Book summary “How to get control of your time and your life”: summary

Introduction

You wake up with good intentions, yet the week slips away while you react to endless demands. There never seems to be enough time for the things that truly matter to you.

Alan Lakein argues in How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life that time is life, and managing it means controlling your own destiny. Effectiveness in choosing the right tasks matters far more than mere efficiency in doing chores quickly.

The book provides a step-by-step system to bridge the gap between your daily actions and your deepest desires. You will learn to identify your true values, translate them into lifetime goals, and structure your days around high-priority activities.

• How do you discover what you actually want from life?
• How can you stop procrastinating on important tasks?
• How do you clear away trivial paperwork and interruptions?

1. Control Starts With Planning

Everyone must live on 168 hours a week. How you spend those hours determines the quality of your existence.

Effectiveness is far more important than efficiency because it focuses on selecting the right task rather than just doing tasks quickly.

Alan Lakein distinguishes himself from time-and-motion organizers who eliminate thinking and reduce activities to mechanical routines. An effectiveness expert puts more thought into activities, ensuring people work less hard, do what they actually want, and enjoy life more.

Taking a potentially valuable trait and turning it into a liability leads to dysfunction.

• The overorganized person focuses more on making and updating lists than accomplishing tasks.
• The overdoer is too busy to assess true value and lacks flexibility.
• The time nut is overwhelmingly preoccupied with saving every single minute and makes everyone nervous.

The time nut knows how to save 11 seconds eating cereal. True control means balance, avoiding these extremes.

You Are the Decision-Maker

Individuals always retain ultimate free choice in how they spend their time, even when facing outside pressures and constraints. While background, age, and economic status impose real limits, other people can only recommend what to do. You ultimately accept or reject the recommendation. Blaming outside factors often masks a failure to manage the areas where personal control does exist.

Mr. Williams spent 14 years in the auto industry before considering a career change. As an assembly plant production manager in Kalamazoo, he considered changing careers, moving to Chicago, or becoming a real estate salesperson amidst many options.

The ABC Priority System

Control starts with planning, which is defined as bringing the future into the present so you can act on it now. Occasional or special-purpose planning runs the risk of failing when planning is most needed. Serious planners treat planning like a professional photographer taking many shots and refining them, whereas amateurs take sporadic, blurry shots and give up.

Every list should be completed by setting priorities using the ABC Priority System based on the relative value of tasks. Writing lists without setting priorities is incomplete. Tasks are categorized as high value, medium value, or low value, and further broken down numerically to ensure high-value items are addressed first.

• Write a capital letter A to the left of items on the list that have high value.
• Write a B for those with medium value.
• Write a C for those with low value.
• Break down A-items further into A-1, A-2, A-3, and A-4 based on time of day and urgency.

2. What Do You Really Want From Life

Unwritten goals remain vague Utopian dreams. Committing goals to paper makes them concrete, allowing them to be analyzed, refined, updated, and scrutinized. This exercise helps uncover important goals never previously verbalized.

Writing a Lifetime Goals Statement helps you discover true desires, provides life direction, and acts as a measuring stick for alternate activities.

15,000 seminar and consultation participants have composed Lifetime Goals Statements. You can join them by setting aside a small amount of time.

• Take about fifteen minutes with several pieces of paper, a pen or pencil, and a clock.
• Write What are my lifetime goals? at the top of a sheet of paper.
• Take exactly two minutes to list answers as generally and inclusively as possible.
• Give yourself an additional two minutes to make any changes necessary.
• Write How would I like to spend the next three years? (or five years if over thirty) and list answers quickly for two minutes.
• Take another two minutes to include missed items on the three-year question.
• Write If I knew now I would be struck dead by lightning six months from today, how would I live until then?
• Write answers to the six-month question for two minutes, then spend two minutes improving them.
• Spend an additional two minutes minimum reviewing and improving your goals statements across all three questions.

Goals are written on paper rather than carved in stone, allowing priorities to be adjusted continuously. Competing goals force higher quality time allocation or deliberate trade-offs over time. You resolve goal conflicts by selecting top priorities from written goal lists and refining them into a preliminary Lifetime Goals Statement.

• Take your Lifetime Goals list and spend one minute selecting your top three goals.
• Label the most important A-1, the second A-2, and the third A-3.
• Repeat the selection and labeling process for your three-year list and your six-month list.
• Write My three most important long-term goals are... on a fresh piece of paper.
• Write the top three long-term goals in order as A-1, A-2, and A-3.

Short-Term Planning

You cannot directly do a goal. You can only do activities, which serve as stepping stones toward goals. Trying for quantity and speed when listing activities lets intuition operate and bypasses inhibitions.

