Real-World Time Management, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 14THE TELEPHONE: TOOL OR TIME THIEF?

“You delay but time does not.”

—BEN FRANKLIN

One discovery shocking to the new time logger: the high percentage of each day spent on the telephone! Two to four hours of a normal work-day is typical on accurate time logs (and only accurate sheets propel you into priority-activated time management).

Yet the telephone, viewed in a vacuum, is a marvel. In the acclaimed television series The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski called the telephone “one of mankind’s superb inventions.” Indeed, our global society depends utterly upon the telephone. In the 1991 crisis in the Soviet Union, President Bush picked up the telephone many times each day to talk personally to world leaders. (Contrast this with the transatlantic ...