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The Personal Efficiency Program

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The Personal Efficiency Program

How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less Time

Wiley,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Knowing how to plan and manage your time is as good as gold. Start now with PEP, the Personal Efficiency Program.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

You know the problem: the amount of paperwork you must do outpaces your efforts to reduce it, and time becomes increasingly scarce. Important tasks do not get done, appointments are forgotten and you find yourself running around in circles. The "Personal Efficiency Program" (PEP) from the Institute for Business Technology puts an end to this problem. The program’s tricks and tactics are as simple as they are efficient. Author Kerry Gleeson’s weapons in the battle against an acute lack of time include thoughtful goal planning, a well-organized filing system and electronic organizational aides. The finest tactic is intangible: develop a philosophy of remembering and focusing on essential tasks. This handy advisor is freshly written and offers lots of tables, checklists and valuable assistance. Its high practical value is diminished only by the somewhat unfortunate structure of the contents: toward the end of the book, you often feel like you are covering advice that you have already read. Then again, at that point, you already will have learned how to set the book aside for later and start saving time right away. getAbstract recommends this manual to all those who suffer chronically from that stressful, too-busy feeling and wish to get a grip on their time.

Summary

Start Now

A manager describes the situation as follows: "You go to the university, get educated in your profession, and get a job. You start your job, and all of a sudden the paper starts coming. No one ever mentioned the paper! What do you keep? Where do you put it? How do you find it again?"

You’ve got a problem. But there is some consolation: you’re not alone. Maybe, like so many others, you create lots of small piles on your desk: important calls to be made, reminders of talks you must have with your boss, papers that need to be faxed and so on. Now that you’ve piled up several stacks of paper (ideally sorted by priority), you no doubt leave them there most of the time, right? And what then? Tomorrow you’ll look through all the piles again and - like magic - you’ve almost doubled the amount of time spent on the piles without getting a single task done. It is time for PEP, your Personal Efficiency Program.

PEP begins with a basic rule: whenever confronted with a task that you can do immediately, do not hesitate. Do it right away. Procrastination is pandemic. Cure it quickly and without compromise. Don’t continue procrastinating; pick up that phone right away...

About the Author

Kerry Gleeson founded a Boca Raton, Florida, consulting firm specializing in white collar efficiency and productivity improvement. Gleeson also wrote The High-Tech Personal Efficiency Program.

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