With over 10 million copies sold since it was published in 1990, Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People" became a time management classic. Few professionals and managers interested in time management have not heard of Covey's "four quadrants" system for time allocation. Covey's basic suggestion: divide all activities to Important and Urgent, Important and Not Urgent, Not Important and Urgent, and Not Important and Not Urgent. Learning how to place tasks into the quadrants, and how to then allocate time to quadrants, is the key to effective time management. Successful people often excel in handling Important and Not Urgent tasks, so that they have less in the Urgency department.
Now, if you have Palm (or Palm OS device, or a Treo smart phone), you probably use some of its time management utilities - namely, its built-in Date Book and To Do List. These two applications are prepackaged with Palm devices since 1998. However, Palm’s scheduling utilities - just like most other time management tools - do not make use of Covey's time management ideas. In my workshops and in my private consulting, I teach about tools that try to make our scheduling smarter. I found seven utilities to do a great job.
I usually start by discussing the Time Maximizer utility - while not the strongest and the most friendly in my time management arsenal, it does a great job of clarifying what is missing from our regular time schedulers, and how they could be enhanced.
Time Maximizer helps Palm users to maximize effectiveness by enabling a better understanding how much of one's time is being spent on important activities. Time Maximizer begins with the activity information already entered in the built-in Date Book (Calendar) and To Do applications. It then asks you to mark each activity for importance and urgency. Finally, it displays your results graphically. You can compare times to see how your behavior is changing, see how your behavior at work differs to that at home, and “drill down” to see what specific Date Book and To Do activities were driving the results. The authors suggest that once you understand how you are spending your time presently, and your current time management performance, you will be able to improve the way you spend your time in the future.
Time Maximizer is available for a 21-day trial. In my view, it just scratches the surface when in comes to synergize Palm with productivity knowledge. However, it is a good example to grasp the possibilities.
I see that you, too, are a fan of Stephen Covey's Habits books. Perhaps you'd like to take a gander at my own blog?
Posted by: Stephen Covey Blog: Click Here | May 28, 2005 at 01:53 PM