Books and Articles about Time
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Future Perfect by Stan Davis. A fantastic, must-read
book. Wired executive editor Kevin Kelly says, ""What was
revolutionary a decade ago is still revolutionary. If you
want a hint of what's going on in the new economy, this vintage
book will clue you in." Explores a broad range of ideas about
organization and management based on the premise that time,
space, and mass are fundamental dimensions of all businesses.
A few of the ideas introduced are: mass customization, real-time
organization, any time / any place organization, distinguishing
between a business and its organization, and the shift to
producing intangible products. One of the most compelling
business books ever written.
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A Geography of Time: The Temporal
Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, or How Every Culture
Keeps Time Just a Little Bit Differently
by Robert V. Levine. An easy read, as books on time go. Using
clever anecdotes and comparisons between hectic U.S. lifestyles
and those of other more relaxed cultures.
Measuring each country's walking speed, postal speed, and
clock accuracy, the author comes up with an index for "the
overall pace of life:" in 31 countries. Switzerland is
on top, Mexico at bottom. A Spanish proverb says, "Those
who rush arrive first at the grave."
More info
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| On the Experience of Time
by Robert E. Ornstein. I am one of Robert Ornstein's fans. I've
heard him speak several times and I've read eight or nine of
this books. But this early treatise is his least substantial
effort. |
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Real Time : Preparing for the Age
of the Never Satisfied Customer
by Regis McKenna. Real time = no time at all. Ironic. Jerry
Yang says, "The notion of eliminating hierarchy and long-term
planning, and creating realtime management that focuses on
delivery, results, and customer needs is a key revelation
for companies large and small. The use of networked technologies
to enable the creation of distributed, connected organizations
has tremendous implications for the next generation of competitiveness
for industries of all types" One problem: been there,
done that. What's new, Regis?
HBR: "Real Time" is a phrase borrowed
from computer culture to describe events in which action (or
command) and reaction (or execution) are simultaneous. There
is no lapse in time and no element of distance in the event.
While many real-time events are apparent, as when we speed-dial
our broker to make that trade now, most are not. We insert
our bank card into a London ATM and get money from our U.S.
account. We watch the Gulf War or the Japanese earthquake
live on TV. Such instant-gratification events change our frame
of reference forever, because we begin to expect immediate
satisfaction. We expect to judge our reality instantly in
terms of truth or fiction, right or wrong, good or bad service,
acceptable or unacceptable behavior. The technological effects
on our environment force individuals and organizations alike
to adapt in new ways, and these new ways of doing things begin
to alter cultural and value-laden patterns of our society.
The bottom line is that businesses must radically redefine
their own perceptions and capabilities to keep up. They need
to create "sensing" organizations that are always monitoring,
feeding, querying, fact finding, adjusting, trying, and initiating.
"
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| Blur : The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy by
Christopher Meyer, Stan Davis. Blur ischaracterized by Speed,
Intangibles, and Connectivity. Speed is the shrinkage of time
through near-instantaneous communication and computation. Connectivity
is the shrinkage of space with the advent of the Web, E-mail,
beepers, and other media of communication. Intangibles are values
without mass, most importantly knowledge and its mobility, made
possible through Speed and Connectivity. Thus far, Blur is simply
an update of Davis's Future Perfect. Then Davis and Meyer begin
discussing the blurring of boundaries between products &
services and customers & employees, and they open new doors
of perception. A good book, but more about business than time.
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Time and the Soul by Jacob Needleman By living calmly,
with a detached attention to detail and an absence of frenzy,
it is possible to experience a more expansive, soulful sense
of time.
Needleman presents a series of spiritual self-inquiries to
reach the root of the problem of "not enough time." Your rushed
side, the part of you always making promises for the sake
of time, can make time move more slowly. Needleman shows how
traditional words of the wise, "be in the moment," "relax,"
"mediate" don't help, but understanding what is eternal about
life and work can change our relationship to time and our
perception of it.
"Before we try to face the question of time as a problem,
the problem of how to manage our lives, can we stay with it
long enough to hear it calling to us purely and simply as
a question, the question of who we are and why we are
alive at all? A problem is something we are supposed to solve."
