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Time Management
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Making It Up in Volume
The Institute for the Future, Pitney Bowes Inc., and San
Jose State University did a study in late 1996 that elicited
responses from 972 employees of Fortune 1,000 companies. It revealed
that workers send and receive an average of 178 messages each day
via telephone (24 per day, on average), e-mail (14 per day), voicemail
(11 per day), and other mediums. 84% indicated that at least three
times per hour their work was interrupted by messages.
And this was in 1996.The numbers today would be much higher.
ing amounts of complex data that we need to do our jobs, man-
age our personal finances, communicate with friends, and
organize the ever-expanding volume of information we receive.
As a result, we can be far more productive than perhaps any
other generation in history. And we now have the tools—techno-
logical, strategic, and personal—that can help us in our efforts
to manage our time, enhance our efficiency, and better organize
our lives. All it takes is to be open to change and willing to
embrace all those new things and ideas that are available to us.
We can indeed tame time.
To do so, you must be alert to the challenges that all these
changes have generated. For example, when you open your e-
mail in the morning, you probably face a blizzard of communi-
cations. Some of these are about things you need to know.
Many, however, are mere clutter—ads providing information oth-
ers want you to know, but about which you couldn’t care less,
junk mail that clogs your in-box and demands your time to sort
through.
And it’s about more than e-mail. Maybe you remember
when secretaries handled correspondence, answered phones,
screened calls, provided reminders of deadlines and appoint-
ments, and helped to prioritize the day’s tasks? Today, in many
companies, managers sit before their computers, typing their
own correspondence, answering their own phones and voice-
mail messages, making entries in their calendars, and setting
priorities without the aid of an assistant. With all of the timesav-
ing attributes of these new technologies, who, after all, needs a