From Time Management to Time Intelligence. Zach Davis

rings will show fairly clearly how productive you were in the relevant period of time, as these are the “important” areas. Adding the numbers from rings two and three will show how high your level of stress was during this time. The difference between a successful and stressful week on the one hand, and a successful and not-so-stressful week on the other hand lies in the difference between rings three and four.

      This also lets us realize something very important. As we discussed above with the terms “important” and “urgent,” there are multiple possible combinations of success (with the many individual interpretations of that word) and stress:

      1) successful and stressed (often the topic of Zach Davis’s consulting engagements)

      2) successful and not too stressed (an interesting combination)

      3) unsuccessful and not stressed (which many people would find boring at some point)

      4) unsuccessful and nevertheless horribly stressed (very difficult to endure)

      Many people ask how they can find the time for working in ring four (the bull’s-eye) when they’re busy putting out fires all day long. That is certainly a valid question. Where does the time for important but not (yet) urgent tasks and projects come from? The answer in terms of the time dartboard is: from rings one and two.

      In this book you will receive tips on how to save time in many different ways. We would like to encourage you already to invest in ring four any of the time you save through the techniques you will encounter in further chapters. The larger the percentage of time you spend in ring four, the faster you will be able to develop an upward spiral of effectiveness.

      Before getting to the individual tips, let’s discuss a few more basic ideas.