The 10 Best Time Management

Tricks Ive Learned

Like most people, I made more than a few mistakes
in my twenties. I dated some loser guys, rented an
apartment in Manhattan without realizing until I
moved in that there was no sink in the bathroom,
and accepted my first big job for a sucky salary
when I definitely could have negotiated for
more. But one of my biggest doozies, which I
still regret, is that I developed into a horrible
procrastinator back then. I constantly postponed
everything from writing assignments to thank you notesand then
was tormented by the deadlines hanging over my head.
Eventually I defeated the problem with some serious professional
help. No, I didnt see a shrink. Rather, I started writing articles about
time management so that I could interview the top experts and learn
everything I could on the subject. The tricks I picked up (and I created
a few of my own) changed the way I did everything. They not only
cured my procrastination but they also made me far more efficient. In
the fourteen years I ran Cosmopolitan magazine, keeping it number
one on the newsstand all that time, I also raised two kids with my
husband and wrote eight mysterieswithout murdering anyone in
the process.
Here are ten of the best tricks I learned:
1. Pinpoint when youre most in the zone.Im a night owl at heart
but after some trial and error, I discovered that Im most creative
early in the morning. So I switched from writing my novels in the

evenings to early mornings. Yeah, it was brutal at first, and I nearly

bitchslapped my alarm clock a couple of times, but I was definitely
more productive when I started penning words at 7:00 a.m. So
experiment. When do your best ideas bubble up? When do projects
seem almost effortless? If you work in the zone, you get a lot more
done.
2. Regularly ask yourself, Why the hell am I doing this?And if the
answer is, I have no freaking clue,stopdoing it. The wonderful time
management expert Alan Lakein, author of How to Get Control of Your
Time and Your Life, wrote that activities should be assigned a valueA, B,
or C. You want to focus mainly on your priorities, the A stuff. B activities
might need to be done at some point but not right this second. And the C
stuff? Those are the activities you shouldnt waste your pretty little time on.
Delegate them to someone else or just throw them overboard and dont
look back.

3. Figure out your no phrase.In order not to get stuck doing a lot
of C stuff that other people try to suck you into on the personal front,
perfect the art of saying no. Your response should be concise, polite,
slightly vague (so they cant offer an alternative), and unequivocal. A
phrase I like is, Thanks for thinking of me, but unfortunately I wont
be able to. Donotelaborate.
4. Handle a piece of paperor an emailonly once.A lot of time
management experts recommend this and its great advice. Every
time you pick up a piece of paper from your in-box (or look at
something on your computer) and then set it aside, promising
yourself youll deal with it later, you use up seconds that eventually
add up to minutes. Vow to deal with something the first time you look
at it. If it needs an answer, reply now. If it needs to be filed, do it
now. What this means, though, is that you must go through your

inbox only during parts of your day when youve allotted yourself
enoughtimeto fully deal with each item.
5. Speaking of email, only look at it four or five times a day:I
learned this from productivity expert Julie Morgenstern. As you can
imagine, it takes some practice, but its life changing. Rather than
constantly checking, checking, checkingwhich not only eats up so
much of your life but drives people insanerespond to email at only
specially designated times during the day.
6. Schedule stuff youd never think to schedule.Sure, some of the
greatest moments in life happen spontaneously and you dont want to
eliminate that kind of magic. But one of the best ways to make sure
certain things happen in your lifelike yourPimsleur Spanish
lessonsor researching your dream vacationis to put them on your
daily calendar. And as the former editor in chief of Cosmo, I will tell
theres nothing wrong or unsexy about even scheduling sex.
7. Do the math.Periodically you should figure out how much time
certain activities actually take up. Add up the minutes and hours.
Consider, for instance, surfing the web. Thirty minutes a day equals
three and a half hours a week equals a 182 hours a year, which is
seven and a half days a year!
8. Slice the salami.Okay, if I had to thank one person for the fact that
I was able to write eight mysteries and thrillers while I had a full time
job, it would probably be time-management expert Edwin Bliss. In
one of his books he pointed out that we often fail to tackle important
tasks not because we arent capable of doing them but because they
seem so big and unappealinglike a huge hunk of salami. Bliss
recommended slicing big project into thin, appetizing pieces. Rather
than vowing to write for a full morning, which I often did and then

failed miserably at, I tackled my first novel by initially only writing

for fifteen minutes each day. Little by little, pages accumulated.
This principle works with so many thingsprojects, hobbies you hope
to start, exercise. My trainer told me that clients who sign up for one
session a week following the Christmas holidays are far more likely to
still be doing it by summer compared to those who sign up for two or
more sessions a week.
9. Instead of multi-tasking, trymaximizingyour time.Multitasking has been shown to be ineffectiveyou dont do either task as
well as possible. I happen to love the notion ofmaximizingtime.
Rather than doing two things at once, do one thing that serves several
good purposes. Example: As a working mom, I gave up most hobbies
in order to use free time to focus on my kids, but, boy, I missed not
having any pleasures like that. So eventually I started introducing my
kids to stuff I thought we both would love. I turned my son into an
avid bird watcher when he was nine years old, something we still
share today. And when my daughter was young, we became indie
movie aficionados together.
10. Constantly learn from time masters.Im always observing
successful people and noting any tricks they use. And of course I love
it when someone says that theyve benefited from one ofmytricks.
The amazing author Daniel Pink told me that after he read that I
always carried a play in my purse (because I both wanted to learn
more about theater and have something to read in long lines), he
followed suit, tucking his into his jacket pocket.