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One of my prospects turned down an offer to participate in a time management course by explaining that he does not want to be turned into a robot. It is a common belief that time management is about doing things very fast and keeping yourself busy all the time. So it may really seem at first sight that good time managers act like robots.

The aim of time management is achieving your goals in your life and being satisfied with your life. Time management does not mean that you have to live a fast life. Many people who have completed time management courses keep themselves busy because they choose to do so. For example, if you want to earn high income or climb up the career ladder then time management will give you tools for it. Fast life is just the matter of preference.

Still, automatic approach to some actions will help you to save time. There are always some routine tasks for you to do, whatever profession you will choose. It can be some paper work, checking your e-mail, making bank transfers etc. Many of us do not like doing them, but we still have to do it. If we can minimize time spent on these tasks then we will have more time available for tasks we like more and tasks, which are vital for our success. It may seem that a person, who handles e-mail fast, acts like a robot, but think that he will have more time to spend together with his children or friends.

But what about people, who do not make conscious decisions about their time use. Many people are regular 9 to 5 employees, who reluctantly obey the orders from their boss. Even their leisure time goes according to a typical pattern. When they arrive home from job, then they will watch TV and eat junk food. On Friday night there will be party and on Sunday morning they will wake up with a hangover. Does not it seem as living a life of a robot?

Many people dream of breaking out of that circle, earning more money, having more free time and getting a meaning to their lives. But without learning how to take control over their time they will not succeed in it.

Time management will give you the possibility to reconsider the values and habits in your life. You will take control over you time. You will be responsible for your life and you are the one who chooses what you are going to do with it. What do you want to achieve in you life?

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Speed reading has numerous benefits. If you are able to read faster then you can work faster and be more productive. You can finish your job tasks within a shorter period of time, which means that you can work more to earn more or you may choose to have more free time. In addition speed reading skills will allow you to read more for educating yourself. If you are planning to get MA degree then being able to speed read will make your life much easier.

There are many different speed reading courses and all of them have basically the same benefits. I do not know what is the share of population, who have learned speed reading but it is likely to be a relatively low proportion. It is definitely not 50%, 30% and probably not even 10%. In case of Estonia, where I live, this number is below 1%.It may be higher for some other countries, where there are more speed reading training trainers and where the traditions of speed reading are longer.

But when speed reading has so many benefits, why most people do not learn speed reading.

The first reason, which may not be the most important one, is that not all people are aware of the benefits of speed reading. There are still some people who have hardly heard something about speed reading. Probably this reason has greater importance in my countries as there were no speed reading courses in Estonia during the Soviet period. It became possible to learn speed reading here only in the mid 1990s.

Second, there are people who know what speed reading is and which are its benefits, but who are doubtful about them. Many people think that these benefits are some kind of advertisement trick and actually speed reading is no use. If you look around in internet forums, then you can find a lot discussion on the question: “Does speed reading actually work?”. It is true that not all the participants of speed reading courses could apply what they have learned to their everyday life. As it takes time and effort to develop your reading skills then many people give up in the middle of the learning process and find that speed reading does not work. Many people participate in one- or two-day speed reading classes, which require the trainees to continue practicing individually after completion of the course, but these people will not practice and that is the reason that they will not benefit from these courses.

Third, there are people, who do not think that the ability to read faster will make there life much easier. A popular argument against speed reading is “I do not want to read faster”. Some people find that it is essential to be slow and careful while reading. Or they may have a job, where it is very important not to make any mistakes. But there are not so many benefits of reading slowly and carefully. It is difficult to improve your reading comprehension significantly by reading extra slowly. And even if your work process does not require fast reading, you may still benefit from speed reading for leading for hobbies and leisure. Wouldn’t it be nice f you could finish your newspapers in the morning in half of the usual time.

Fourth, some people think that they are not able to learn to speed read. Many of them are natural slow readers, who think that their reading abilities are so bad that there is no point in even trying out the speed reading. This is absolutely wrong as naturally slow readers, who have usually very inefficient reading techniques are the ones who benefit most from speed reading courses. If you are very slow then there is more room for improvement for a naturally fast reader. Some people think that they are too old for speed reading. Well, some participants of my speed reading classes have been more than 70 years old and they have managed to increase their reading speed.

Fifth, there are people who are satisfied with their reading speed although they can be relatively slow readers. We learn to read at early ages and it may seem strange for a grown up and educated man or woman. For example, when I was visiting IZA (Institute for Labor Market Research) in Bonn, Germany a year ago and I talked about speed reading there, I was asked if I had a problem with reading. It is sad to see that many people will not be able to enjoy the benefits of speed reading because they have that kind of attitude towards speed reading.

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Every day you have many small gaps in your daily schedule, when you have 5 or 10 minutes of free time before the start of a new activity. It can happen when you are waiting for a meeting to start, if you arrive an appointment 10 minutes early, if a person tells you that he/she will call you back in 5 minutes. Most of people do nothing during those moments. But using those gaps purposefully can make your time use much more efficient. If you add all those small intervals together during one time, it can make one, two or even more hours.

There are very many options for using those time gaps and here I list a number of them, which are suitable for most of us:

• Read and process your e-mail. Although you should have certain times during your day when do you read e-mail, you could still benefit using extra time to read and process your mails. It is important that you just don’t read your mail, but also processes it, i.e. reply it or schedule following actions depending on the message. So you can follow the rule, that you deal only once with one message.
• Check your schedule. It is always good to constantly check if you are following your schedule. Have you missed something? Have there been changes to your plans? Those moments give you a brake to monitor your progress.
• Social conversation. If someone is nearby you, then it could be a good idea to chat with him/her for a minute or two. Maybe a person next to you is potentially a good customer or business partner for you. A couple of minutes of conversation may lead to long-lasting relationship.
• Make a phone call. Those kinds of moments are suitable for making quick phone calls, especially for social purpose. Just call a friend or relative you have not met for a while.
• Read a book or journal. It is a great idea to read books or journals, which you could benefit from your job. You could read one book every week on those 5 to 10 minute gaps in your schedule, which means 52 books a year. If you read so many professional books in a year, it gives you a huge advantage over your colleagues.
• Do physical exercises. You can just stand up from your desk and stretch yourself, but you can also do some breathing exercises or even push-ups or sit-ups if possible.
• Arrange your desk. Look at your desk, are all things in their correct places. Do some papers need to put into their folders or are some papers unnecessary and can bee thrown away. Arranging your desk can make a work much easier and it give avoids the negative emotions from the mess around you.

In fact, there exist many more things you can do in such short period of time. Which ones these are depends also on your profession and activities you do. Think creatively about it. I am sure you will find many new ways of using your time more efficiently.

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