How's this for a sentence? Telling the reader we all have
an original, eternal, pre-birth face within us, Needleman
writes, "The metaphysical cemeteries are filled with
the graves of scholars and poets and artists -- brilliant,
learned, full of heartfelt subjective conviction -- who grapsed
this idea too easily, too cleverly, who absorbed it into their
sense-based, logico-imaginative reasoning where the assumptions
are childish, one-eyed, and the chain of logical deduction
phenomenally ingenious, and the conclusion toxic to the point
of locking us more securely in the prison of time and neurosis."
Well, excuuuuse me.
"A wise man is never in a hurry," said Aristotle.
Thoughts and images in endless procession steal our time because
they steal our attention. We give them more attention than
is necessary--in this consists the essence of our helplessness
in front of all the demands that life makes upon us and all
the opportunities (or temptations) that it offers us.
Summary: Be mindful. Be yourself. The important stuff is
inside. Look at the really big picture.
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Time Shifting : Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life
by Stephan, MD Rechtschaffen. By learning how to time shift--moving
in rhythm with others, stretching the present, and practicing
mindfulness--we can renew our health and improve our relationships
with others and the world around us. People continually dwell
on the past and future and offers exercises that demonstrate
how to focus on the present while finding time for everyday
happiness. Be here now. Again. As I read this book, I found
myself coveting the author's job, running The Omega Institute
in Rhinebeck, New York.
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| The Time Trap
by R. Alec MacKenzie, The classic book on time management.
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| A Watched Pot : How We Experience
Time by Michael G. Flaherty.
I know nothing about this one (yet), although the topic rings
my bells. |
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| What Time Is It, Clifford? (Clifford the Big Red Dog)
by Norman Bridwell. Winnie-The-Pooh Tells Time by A.
A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard Watch a child learning to tell time
and you see how unnatural it is. Hundreds of books are devoted
to the topic! |
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The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Don't mess with mother
nature.
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| Time and Free Will : An Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness by Henri Bergson. Flux is the precondition
of our more vulgar concept of time. With this flux, the past
is pulled along by the future and presented to consciousness
in the present as a heterogeneous conglomeration, inseperable
and uncategorizable. It is this work which inspired the stream
of consciousness novelists, especially Proust. But the most
remarkable element of Time and Free Will is its demand on the
reader to live the duree, to return to the duree and forget
oneself in it. The goal is freedom and authenticity and this
can only be achieved when letting oneself go, flying like a
bird, and despatializing time. This book does not only open
the door to phenomenology, but it also contributes in a significant
way to french existentialist thought. Flow? |
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| Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust. Can you
find real-life lessons in one and a half million words spread
over seven volumes, written by a hypochrondriacal asthmatic
Frenchman who divided his life almost exclusively between dinner
parties and bed rest? Novel in seven parts by Marcel Proust,
published in French as A la recherche du temps perdu
from 1913 to 1927. The novel is the story of Proust's own life,
told as an allegorical search for truth. It is the major work
of French fiction in the early 20th century. |
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| How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel by Alain
De Botton. Proust groupies hate this book with a passion. Reviewers
either lover it or hate it. Here's someone who likes turning
the giant novel into a how-to book: "This is a genius-level
piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with
self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky,
early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for
surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics
such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first
date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how
to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors
had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a
lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help
movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives."
You gotta love the title. |
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Einstein's Dreams by Alan P. Lightman. A wonderful
book. I read a chapter a night, trying to go slow in order
to savor it. Lightman takes you inside Einstein's head for
thirty dreams where time is warped one way or another. "Lightman's
fables come off like Bach variations played on an exquisite
harpsichord. People live for one day or eternity, and they
respond intelligibly to each unique set of circumstances.
Raindrops hang in the air in a place of frozen time; in another
place everyone knows one year in advance exactly when the
world will end, and acts accordingly."
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| The Quotable Einstein by Albert Einstein, Alice Calaprice
(Editor), Freeman J. Dyson. The human side of a wise, charming
man. "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
"I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks,
I don't have to." |
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| Relativity : The Special and the General Theory by
Albert Einstein. "Not casual reading," bound to impress
people who see you reading it at the picnic. Myself, I'm a visual
learner. The video documentaries that show the Bern streetcar
zooming away from the clocktower speak to me more clearly than
this book that I have never managed to finish. (Here's the Einstein
joke.) |
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| Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved
the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel.
