The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management

This is a thoughtful time management book, that gets to the point, effectively. Personal discipline is the key to stress-free success. Set a plan, log what you actually do with your time, and then identify the time-wasters for mitigation. The book provides the insight, list of common time-wasters, and some simple forms to help in logging and evaluation. I find "At-A-Glance" paper calenders work well with Mackenzie's system. If you want to get control of your day and become dramatically more efficient this book is for you.

Author Alec MacKenzie has updated the mother of all time-management books, which fist hit the shelves in 1972. Despite the fact that time management has become a multi-million-dollar industry since this title was originally published, The Time Trap still stands as one of the most effective guides to getting it together. Why? Because MacKenzie tells you flat out what the problem is: You. He doesn't offer sympathy, create excuses or complain about how modern technology has put us on a treadmill. Instead he tells you, in plain English, how to record how you spend your time, how to identify time-wasting activities, and how to change your behavior to make yourself more productive and efficient. Nowhere will you find a self-help book with more practical techniques or less BS. Small-business owners and time-pressed executives are the perfect audience for this book, but we [...] recommend it to any stressed-out professional or student.

The Time Trap by Alec MacKenzie is the single best "to-the-point" book I've found on time management. I have re-read the book at least 4 times from cover to cover since the early 80's and have found the advice to be excellent. Each time I re-read the book I find that I am able to accomplish at least a 100% improvement in my time management techniques. I always discover some new tricks which are proven out by my experiences during the time span between readings. It is absolutely amazing how successful his techniques are in application. Through the use of this book I was promoted to a Production Manager position at a music publishing company and dealt with over 2500 new publications a year in addition to keeping a 7500 title catalog of products in print (we averaged approximately 35+ print jobs received each day of the week). I placed orders and maintained production schedules with over 35 different outside printer-suppliers and didn't even have a secretary. I owe ALL of my production management success to this book. I double dirty-dog dare you to read it!Larry Norred

I am a graduate student at the University of Houston who has writtem several papers on time manaagement. The following is a review of The Time Trap by Alex Mackenzie. Additional material is taken from the audio program, Managing Your Goals by Alec Mackenzie and Melody Mackenzie Brown (Chicago: Nightingale-Conant, 1992) and the article "The Trouble with Time Management Courses" (Fortune, June 4, 1990, p. 262.) Review by Grady McAllister: The Time Trap is not a Star Trek episode about being caught in the a time warp or a space-time continuum. It is the title of Dr. Alec Mackenzie's down to earth book on time in the workplace. The 1972 edition of the book (revised in 1990) helped spawn the modern time management boom. Mackenzie ties time management directly to the issue of American productivity: "The U.S. manufacturing sector is showing an improvement in productivity at the rate of 3.5 per cent a year. The service sector, however, has lagged behind at a rate of 0.5 per cent since 1979. And since service industries represent more than 70 per cent of our economy, this is an acute problem indeed... "Therefore our productivity must shift to individuals. If the memo writer, the marketing vice presidents and the finance officers can learn to get better results and do it in less time, the impact on the U.S. economy could be powerful." Mackenzie may have done the definitive study on time wasters. In The Time Trap, he devotes an entire chapter to each of these topics: · Management by crisis · Telephone interruptions · Inadequate planning · Attempting too much · Drop-in visitors · Ineffective delegation · Personal disorganization · Lack of self-discipline · Inability to say no · Procrastination · Meetings · Paperwork · Leaving tasks unfinished · Inadequate staff · Socializing · Confused responsibility or authority · Poor communication · Inadequate controls and reports · Incomplete information · Travel Mackenzie uses himself to illustrate the problem of procrastination. He tells of the time he kept putting off his calls to sell Celestial Seasonings Tea on his program. When his calls didn't go through, Mackenzie became convinced that the president wasn't interested. He finally reached him on the seventh call, and Mackenzie felt the final put-down when the man called him "Charlie." He had picked up the phone expecting someone else. Mackenzie wearily identified himself. The president said, "Alec Mackenzie? I've had your name on my desk for months. I don't need any explanation of your program. How soon can you come out to conduct a two-day seminar on time management for all my people?" Mackenzie asks seminar participants to do "the one thing they'll not want to do," and that is to keep a time log. For at least three days, they must write down every interruption and change of mental attention, "no matter how trivial." The purpose is to find out where their time is really going and which time wasters need to