1 Introduction

You may often be 'working against time'. Why not recruit your enemy, and get time to work for you?

How can this be done? In principle, it's very easy: all you have to do is to analyse how you've spent your time in the past, then think ahead and plan what you want to do in the future. Then time falls into line; this precious resource becomes your friend and you can do with it what you will.

It is true that plans seldom survive reality completely intact: they are invariably made with insufficient knowledge for them to be carried through without a hitch. But, as we will discuss in this session of the workbook, it is still very important and useful to make plans. What you also must do is to be ready to adapt your plans to changing circumstances.

The way the session progresses is as follows. We start with a discussion about time logs, which analyse how you've previously spent your time. Then we go into the list system, which helps you plan how to spend your time in the future. We also introduce a useful tool for managing complex tasks in the most efficient way: the Gantt chart.

2 Time Logs

There are various ways of making a time log, and we'll look at these in turn.