:The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century
was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had
been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to
determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story
of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the
problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed
only half the promised rich reward." |
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| Medieval books of days |
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| Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? by William Oncken
Jr.; Donald L. Wass "Managers divide their time between
activities required of them by their bosses, activities imposed
upon them by the system, and self-imposed activities. Managers
further divide self-imposed time into discretionary activities
and time taken up by requests from subordinates. Self-imposed
time, the only time that managers can control without penalty,
can be managed more effectively by increasing the discretionary
component and doing away with the subordinate component, thereby
allotting more time for managing boss-imposed and system-imposed
activities." |
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| Judo Strategy: The Competitive Dynamics of Internet Time
by David B. Yoffie ; Michael A. Cusumano "Competition
on the Internet is creating fierce battles between industry
giants and small-scale start-ups. Smart start-ups can avoid
those conflicts by moving quickly to uncontested ground and,
when that’s no longer possible, turning dominant players’ strengths
against them. Authors David Yoffie from HBS and Michael Cusumano
from MIT call this competitive approach judo strategy. They
use the Netscape-Microsoft battles to illustrate the three main
principles of judo strategy: rapid movement, flexibility, and
leverage. In the early part of the browser wars, for instance,
Netscape applied the principle of rapid movement by being the
first company to offer a free stand-alone browser. This allowed
Netscape to build market share fast and to set the market standard.
Flexibility became a critical factor later in the browser wars.
In December 1995, when Microsoft announced that it would "embrace
and extend" competitors’ Internet successes, Netscape failed
to give way in the face of superior strength. Instead it squared
off against Microsoft and even turned down numerous opportunities
to craft deep partnerships with other companies. The result
was that Netscape lost deal after deal when competing with Microsoft
for common distribution channels. Netscape applied the principle
of leverage by using Microsoft’s strengths against it. Taking
advantage of Microsoft’s determination to convert the world
to Windows or Windows NT, Netscape made its software compatible
with existing UNIX systems. While it is true that these principles
can’t replace basic execution, say the authors, without speed,
flexibility, and leverage, very few companies
can compete successfully on Internet time. " |
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| Time Pacing: Competing in Markets That Won't Stand Still
by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt ; Shona L. Brown "Most companies
change in reaction to events such as moves by the competition,
shifts in technology, or new customer demands. In fairly stable
markets, "event pacing" is an effective way to deal with change.
But successful companies in rapidly changing, intensely competitive
industries take a different approach. They change proactively,
through regular deadlines. Kathy Eisenhardt of Stanford and
Shona Brown of McKinsey have studied this alternative approach,
which they call time pacing. Like a metronome, time pacing creates
a rhythm to which managers can synchronize the speed and intensity
of their efforts. For example, 3M dictates that 25% of its revenues
every year will come from new products, Netscape introduces
a new product about every six months, and Intel adds a new fabrication
facility to its operations approximately every nine months.
Time pacing creates a relentless sense of urgency around meeting
deadlines and concentrates people on a common set of goals.
Its predictability also provides people with a sense of control
in otherwise chaotic markets. The authors show how companies
such as Banc One, Cisco Systems, Dell Computer, Emerson Electric,
Gillette, Intel, Netscape, Shiseido, and Sony implement the
two essentials of time pacing. The first is managing transitions--the
shift, for example, from one new-product-development project
to the next. The second is setting the right rhythm for change.
Companies that march to the rhythm of time pacing build momentum,
and companies that effectively manage transitions sustain that
momentum without missing important beats." |
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| Fairly Timeless Insights on How to Manage Your Time
bt Jim Billington HBR: "Too much literature on time management
stresses how to do more faster--essentially how to manage a
to-do list. Instead, managers should visualize the end result
by "getting on the balcony--seeing the whole field of play and
where their undertaking should fit in." Only work that is truly
necessary should be done, and the addiction to urgency--fighting
fires, fielding calls, firing off memos, and attending irrelevant
meetings that can consume a manager's day but add little lasting
value--should be avoided. The goal of enlightened time management
is to allow people to spend most of their time on work that
is truly important, but relatively non-urgent. Work and leisure
should both be governed by this same philosophy, because by
balancing excellence in work with excellence in relaxation,
our lives become healthier and a great deal more creative."
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Developing Products on Internet Time by Marco Iansiti
; Alan MacCormack HBR: "The rise of the World Wide Web
provided one of the most challenging environments for product
development in recent history. The market needs that a product
is meant to satisfy and the technologies required to satisfy
them can change radically--even as the product is under development.