A high school sophomore wants to be a professional baseball player and starting pitcher on his varsity team, so his winter activities include running a mile every day and throwing indoors in the gym three times a week.

Long-term goals must be complemented by short-term planning that specifies concrete, actionable steps.

• Take three fresh sheets of paper and write one of the selected A-goals at the top of each.
• Spend three minutes making as long a list as possible of activities for the first A-goal.
• Spend three minutes each to list activities for the second and third A-goals.
• Review each list for a minimum of three minutes to add, delete, consolidate, refine, and invent activities.
• Ask yourself for each activity whether you are committed to spending a minimum of five minutes on it in the next seven days.
• Draw a line through any activity where the answer is no.
• Combine pruned items into a single list of about a dozen activities.
• Classify the best use of time as A-1 and number remaining A-activities accordingly.
• Set deadlines and schedule the A-activities into the next seven days.

3. Scheduling and Making the Most of Priorities

Actively scheduling large blocks of time for high-value A-activities and making a daily To Do list ensure that your goals translate into actual accomplishments.

To accomplish lifetime goals, you must actively schedule large blocks of time for high-value A-activities instead of merely fitting in routine tasks. Scheduling requires more than accommodating meetings and deadlines. It means reserving specific days or time blocks for major projects to build momentum.

• Put your lifetime goals in the background and look at what you have to do today.
• Set aside a special A-time each day and firmly banish all C-items during this period.
• Start small by allocating fifteen minutes each day exclusively for A-items and gradually increase.
• Try blocking A-time horizontally on a weekly calendar at the same time each day or vertically down the page.

A husband who felt he never had enough time alone with his wife went through her calendar and wrote busy alongside all Tuesday nights, successfully freeing up A-time for them. Rigid schedules cause tension, so you must build flexibility and uncommitted slack time into your day to handle unexpected crises and interruptions. Filling every moment with back-to-back appointments creates frustration and nervousness.

• Always reserve at least an hour a day of uncommitted time.
• Leave holes in your schedule for recovery from long interviews and to catch up on paperwork.
• Get absolute musts out of the way early in the day to feel less frantic about interruptions.

Maximizing productivity requires identifying and utilizing your internal prime time for creative concentration and external prime time for dealing with others. Internal prime time is when your concentration and thinking are clearest, which should be reserved exclusively for prime projects rather than routine mail or reading. External prime time is when external resources like people are most available for decisions and meetings.

• Check your concentration over the next two weeks to identify your two clearest thinking hours as your internal prime time.
• Save all your internal prime time for prime projects.
• Shift routine tasks and chores to non-prime hours.
• Identify when external resources are most available and align your schedule to meet them during those windows.

A housewife who rushed to finish all her housework by 11 A.M. was too exhausted afterward for candlemaking. Reversing her schedule netted her two hours of prime time for her project.

Internal Prime Time

Taking a short amount of time daily to plan is essential, and doing it both in the morning and evening provides distinct compounding advantages. Failing to plan prevents you from discriminating among ABC tasks. Morning planning provides momentum and clarity for the day, while evening planning offers historical perspective and allows the unconscious mind to work overnight.

• Spend only ten minutes at the beginning or end of the day planning.
• Use Friday afternoon for reviewing the week and planning the following week's projects in a general way.
• Use Monday morning for refining your plan and starting your A-goals of the week.
• Come in fifteen minutes early the next morning to sharpen up the plan made the previous evening.

Conscientious clients found that all their weekly planning came to less than four hours a week, resulting in more A-1 tasks completed and less trivia. Tracking every minute of your 24 hours a day and 168 hours a week is a burdensome waste of time, but selective recordkeeping of specific problem items can drive meaningful behavior changes.

• Avoid keeping track of your time 24 hours a day across 168 hours a week.
• Watch your time selectively by keeping track of particular problem items consuming inordinate amounts of time.

The Daily To Do List Game

A primary secret of successful people is making a To Do list every single day, ranking items by ABC priority, and treating completion like a game.

Successful people use a visible master To Do list daily as a guide to action, avoiding miscellaneous scraps of paper. Rather than trying to complete every minor item, the objective is to ensure high-priority A items are executed first, delegating whatever possible.

• Write all To Do items on a master list or notebook rather than miscellaneous scraps of paper.
• Look over the list before doing anything and delegate as many tasks as possible.
• Label each item on your list according to ABC priority.
• Go down your list doing all the A's before the B's, and the B's before the C's.

A prominent business executive treated his daily To Do list like a bingo card, checking off items as opportunities arose and aiming for a no-miss day with a perfect score. Overlooked patches of time such as transition periods upon waking, commuting, coffee breaks, lunches, and waiting periods can be converted into productive goal pursuits. Transition time offers quiet moments alone to plan the day or listen to educational materials.

