it has allowed us to become more and more involved with speed: the speed of thought, of communication, of travel, action and of commerce. And, perhaps most importantly, the speed of expectation.
Sesame Street was one of the first TV shows to present learning in a high-speed modular format, using short skits and carefully researched visuals in place of long story lines. The millions of kids who grew up watching Sesame Street used a method of thinking that was profoundly different from that of their elders, who had been raised on narratives—stories, radio plays, and books.
These concepts, daylight saving time, the light bulb, and Sesame Street are but three milestones along the road of increased human activity, one that has taken us to unprecedented heights and achievements, yet continues to outpace our own internal wiring.
Take, for example, e-mail. Has e-mail remained the efficient global messaging system it was designed to be, or has it become something else to you? For a moment, forget about the spam, the viruses, the patches, the repairs and maintenance issues, and think about how many e-mails would pile up in your in-box if you were to take a week’s vacation. Think about the time it takes to go through each one, especially the FYI’s, the multigenerational quotes-within-quotes letters, and all those that you’re merely cc’d on. Do you have to read them? You won’t know if you need to read them until you after you’ve read them. God forbid if you don’t read one and then get called to task about it a week from now.
And you know that going home won’t help because the e-mail will continue to arrive. There will always be something else in your in-box to tempt you to stay later and work just a little longer. For some the answer to that is to get a phone or a PDA that can receive e-mail at home. They take it into the bathroom in case something important comes in while they’re in the shower, and they set it on the bedside table at night. “At least then,” they say, “I can check in and know everything’s OK. That way I can go to sleep.”

THE SPEED OF EXPECTATION

The Speed of Expectation has taken over. We crave the stimulation of the immediate. We need to be in touch, to communicate, to get instant answers. Even if we think we don’t like it and would prefer to leave work at work, the addiction to quick stimulation makes it a permanent need.
Occasionally the compounded stresses of this lifestyle lead to rage. Road rage and air rage, for example, have been born out of unrealistic expectations—that we can and must get to our destination quickly and conveniently. We envision the trip optimistically, with no traffic congestion or delays in mind. Ads for new cars and for air travel always depict clear skies, clear roads, smiling people, and uninterrupted fun. We are conditioned to expect no delays. Traffic jams and airport hold-ups, which frustrate us because they slow us down, release the pent-up frustrations of a life lacking control. Not everyone resorts to outward violence, of course. Some merely internalize their frustrations, to have them later emerge in surprising ways. Take reality TV, for example...

THE ERA OF SCHADENFREUDE

Reality TV demonstrates how the age of overload has given birth to the era of schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is a German term that means “taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others,” which is precisely why most people watch reality TV—to observe the expressions on the faces of those who have been voted off the island; whose houses, faces, and lives have been transformed, not always in the way they had hoped; who are trapped, on-screen, in uncomfortable situations. People watch, not to cheer the winners, but to revel in the discomfort of the losers, knowing that for a moment at least, there is someone whose powerless situation we can observe and enjoy. This is how the loss of control manifests itself.
Back in our own lives, speed abounds. In radio broadcasting, for example, dead air is a bad thing. It takes one-third of a second for you, the listener, to pick up on the fact that the radio’s silence is longer than it should be, and that someone has missed his cue. We are always consciously and unconsciously aware of the speed of existence, which has resulted in habits and reactions such as:
• Skipping breakfast because there’s no time for it in the morning.
• Feeling frustrated by a busy signal on the phone.
• Using a cellphone when driving.
• Hearing news stories about parents “flipping out” on their kids’ teachers or coaches.
• Feeling out of touch when the Internet service goes down.
• Wondering why someone you called or e-mailed an hour ago hasn’t returned the message.
• Expressing frustration at traffic jams and transit delays.
Perhaps the source of this problem should be traced to the dawn of the information age in 1939.

