PLANNING
Cover Story
broken watchband and hasn’t worn a timepiece with ThinkBusiness magazine. “I know the pain
since. that people have with this feeling of being out of
control.”
Having seemingly mastered the art of time
management, Richardson adds to his own already Spend Time to Reap Time
crammed schedule by conducting seminars in a Of course, time management is a bit of a misnomer.
bid to help other businesspersons capitalize on It’s an immutable fact that each day has just 24
his lessons learned. His time-management system hours; but although we can’t manage time, per
focuses on “controlling your day rather than it se, Richardson’s system works on the principal
controlling you,” Richardson said in an interview that we can manage ourselves and our behaviors.
Richardson’s system, which he has been practicing
for nearly 20 years, as its first step requires time-
strapped businesspersons to examine the things
that are important to them in life and work; in short,
Richardson says, professionals need to articulate
“the whys” behind their drive to get a better handle
on their minutes and hours. The reasons can be
anything from a yen to increase productivity and
make more money to a desire to have more
free time at the end of each day for a
relaxing bike ride.
Richardson says that effective time
management will bring about some
dramatic improvements in one’s life,
but you must be prepared to make
some fundamental changes. Doing
this effectively requires a clear
plan—a time plan. You need to have a
cogent idea of what needs to be done,
how long it will take to accomplish, and
also to identify and eventually eliminate
the critical time-wasters that plague your
work day, be it a continual perceived need
to “put out fires” at the office, interruptions
by staff, an overcrowded email inbox or even a
slavish devotion to Facebook.
Undergirding Richardson’s system is the practice
of setting aside a block of time at the start of every
day to formulate a strategy for the coming work
 ThinkBusiness June 2009 
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