• Use morning transition time to reflect on the best use of your day and work on lifetime goals.
• Listen to cartridge tapes, practice vocabulary, or preview your day during commuting.
• Use coffee breaks to learn a dictionary word or make important personal phone calls.
• Think through tricky work problems sequentially during waiting times by outlining them step by step.

Robert Kennedy listened to Shakespeare plays while shaving. An architect who worked sixty hours a week cut fifteen hours of drafting from his schedule, improving his family life and health while boosting creativity. Work expands to fill the time available only when alternatives are absent, so allowing people to leave early or pursue personal interests creates an incentive for efficiency.

• Convince your boss to let you go home early if your work is finished by offering it as an incentive for speed.
• Ask permission to satisfy personal priorities like reading books or writing letters while handling routine desk duties if leaving early is denied.

You can squeeze progress toward lifetime goals out of spare minutes by establishing short-term special-emphasis goals lasting from a week to a couple of months. By keeping a specific focus active in your mind or writing it down on a card in your pocket, you can pounce on spare moments throughout the day to execute small A-activities.

• Develop special-emphasis goals lasting from a week to a couple of months.
• Do something each day to squeeze in at least one A-activity for each special-emphasis goal.
• Write the goal on a letter card and slip it into your pocket as a reminder.
• Put up a private desk sign to remind yourself of behavioral habits you want to change.

A gourmet cook had a special-emphasis goal of trying a new vegetable dish each day for a week by laying out the recipes in advance. As you become more proficient and successful, you must continually upgrade your standards by turning last year's A-activities into routine C-activities and pursuing higher-level goals. Activities that once demanded critical attention eventually become routine procedures that can be delegated or streamlined.

• Record the necessary steps of an annual task so it becomes a routine reference guide next year.
• Go through customer or prospect files weekly and weed out low-volume prospects.
• Recognize when an activity is mastered and consciously shift your focus to more difficult challenges.

A salesman who continually upgraded his customer base threw away 20 percent of their customers in terms of volume each week. He eventually treated a $100-unit customer as a routine C-item and focused exclusively on a $500-unit account.

4. Tasks Better Left Undone

You can eliminate low-value tasks and paperwork overwhelm by applying the 80/20 rule, converting chores into CZs, and creating quiet time.

People frequently escape difficult, high-value A-activities by focusing on easy C-tasks to gain a false sense of accomplishment. Top-value activities often involve unknown risks, complexity, or lack of perfection on the first try. To avoid this discomfort, people busy themselves with routine paperwork or desk-neatening, tricking themselves into believing they are clearing the way for future important work.

A field representative rushing to catch a flight gives unnecessary instructions to office help, delaying his departure. A homemaker collects recipe clippings instead of cooking substantial meals.

The 80/20 rule dictates that 80 percent of value comes from 20 percent of items, allowing people to focus on top priorities while ignoring trivial ones. When items are arranged by value, a small fraction yields the vast majority of results. Identifying and executing these few key items while leaving the rest undone prevents overwhelm and maximizes productivity.

A political candidate realized 80 percent of his exposure came from less than 20 percent of his speeches, allowing him to cut low-value appearances and win the election.

• Arranging items in order of value
• Finding the top 20 percent of items that yield 80 percent of value
• Labeling them A and getting them done
• Leaving most of the other eight items undone

Many trivial C-tasks can be turned into CZ's, which are tasks that can be deferred indefinitely without harm or allowed to die a natural death. By asking whether it would be terrible if a task were left undone, people can eliminate unnecessary chores. Unsure tasks can be filed on 3x5 index cards in a Possible CZ's folder and reviewed monthly to discard obsolete items.

Mr. Bean used a file labeled with dates to store bottom-drawer C's for a year, finding that most items became obsolete and unnecessary over time.

• Asking the question How terrible would it be if I didn't do this C?
• Making a note of uncertain items on a 3x5-inch index card
• Sticking the card in a file folder labeled Possible CZ's
• Looking through the file folder once a month and throwing out unnecessary cards

Handling Paperwork and Information

Paperwork efficiency is dramatically increased by handling each piece of paper only once or making immediate progress on complex items. Putting down a document requiring a response forces a later setup time to re-familiarize oneself with it. If complete action is impossible, taking even the smallest step forward moves the project along.

An executive who previously shuffled papers constantly learned to screen mail immediately into Action, Information, and Deferred folders.

• Screening and sorting incoming mail critically
• Writing informal notes right on incoming mail and sending it to the out-box
• Handling each piece of paper only once
• Doing something to move ahead the project every time a paper is picked up

Books can be consumed rapidly by applying a newspaper-reading approach to extract key ideas rather than reading every detail. Nonfiction books are built around core messages expanded from outlines. Readers can scan book jackets, tables of contents, and summaries to find main ideas quickly, saving time while absorbing essential concepts.

