It is time once again for another Skinny book and this one is on Time Management and Other Life Challenges. I received a thick stack of Skinny books from the author, Jim Randel, and will be reviewing one every couple of weeks as time goes by. For those of you who don’t know ‘The Skinny On..’ is a series of books that deal with a wide range of topics from financial planning to time management and everything in between. They are written in simple, everyday language and take just a short amount of time to read.

The Skinny On Time Management is simply about finding the best way to manage your time up front so that you can enjoy your life later on. By knowing how much time you spend on certain things you can see where you can free up time later in the day to do other things. This book helps you to budget your time in much the same way you budget your money.

If you overestimate the time you spend on one activity you may think that you do not have time during the day to do other things when in reality you actually do have the time. You may also be underestimating the amount of time that you spend on your favorite activities, which might be the reason why you never seem to have time at the end of the day to get things accomplished.

When you focus on how you actually spend your time then you find ways to ‘create’ more time for the important things in your life. Jim mentions that if he simply gets out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off, instead of lounging in the bed then he gets an additional 10 minutes per day to do more important things. Now if that 10 minutes of lounging is important to him then he can make the decision to linger in bed each morning instead.

The book contains many clever quotes but one of those that stood out most to me follows:

To be very effective, you need to mesh your time slots and energies.”

This quote simply means that you need to be more productive during the time that you are alert. If you work well in the morning then you should try to fit in your most demanding tasks at that time. If you work better at night then you can focus your energies on being creative then instead.

So to recap, the Skinny On Time Management is a really easy read (as are ALL the Skinny books) and it simply shows you how to track the time you spend on a daily basis and then reallocate your time to be more productive so that you are not overwhelmed with all what you need to get done.

EDIT October 5th 2010. If you wish to purchase any of the Skinny books you can go directly  to the website and see the pricing information. (this is NOT an affiliate link and I do not benefit financially if anyone  purchases books from the site.)