THE 1939 WORLDʼS FAIR, NEW YORK CITY

In 1939 there was a World’s Fair in New York City. It was a great time for people to explore the wonders of science and progress. Huge Art Deco pavilions invited eager visitors to experience a future in which sleek, gleaming cars with fins and transparent space bubbles waited to whisk citizens back to suburban homes where robots performed the household chores. By 1985 or maybe 1990, humankind would have to work only two hours a day, leaving the rest of the time for leisure. Or so they said.
The 1939 World’s Fair heralded the age of science, the age of speed. But few working professionals today can boast of living the expected two-hour workday, and that’s because discovery is never enough. Every time we discover we can do something, we seek a way to do it better (which is good), or faster (which is also good). We then try to find time in an already crammed schedule to fit this new talent in alongside other priorities, which is not so good. As we raise the bar for our abilities, we also raise the bar for our expectations while the platform of time remains fixed. That’s why we don’t have a two-hour workday. For although we can do more in two hours today than someone in 1939 could have done in an entire day, our human makeup demands that we continue working, and our mental makeup renders us blind to current and past achievements. It’s a condition called sensory adaptation.
A good example of this would be the last time you acquired a new computer. Most likely the first half-hour of use was the most fascinating. Everything was so much faster than your old PC—incredibly fast! Yet very quickly you grew used to the speed of the new machine. It became normal, so that you could re-experience how far you’d come only by going back and working on your older, seemingly arthritic PC.
Because sensory adaptation is so common and so natural, I often get asked for the “time management magic bullet,” the secret that people think will help them work faster, so they can either get it all done or just get caught up. With a wink, I ask them if they would prefer this solution in aerosol or pill form, since I usually have both in stock, and which, when taken correctly, will make them move in fast-motion, like a movie from the 1920s.
I warn them, however, that it comes with an undesirable side effect: The moment people start working consistently in this new speeded-up mode, the body adjusts, and that new pace becomes the norm. And then they will want to do just one more task, to work through lunch, to take on more and more, to never say No. That’s when those “magic bullet” customers come back to see me for the extra-strength dose.
The moment we raise the bar of expectation, we forget the limits of our current abilities. Sensory adaptation generates a kind of ergonomic inflation, in which tasks expand to fill the available space, expectation follows, and nobody gains ground.
And it’s for that reason that Cool Time seeks to provide a solution.

SO IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU?

When I tell people that I teach time management skills, I often get responses such as: “I took a time management course once ...,” which is usually followed by the reasons why the course didn’t succeed. Others will say, “That stuff wouldn’t work at our place—we’re pretty unique . . .” Though the reasons may vary, most people admit they’re still looking for a better way.
If you work for a living, whether in an office or on the road, as part of a company or as a home-based entrepreneur; if you report to others (customers, managers) and/or have others report to you; if you have work that needs to get done and have (or would like to have) a life outside of work, then Cool Time is for you.
If you can admit to any of the following symptoms, then Cool Time is for you:
• New tasks seem to arrive too quickly before you’re finished with current work.
• Things pile up too quickly.
• Meetings happen in place of better things you could be doing.
• Incoming calls and visitors take up too much time.
• Conflicts happen.
• The workspace becomes cluttered.
• Sticky notes litter the walls.
• Your to-do list is unrealistically long.
• You take work home regularly.
• You feel tempted to go into the office on the weekends.
• Your hobbies, nutrition, and exercise goals are falling short.
• You simply have no time.
If you’ve experienced any of these, then Cool Time is for you:
• an increase in your stress level on Sunday afternoon as you anticipate Monday morning
• buildups in stress as the day progresses
• feeling a lack of control
• feeling overwhelmed
• conflicts between family and work
• fatigue, loss of sleep, or trouble sleeping
• resentment toward distractions/politics in the office
• the sense of missing out on some part of life
• feeling burned out
• lapses of memory
• anger toward slower drivers or slow elevators
• feeling and worrying about being out of shape
• feeling like you’ll never catch up
It doesn’t matter what kind of tools you use—cellphones, PDAs, software calendars (like Microsoft Outlook), or paper-based day planners—because it’s not the tool you use, but the technique that counts. It’s about creating your own system for keeping in control and feeling in control.
We each have a lot to do each day, and a finite number of days at our disposal. We base much of our self-worth on the tasks and jobs that we’re assigned to do, sometimes at the expense of our health, leisure, and family. We actually shouldn’t be doing much of what we think we should be doing, and the importance of much of what we think we are doing is artificially inflated in our own minds due to distraction, fatigue, and stress.
The approaches you choose to adopt from this book should become extensions of your own method of living and working. The way in which they help you interact with the people around you will shield you from overload while keeping lines of communication and expectation clear. These approaches must be woven into the existing fabric of your life and become a tangible garment, one that is not only comfortable for you to wear, but one that others can see, touch, and appreciate.
So, let’s get started.