Cramming, by the way, is not allowed. During the definition stage, you determined how much time is required to complete each task. If you attempt to cram a two-hour task into a one-hour time slot on your schedule, you will not be able to complete it and will end up rushing the task, cutting corners and quality. You must decide, even before starting, that it needs to be rescheduled to a time when you can dedicate the necessary hours to its completion. You will find leftover tasks because your schedule is full. Despite their being low priority tasksif you didnt fill up your schedule only with highest priority tasksyou still need to manage them. Some should be discussed with your boss if they are part of your assigned duties (bring along your planner for this discussion). Others should be negotiated with the appropriate stakeholdersfamily, friends, committee members. Having your planner during the negotiations

Ideally, you will be able to shift responsibility for a low prior- ity task to someone else; if not, move the due date to a time you can accommodate, or reduce your involvement to a manageable level. You may wish to make your schedule available to others, certainly anyone having responsibility to schedule your time. Technology is on your side if youve chosen a planner that can easily synchronize with a resource accessible to others.

An Alternative Approach Although we have disallowed cramming, it should be mentioned that there is a scheduling scheme alternative to the rational method dis- cussed above. This scheme will certainly appeal to the more control- oriented individual, and have an attraction for those who are hopelessly behind as well. (Weve also discussed this technique elsewhere, when we decided that in some cases, a job worth doing is worth doing poorly.) In this method, once youve captured your duties and given them their priority score, decide how much time you want to allocate to each. A two-hour task may not be worth two hours, particularly in light of the fact that you have seven more two-hour tasks to complete today. So decide to give it one hour of quality time. You can do this without a great deal of anguish or sense of guilt, because one hour is all youve got to give. With the focus that such an approach demands, you may be

In soft- ware development, this technique is called time boxing and is useful because it recognizes and succeeds at meeting hard deadlines.