I don’t know where it all started, but most of the world works from 9am-5pm. Who in the world ever came up with that concept? Does he think that everyone in this world needs 8 hours to complete all their work?  Those hours are so famous that Dolly Parton sang a song about it. The bad thing about it though is that we are stuck at work for 8 hours with only 2 hours worth of real work. There is no possible way that we have 8 hours worth of work in a day. Don’t blame the employee who kills time doing nonsense work. It’s not their fault that they find different ways to fill up the rest of their hours.

With that said, thank goodness that most of us don’t work 16 hours. If we were to work 16hrs, we would have to find things to do to fill up the rest of the hours. Isn’t it amazing that during an emergency, where we have to leave work in 3 hours, deadlines force us to complete those assignments before we head out of the office? This is an interesting phenomenon because it proves that it doesn’t take 8 hours of work to finish those important tasks.

So what just happened in the previous example? This is where Parkinson’s law came into play. It says that a task becomes more important relative to the time given to complete the task. Let’s say, for example, someone gave you a task to complete in 24 hours. The deadline will force you to focus on the project to get it done. The same task with a one week deadline will be brushed aside until the last two days before the due date. The closer a task is to the deadline, the more important it will be, which in turn will cause you to be very productive due to your focus. You will be hammering out more on your project in those last hours than you ever will had you started earlier.

So how can you apply Parkinson’s law in your life? First you have to identify your most important tasks using the 80/20 rule. Then you can give those tasks short deadlines to give them the impression that they are very important. Best Buy is a company that is bucking the 9am-5pm trend. They have let employees come in and work whenever they want. All they ask in return is that the project or task be completed by the deadline. The company saw that productivity increased by 35%. By applying both rules, you can increase your productivity without having to find time to fill or waste.

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback on any of my articles when you are done reading. In addition, tell me what other personal development topics you want to hear about. Thanks.

Allright, I admit that I say “I don’t have time to do that” more than Wendy’s says “Where’s the beef?” Time management is a huge problem for many people these days. Were talking about people that range from CEOs to students, garbage collectors to couch potatoes and security guards to bank tellers. My friends always tell me that there are never enough hours in a day.

Basically, time management puts your skills to the test by allowing you to play this one player game called prioritizing. In this game, you set goals and list them from number 1 to whichever number in order of personal importance. You then get to decide what time frame you want to acheive those goals. If you can get this basic structure down, then you will be on your way to working “smarter” instead of working “harder and longer.” When you become an expert at time management, the joys of life will begin to emerge. Who wouldn’t want more time for rest, leisure, and fun times?

The first step, like I mentioned in an earlier article, is to set your goals. They can be practically anything: professional (I want to be a OB/GYN doctor),  personal (I want to be a stricter father), family (I want 7 more kids), social (I want to catch up with my 1st grade girlfriend) or financial (I want to be richer than Bill Gates). Think of what your goals are and decide what you want to accomplish. After doing some soul searching, rank your goals in terms of importance and put your goals down in writing. This step is is really important because without it, you won’t know what your goals are and whether or not you have accomplished them or not. Make sure you realize that you can’t do it all at one time. Not even a robot can. The easiest way to handle this problem is to break down large or long-term goals into a series of small steps.

Step two calls for analysis of where your time goes and how you use it. You can do this by keeping a log book for one week to find out exactly what you do with your time. Be as specific as possible in the log book. Record everything that you do at work, at home or in your car. You will probably notice a pattern of peak busy hours during certain times of the day and week. This can be handled easily by reducing the time on less important activities and by planning ahead. You can easily take out some of the activites and place them in a different time slot for another day. Finally, you may see that you will have large amounts of free time. These free time periods should be used to fill up activities from one of your busy days.

Step three is to notice on your time log what you do to waste time and try to eliminate those habits. I’ve been guilty of almost all the common time wasters such as talking on my cellphone for long periods of time, reading my email 50 times per day, putting things off until the next day, sleeping in, being at useless meetings and driving to work. 

Step four is to put together your own time plan. There are 3 ways to accomplish this. The first way is obviously the easiest way to make a plan. Just list all the things that you want to do and cross them off as you have the time and the desire to tackle the task. The second way to create a plan is similar to the first. After you list the things you want to do, prioritize them starting from the most important to the least important. The third and final way to plan is to make your list, order them in terms of importance and put a detailed time schedule to each task.

