Use Time Or It Will Use You

The proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the Professor R. Geoff Dromey Foundation and Scholarship Fund to facilitate industry focused applied academic research to advance and improve systems and software engineering capability.

Use Time Or It Will Use You is a modern classic. First published in 1997, written by one of the world's foremost experts in Time Management. This book has helped thousands of people become highly effective managers of their most precious commodity.

Whatever field of endeavor you are in, the principles outlined in this easy-to-read, practical guide can help you shift gears into a higher level of productivity and achievement.

Use Time Or It Will Use You has a different focus from other time management books. It is designed to inspire, to motivate and to assist anyone and everyone who is interested in improving the quality of their life.

According to Dromey, the greatest pleasure and satisfaction in life comes from the accomplishment of things that require large investments of time. In a nutshell, this book is about how to create that abundance of time that you need to invest to realize your long-term goals and ambitions.

Each and every one of us has a great untapped potential to use our time much more effectively. If we exploit this potential we can accomplish things that will make our lives richer, make the world a better place, and give pleasure and inspiration to those we love and touch.

Contents
Preface (read first)
Chapter 1: The strategic use of time
Chapter 2: Laws of time investment
Chapter 3: Laws of time utilization
Chapter 4: Managing the use of time
Chapter 5: Optimizing the use of time
Chapter 6: Time and your future
Chapter 7: A plan for action
Appendix I: Problems with our use of time
Appendix II: The psychology of time utilization

Each of us has different backgrounds and different needs. Consequently the way we set about getting what we want from a book can differ considerably.

Every author hopes that readers will read all that they have written, preferably in the order in which it is presented. However this is not the way the world works, or the way people necessarily behave.

To accommodate people who are "busy" the book has been kept deliberately short. This is a carrot to encourage people to read the whole thing. Readers who just want to get to the main game as quickly as possible often run the risk of getting a distorted and incomplete view of what a book offers. Also, by being focussed only on what to do, a reader runs the risk of missing important motivating arguments designed to keep them committed to improving their time-skills. Things worth having don't just happen overnight. If you think any book on time utilization is going to deliver you the magic formula in a single cursory reading of a couple of chapters you are likely to be disappointed.

The Reader Who Knows a Lot About The Subject and Who Is Looking To See If This Book Has Anything New To Say: Readers in this category should at least read Chapter 1 to get a perspective on what the book is trying to do. Chapters 2 and 3 deserve at least a quick visit to see what the laws offer. Chapters 4, 5 and 7 should be of most interest to readers in this category. They may find Appendices I and II discussing problems they are already well aware of.

The Reader Who Just Wants To Know What To Do And How To Do It Without Worrying About Why: This reader, who just wants to get hold of, and start applying the technology as quickly as possible, should at least read chapter 1 and then chapter 7 followed by chapter 4.

The Author's Model Reader: This reader will read what has been written with an open mind, but in a critical and reflective way. They will weigh up what is said, and take away from the book what is useful to them. This reader will be prepared to try out things, to take action and to see what really works for them.