The Business Coaching Toolkit

CHAPTER TWO

The One-Percent Solution

Cell phones in the United Sates have topped 203 million and worldwide sit at an estimated 3.25 billion. It’s the invention, according to a 2004 MIT survey, that people hate the most but can’t live without, beating out the alarm clock and the television. (Leo, 2006, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Knowledge workers receive 23,000 pieces of e-mail a year. That’s 500 pieces of e-mail for every executive every workweek. Advertisers estimate that the average American consumer receives over 3,000 marketing messages—logo placement, pop-up ads, billboards, radio spots, television commercials—every single day!

In the 1960s, expert testimony was given to a Senate subcommittee that, because of the advances of technology, within 20 years from then, America would have to radically change the way it does business. Employees would have to work only 22 hours a week and come to work only 32 weeks a year. Because of technological efficiency, people would be forced to retire at the age of 40. Amazingly, just the opposite is true. We’re working harder and longer. Every year average vacation time shrinks as the retirement age grows.

A BUSINESS CASE FOR TIME MASTERY

Demands on our time have increased exponentially as we are caught in a tidal wave of 24/7/365 living, made possible by technology. Corporate executives and business owners alike face a list of things to do every day that no 24-hour time period could bear, let alone an 8-hour workday. Unfinished tasks get ...