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Time Management
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The ABC System
Preached by virtually every time management expert (especial-
ly time guru Alan Lakein) and practiced by more organization-
sensitive people than any other method, the ABC system is the
“grandfather” of prioritizing strategies. In a nutshell, it says that
all tasks can—and should—be given an A, B, C value:
• A tasks are those that must be done, and soon. When
accomplished, A tasks may yield extraordinary results.
Left undone, they may generate serious, unpleasant, or
disastrous consequences. Immediacy is what an A priority
is all about.
• B tasks are those that should be done soon. Not as press-
ing as A tasks, they’re still important. They can be post-
poned, but not for too long. Within a brief time, though,
they can easily rise to A status.
• C tasks are those that can be put off without creating dire
consequences. Some can linger in this category almost
indefinitely. Others—especially those tied to a distant
completion date—will eventually rise to A or B levels as
the deadline approaches.
Huh? There’s one additional
Perhaps the manager who category that you might
wrote the following memo like to use, if you feel that
might like to rethink his or her prior-
three are really not suffi-
ities:“Doing it right is no excuse for cient to cover all your
not meeting the schedule.”
bases:
• D tasks are those that, theoretically, don’t even need to be
done. They’re rarely anchored to deadlines. They would
be nice to accomplish but—realistically—could be totally
ignored, with no obvious adverse or severe effects.
Strangely, though, when you attend to them (often when
you have nothing better to do), they can yield surprising
benefits. A few examples: reading an old magazine that
turns out to contain a valuable article, buying a new read-