You can't manage time, you actually only manage what you do during time. So the management issue is not so much about time, it's more about how do you manage your focus, how do you manage your actions and your activities in terms of what you do.

You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it "done.

Why do people complain that there's no time to get their work done? Because there is more work to do than the work they think they have to do.

Most people move actually into high performance in a crisis because that creates the kind of focus that creates high performance.

The real issue is how to make appropriate choices about what to do at any point in time. The real issue is how we manage actions.

Sometimes the biggest gain in productive energy will come from cleaning the cobwebs, dealing with old business, and clearing the desks—cutting loose debris that's impeding forward motion.

The problem is, is when your focus is created by a crisis, then the frontal lobe shuts down essentially, the frontal cortex which is your intuitive intelligence. So you get very clever and very stupid in a crisis. Also, you pump adrenalin into your body from what you - physiologically you'll crash.