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are tactile by nature: they need the sense of touch to fully absorb
what they need to know. (Athletes are a prime example.)
We’re different in other ways, as well. Taming Time 5
Some of us seem to have been born neat. Or childhood
experiences, or being born a Virgo, or some other mysterious
series of events made us so. Our childhood bedrooms were the
pride of our lucky parents, our handwriting was (and remains)
neat and tidy, and our sock drawers are perfectly arranged.
Others of us are natural clutter magnets, with parents who
despaired of getting us to clean our rooms. Today, our desks
may vary much resemble the bedrooms of our youth. And
some of us are a combination—neat one day and untidy the
next, with some parts of our lives elegantly organized and other
parts in a jumble.
And some of us are organized in what appears to be a whol-
ly disorganized way. Perhaps you’re the kind of person who can
pull out a sheet of urgently needed paper from the middle of
one of a dozen messy stacks in less time than it might take a
more obviously organized person to retrieve it from a file cabi-
net. The appearance of disorganization (or organization, for that
matter) can be deceiving.
As you learned in the preface, this book isn’t about impos-
ing a “one-style-fits-all” approach to managing your time. Your
individual style should dictate which suggestions and tips you’ll
find most helpful. You may also find, however, that your style
undergoes a slight—or even major—transformation as you
adopt some of the suggestions you’ll learn here. If you’re the
sort of person who never meets deadlines—whose library books
were (or still are) always late—you’ll most likely want to
change some elements of your style. If you already manage
your time well, you presumably are still open to fine-tuning your
approach.
First, though, it’s important to understand and acknowledge
where you are, right now—today.