Book Review: The Time Trap by Alec Mackenzie

The Time Trap is a classic book on time management that is in it’s 4th edition. It gives practical tips for prioritizing and how to be productive with the time you have. It also gives practical suggestions to help you deal with different “time traps”. These range from external issues such as problems with colleagues and overload of email to internal issues such as delegation and task overload.

The book begins with a great pull, asking the reader what he would do with 1 hour more to focus on a goal that you have? If you had an hour more every day available for pursuing your own life goals, how much more productive and beneficial/rewarding would your life be?

If you realize the importance of productivity in your work and day to day life but need some practical advice from experienced professionals, this book is a must for you.

A few points that I found particularly helpful:
1) First was their focus on goals/priorities/objectives which is something I had been doing in my own personal organization but it was good to have this reiterated by experienced professionals.

2) Big Three Priorities/tasks for the day:
This idea is that you should start your day determining 3 things that you MUST accomplish no matter what else you plan to do. Set this out first before you do anything in the day so you know the amount of time to be spent on these tasks.

3) Pareto Law – 20% of your tasks yield 80% of your results:
You need to read the book for the examples but the idea is to clear a lot of the small stuff at various points of your schedule in order to have prime focus on the big stuff.

4) The RED ZONE:
This was my favorite suggestion. The idea stems from the hustle and bustle of today. We are inundated with emails and small pesky interruptions all day long. A lot of interruptions are good. In the past before internet and cell phones people could plan their day from front to back without much variation from their objectives. Today, we usually have different priorities that move in and out of our schedule based on urgency and validity. So, it is important to have time during the day when you are available. But, the RED ZONE concept is to use approx. 2 hours of time per day to be totally focused on a project that you need to get done. Turn your phone off, tell your secretary that you shouldn’t be interrupted for your time in the RED ZONE. This will allow you maximum focus to get the big tasks completed without interruptions. It doesn’t have to be the FIRST part of your day, it needs to be the BEST time of your day.

Read the book for more great suggestions.

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