Give Me a Break: The Art of Making Time Work for You

The always-on, striving for more, multitasking, 24/7 world we live in is having its toll. We are getting busier, but not happier. While the "time management" movement created more list-makers, it failed to address the heart of why "To-Do's" tended to trump time for family, and time to think, reflect, and plan was replaced by a bulging email Inbox. In Give Me a Break, Hugh Culver presents a model for getting to the heart of why we never seem to have enough time and how to create the time we actually need. A past workaholic, successful business owner, and consultant to large corporations, Culver knows a lot about being busy and what defines success. His solution is to first redefine the beliefs that drive the behavior and from there reset priorities, create better systems, practice better habits, and finally, invest in reflection, review, and renewal. The five systems in Give Me a Break are based on observations with thousands of employees in over a dozen industries. For each system, Culver presents persuasive arguments for investing in a redesign of your approach to work. For example, reducing unwanted interruptions by just twenty minutes a day is the equivalent of finding two weeks of new time a year. Like committing to making deposits in a bank account, Culver explains, the benefits of creating the time you want can be exponential. Rather than the usual list of productivity habits, Culver suggests eight original approaches he has tested with participants in his live training seminars over the past twelve years. For example, Honor the Mundane is the perfect active meditation for the always-on mind while Go with the Flow matches work difficulty to the natural rhythms of our energy in the day. A favorite habit of his clients is Start a Stop-Doing List where you stop doing low-value, unwanted, or simply out-dated tasks in favor of Me-Time (Culver is big on recharging the mind and spirit with regular exercise, and down-time). If you have tried the usual litany of time management books and still find you procrastinate and never seem to have time for yourself, this could be the solution for you.