Rule 2. Take up first of all the most important and urgent affairs.

Affairs of little importance come first. They take up 80 % of your time, but contribute no more than 20 % to the efficiency of the day. And vice versa, there are always 2 or 3 jobs out of 10, after doing which you feel satisfied with the whole day.

If you deal only with problems which are not to be delayed, problems will avalanche upon you. If problems are solved by way of nipping them in the bud, they take less time.

How shrewd were the words of a certain man of learning: "Who ever takes up minor problems without solving the prin­cipal, general ones will come up against unsolved problems at every step." However, it takes more than a little will-power and self-possession not to get bogged down in the notorious routine of petty questions, the greater part of which we cannot even bring to mind at the end of the day.

As applied to daily schedule it looks like this: don't allow circumstances to thwart you in the plans you have mapped out. Do not proceed to less important and less urgent jobs un­til you make sure you have done everything possible on those that come before.

How to go about that you will learn below.

Rule 3. Escape from routine work and try to stay alone at least for an hour.

A manager is approached so often that an average interval be­tween every two successive meetings is no more than 8 minutes. However, owing to the fact that a considerable amount of time is spent on conferences and meetings, talking to one's superiors, etc. these intervals in the remaining time become still shorter. Therefore, there is hardly any hope that one can afford enough time for a thoughtful consideration of the most important mat­ters requiring, as a rule, a great deal of attention.

If you have a secretary or an appropriate assistant, they can shield you from plenty of smaller things. A good secretary saves close to 30 % of the boss's working time.

The tactics of "closed doors" is the only acceptable when writing a serious document or making a decision on some cru­cially important question. To use it, one has to lock the door, and connect your telephone to an automatic answer-back device. In case you haven't got one — just switch off the telephone.

If you cannot stay locked in your own office, you can withdraw to a place where no one can find you without help (in case of urgent need — somebody's unoccupied study, library, conference-hall or any other vacant room.

World business doesn't know any other equally efficient ways of escaping from daily matters of urgency.

Experience shows that during time of solitude one manages to do tasks that appear to be of the greatest importance at the moment. It's during this one hour or so that you achieve max­imum results which give you satisfaction with the working day, feeling of your duty fulfilled awareness of strong will-power.

Rule 4. Don't scatter your attention, concentrate on one job at a time.

Imagine that you are a sand clock: it lets only one grain of sand pass through its neck at a time. Let only one question pass through your mind at a time, the most important question, and don't go over to another-before you settle the one that comes before.

"Skipping" from one question to another is waste of time because going into a new subject takes additional time.

Moreover, such "skipping", according to medical research, affects the nervous system: you grow more and more tired, your work becomes less effective, the number of erroneous ac­tions and decisions increases.

Unfortunately, the following situation can be often witnessed: the manager's talk with his subordinate is interrupted by a visitor. After greeting his chief he takes up his problem directly with his boss, paying no attention to the fact that the manager has been discussing some other business. Then next visitor comes and it goes on that way. Thus the manager let alone encourages bad manners of his subordinates but puts up with waste of his own time, for with one and the same group of visitors he has to come back to the same questions again and again. Consequently, the boss ought never to allow any conversation to be interrupted.

Beside this practice of "open doors" whose harm has just been discussed we have to skip from question to question when we interrupt the conversation with a visitor to answer a telephone call. "Telephone for me is like an icon" — these are the words of one of Vysotsky’s songs. Really, we display worship for telephone when we interrupt a serious conversation to answer a telephone call For one thing, we show disrespect to our interlocutor and for another, we spend our time unreasonably because after the telephone conversation we have to re­call the subject of the interrupted conversation with the visitor: "Well, what is it we were talking about?" In this way we admit that the subject of the conversation has gone right out of our head

It would be more rational to act like this: if the conversation is nearly at an end, take up the receiver and say: "Just a moment", put the receiver on the table, and only after your talk is finished, answer the caller who is waiting at the other end. If your present discussion is not coming to a close, it is natural to say: "Please, call me back in... minutes." By the way, for your business partner at the moment this would indicate how much time you are in­clined to allow for finishing the conversation. If that time is not enough, the same telephone caller may interrupt you again and you find yourself in an awkward situation. Mind that by allowing too little time for the conversation, you risk making an impression that your visitor's business is of little importance to you and offend him. That's why you would be well-advised to allow time, that is one and a half times longer than you need to finish the business on hand.

By the way, putting off the telephone talk often leads to such a turn that problem is solved without your help — people often make telephone calls only because to call is easier than just to think. As you see, in this way you might save your time, too.

While resorting to this method bear in mind one important point: after lifting the receiver, don't inquire who is calling and why, because that may involve you in conversation. Besides, the caller may get the impression that if it were somebody else, you would probably choose to talk to that person at once (in­deed, why learn who is calling if you are so busy). Having lifted the receiver, put him off, and showing in this way that no matter who the caller is, you just can't talk to him at the mo­ment.