The End of Time Management » ILLUSIONS AND ITALIANS Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. — ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY, pioneer of international postal flight and author of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. — WILLIAM OF OCCAM (1300-1350), originator of “Occam’s Razor” J ust a few words on time management: Forget all about it. In the strictest sense, you shouldn’t be trying to do more in each day, trying to fill every second with a work fidget of some type. It took me a long time to figure this out. I used to be very fond of the results- by-volume approach. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. The options are almost limitless for creating “busyness”: You could call a few hundred unqualified sales leads, reorganize your Outlook contacts, walk across the office to request documents you don’t really need, or fuss with your BlackBerry for a few hours when you should be prioritizing. In fact, if you want to move up the ladder in most of corporate America, and assuming they don’t really check what you are doing (let’s be honest), just run around the office holding a cell phone to your head and carrying papers. Now, that is one busy employee! Give them a raise. Unfortunately for the NR, this behavior won’t get you out of the office or put you on an airplane to Brazil. Bad dog. Hit yourself with a newspaper and cut it out. After all, there is a far better option, and it will do more than simply increase your results—it will multiply them. Believe it or not, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination. How You Will Use Productivity Nw that you have defined what you want to do with your time, you have to free that time. The trick, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013839