A doctor with an office piled high with unread books switched to summarizing items on 3x5 cards and cleared space on his desk.

5. Overcoming Procrastination and Fear

Procrastination and fear on high-priority tasks can be overcome through tactical methods like the Swiss Cheese Method, stimulus change, and confronting the price of delay.

When faced with an overwhelming A-1 task, procrastination often sets in because the total time or effort required feels too large. By committing just a few minutes to an instant task connected to the project, you create holes in the task, build momentum, and eventually transition into full involvement. Preparing an annual departmental budget feels overwhelming and takes fifty hours, but breaking it down by getting last year's budget or obtaining files serves as initial instant tasks.

• Make a list of possible instant tasks connected to the overwhelming A-1.
• Set priorities among the listed instant tasks.
• Spend five minutes or less executing the chosen instant task to make a hole in the project.

If you cannot bring yourself to tackle an A-1 task, negotiate with your resistance by capping the effort at five minutes. This lowers the psychological barrier to starting, similar to testing cold water before jumping in, and often leads to sustained interest once you begin. A man reluctant to start a doctor-prescribed exercise manual used a kitchen timer to limit his exertion to five minutes, successfully bypassing his initial groaning and beginning his routine.

• Note the time on your watch and decide to spend exactly five minutes on the A-1.
• Work on the task with the firm guarantee that you can stop after five minutes.
• Quit after five minutes if you still wish to, or continue if your interest has grown.

The Swiss Cheese Method

Combat boredom and fatigue on long projects by introducing stimulus change through varied tasks, shifting locations, or alternating between information collection and processing. Human biology demands stimulus change, and working on a single task for too long leads to psychological deterioration or restlessness. Ms. Gill wanted to make a needlepoint cushion but got so bogged down and overwhelmed by months of preparatory steps, shopping, and taking a course that she abandoned the actual project.

• Take a short rest break to stretch or socialize before returning to the A-1.
• Change your physical location or working position when you grow tired.
• Shift back and forth between collecting information, digesting it, and taking action.

Conquering Fear and Escapes

Fear is frequently at the root of all avoidance of high-priority tasks. When fear is too strong to be dismissed by a simple pep talk, you must either contain it within boundaries, use its force to drive your preparation, or exaggerate the fear to absurdity so the mental balloon bursts. Mr. Blue procrastinated on calling a major industrial purchasing agent due to fear of rejection, but used judo to channel his anxiety into researching the company and ballooned his worst fantasies until he realized they were absurd.

• Extinguish low-level fears with a positive pep talk when the anxiety is minor.
• Contain uncontrollable fears by setting boundaries, allowing yourself to worry only after completing a specific action.
• Judo your fear by taking every worry about being unprepared and turning it into a concrete research task.
• Balloon your fears by imagining the absolute worst possible consequences until the fantasy becomes absurd and bursts.

Contemplating the consequences of procrastination before delaying an unpleasant task helps get you back on track.

Delaying tasks that will eventually need to be done increases the actual work required and causes ongoing mental anguish. Anne Davis delayed writing a thank-you note to Aunt Mary for a birthday gift, letting the task escalate into months of guilt, anxiety, and elaborate avoidance fantasies.

• Slow down before considering delaying an unpleasant task.
• Take a minute or two to consider the consequences that will follow.
• Acknowledge that this is not something that will go away and you are going to do it eventually.
• Ask yourself if you really want to pay the price of delay.

10 Key Ideas

1. Effectiveness matters far more than efficiency because it focuses on selecting the right task rather than just doing chores quickly.
2. Every list should be completed by setting priorities using the ABC Priority System based on the relative value of tasks.
3. Writing a Lifetime Goals Statement helps you discover true desires, provides life direction, and acts as a measuring stick for alternate activities.
4. Actively scheduling large blocks of time for high-value A-activities and making a daily To Do list ensure that your goals translate into actual accomplishments.
5. A primary secret of successful people is making a To Do list every single day, ranking items by ABC priority, and treating completion like a game.
6. You can eliminate low-value tasks and paperwork overwhelm by applying the 80/20 rule, converting chores into CZs, and creating quiet time.
7. Asking how terrible it would be if a task were left undone helps you eliminate unnecessary chores and defer bottom-drawer items indefinitely.
8. Procrastination and fear on high-priority tasks can be overcome through tactical methods like the Swiss Cheese Method, stimulus change, and confronting the price of delay.
9. Taking a short rest break, changing your physical location, or shifting between information collection and processing introduces necessary stimulus change.
10. Contemplating the consequences of procrastination before delaying an unpleasant task helps get you back on track by making you realize you will have to do it eventually anyway.