Step five is to act. But before you do, you have to look at your own time patterns. That is, as former NFL player Deion Sanders says, “Prime Time!” Your prime time is the time during which you are most efficient. This is the same principle as the biological clock is to the scientific world. Some people do their best work early in the morning, others in the late afternoon and others in the middle of the night. Your first step is to find out which one of the three categories I just mentioned you fall into. Once this is done, plan to spend that time on your creative thinking and most demanding jobs. For myself, I am not an early morning nor an afternoon person, but I am most energetic during the late night-early morning hours. That is the time that I do my best work. One major point I want to make is to try and reduce interruptions during your best working hours. Did you know that tasks get accomplished twice as much in one quiet hour vs. tasks in two regular hours of frequent interruptions.

Step six is to increase your available time during some hours of the day or week to be with others. This is very similar to office hours in college that make professors and teaching assistants available for students to come in and ask questions. So use this same technique to set aside strict time to be available for members of your family, friends or co-workers only.

Step seven is to be an expert of the balancing act. I’m not talking about Bozo the clown walking on a line 100 feet off the ground and across the Grand Canyon. I am talking about balancing your life between work, rest, family, relationships, leisurely activities and nose picking. The way you become an expert of the balancing act is to give up the less important activities which, in turn, frees up time for more important activities. It all comes down to prioritizing again. Just like a kid at Toys R’ Us who can’t have every Lego set in the building, the kid has to choose the set that is most important to him at the time.

By following these seven steps, you will be well on your way to being a time management expert. Who wouldn’t want extra time to do the things that they like?

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback on any of my articles. In addition, tell me what other personal development topics you want to hear about. Thanks.

The Pareto principle, known famously as the 80-20 rule, states that, for any kind of event, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Pareto observed that 80% of the income in Italy went to 20% of the population. He also noticed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population. In his own garden, he observed that 80% of his garden peas were produced by 20 % of the peapods.

The rule became so famous that he and others observed the same phenomenon outside the scope of economics.  This principle can be applied to practically anything. For example, in terms of relationships: 80 % of nurturing, support and satisfaction are provided by 20% percent of the people you know such as friends, colleagues and family. In the business world: 80 %of profit comes from 20% percent of your customers. This is what businesses focus on these days to increase their bottom line profits. For self productivity: 80% percent of what you get done comes from 20% of your activities. 

I have put Pareto’s principle to good use myself. I realize why my favorite NHL hockey team, the Los Angeles Kings, is not doing so well. The reason why is because of Pareto’s law. This is analysis as of games played until Dec.9th, 2007. Of the 64 (80%) goals that the team has scored, it is spread out among 9 (38%) players. As they do in the business world, we need to focus on the 20% of the customers. That means, we have to have the bulk of the scoring spread among the top 4 or 5 players. The reason Detroit and Carolina are at the top of the standings is because is because 80% of their goals come from 20% (4-5 skaters) of their players. Remember, the minimum optimal ratio is 80/20!

How can we put the Pareto’s 80/20 principle to good use besides hockey stats? Well, there are two things you can do right now.

1) Time management: When we get bombarded with many tasks to do, simply write them down and figure out which 20% of the tasks will contribute to 80% of the results that you seek. Then simply just focus on those tasks that fall into the 20%

2) Focus: Don’t try to do more than you can handle. Just do more of the correct things. For example, 20% percent of our problems contribute to 80% of all the misery and hardship. Working on just that 20 % can greatly contribute to our personal growth. So if the 20% of your problems are the girl that just dumped you, the street bum that scratched your car or the dog that ate your homework, forget about it and you will feel 80% better!

With a little effort and the application of the 80/20 rule, we can save a lot of our emotional and physical energy to concentrate on things that really matter to us as well as enriching our lives in the process. This is a small side note regarding the 80/20 rule: the numbers don’t always add up exactly. The rule has also been described as 90/10 or 95/5 but the minimal ratio is 80/20. Which part of the crowd would you rather be in? The 20% that own 80% of the money or the 80% that own 20% of the money??

Please feel free to leave comments and feedback on any of my articles. In addition, tell me what other personal development topics you want to hear about. Thanks.