Chapter 10: Power Tools for Time Management. Some—like handheld electronic organizers, cell phones, pagers, fax machines, voicemail systems, photocopiers, personal computers, and even VCRs and microwave ovens—are the offspring of advanced technology | Power Tools for Time Management Imagine you re a secretary. Yes that term is becoming obsolete. But play along. You ll see why. Your first job today to send out 10 identical letters to 10 clients. You insert two sheets of stationery into your typewriter with carbon paper in between. You type the first letter making sure you have the person s name address and salutation exactly right. Fortunately you type about 80 words a minute so you ll finish the first letter in about five minutes. Then again you re not perfect you ll probably make about five typos. But there s this wonderful new invention a piece of chalky white paper that you can place over a mistake. Just type the same letters onto the paper the mistake under it disappears and then you type the correct spelling onto the stationery. So realistically it will take you about 10 minutes to do that letter and its envelope. You follow the same procedure for the remaining nine letters since each will be addressed differently. Total time for 132 Copyright 2003 by the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. Click here for Terms of Use. Power Tools for Time Management 133 the project about an hour and a half. These letters must get to their recipients soon so you personally take them to the post office down the street to ensure promptness. Only a half hour for that. You re proud of yourself it s only 11 . and you ve completed one of the most important tasks of the day. Was that simple to imagine Did something about it seem anachronistic Oh one thing we forgot to tell you you were a secretary in 1950. If you d done that task today you would have typed the letter using a word processing program corrected mistakes almost instantly knocked off all 10 personalized copies in a few minutes and then probably e-mailed or faxed the letter to ensure swift receipt. The whole process would have required a half hour or less not two and the results would look far more professional. In recent decades a broad spectrum of tools has arrived that .