In response to such factors, companies have had to modify
the traditional product-development process, in which design
implementation begins only once a product's concept has been
determined in its entirety. In place of that traditional approach,
they have pioneered a flexible product-development process
that allows designers to continue to define and shape products
even after implementation has begun. This innovation enables
Internet companies to incorporate rapidly evolving customer
requirements and changing technologies into their designs
until the last possible moment before a product is introduced
to the market."
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| Limits of the Learning Curve by William J. Abernathy
; Kenneth Wayne HBR: "It is important for managers to realize
that they cannot receive the benefits or cost reduction provided
by a steep learning-curve projection and at the same time accomplish
rapid rates of product innovation and improvement in product
performance. Managers need to exercise care in choosing between
the learning curve approach, which shows that manufacturing
costs fall as volume rises, and the experience curve approach,
which traces declines in the total costs of a product line over
extended periods of time as a volume grows. When selecting a
strategy, management investigates: the practical limit to volume/cost
reduction, the pattern of changes in the organization which
accompany progress along the learning curve, and the expected
results when the practiced limits of cost reduction are reached."
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ideas to add here. color coding. annotation. awards. explain
found objects approach. |
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Slowness by
Milan Kundera, Linda Asher (Translator)
Suggested by an acquaintance but gets spotty reviews. "Despite
Kundera's disclaimer about the novel's seriousness, Slowness
resonates with a profound meditation on contemporary life, the
secret bond between slowness and memory, the connection between
our era's desire to forget and the way we have given ourselves
over to the demon of speed."
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Borderliners by Peter Hoeg, Barbara Haveland (Translator)
Marcia recommends it highly. "Peter and several other borderliners
are given one last chance when they are transferred to an exclusive
private school where, unknown to them, they have been sent in
order to be guinea pigs in a secret government experiment where
troubled students are integrated with regular, privileged students.
At this Dickensian academy he befriends and tries to protect
a very damaged psychotic boy and a recently orphaned girl, and
together they conduct ``experiments'' in mentally and physically
escaping the spacial and psychological constraints of the rigid
school. They try ``escaping'' by doing everything from meditating
on corporal punishment to breaking into the steam tunnels below
the school."
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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The snob book to be seen with ten years ago. Perhaps the greatest
sales of any unread book in history. "...gravity, black
holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search
for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts
are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading,
and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize
this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about
things like alternate dimensions." I've seen the movie
and read excerpts; maybe some day I'll finish the book.
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| Man and Time by J. B. Priestly. Out of print but worth
checking for at the library. When I read this a dozen years
ago, I was excited by its breadth and clairty. |
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| Time and the Art of Living by Robert Grudin. A thoroughly
enjoyable collections of meditations on time. When I read this
book, I knew I had to talk with the author. He told me he wrote
it while sitting on a bench in a cloistered garden. Each morning
he would record his thoughts as they flowed forth. The book
takes you through a year one day at a time. More |
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How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan
Lakein
I recall leading a training session for sales people back in
the early eighties. "I'll save you the time you'd spend
reading Lakein's book," I said. "Just ask yourself
this question, 'Is this the best use of my time right now?'"
I'm skeptical of books that instruct you to start your day by
making a list of A, B, & C priorities -- and then only do
the As and some of the Bs. It smacks of a left-brained person
telling a right-brained audience, "Hey, stupid. Just do
what I do naturally."
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Time and Again
by Jack Finney
Recently deceased Mill Valley author Finney's timeless classic
tells what happens when Simon Morley is selected by a secret
government agency to test Einstein's theory of the past co-existing
with the present and is transported back to 1880s New York.
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| The Berenstain Bears and Too Much
Pressure by Stan Berenstain, Jan Berenstain Reviews From
Horn Book In another self-help book for the young, the Berenstain
Bears find themselves stress-ridden from an overbooked calendar
of after-school activities. The pressure is released and nightmares
cease when the family car breaks down, causing Mama to break
down, which then spurs the family to re-evaluate their priorities.
For clients of Berenstain bibliotherapy. |
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| Capital Times : Tales from the Conquest
of Time (Theory Out of Bounds,
Vol 6) by Eric Alliez, Geroges Van Den Abbeele (Translator),
Georges Van Den Abbeele (Translator) Reviews Booknews, Inc.
, August 1, 1996 Offers a history of the philosophy of time
and a comparison of the ways of conceiving the temporal, concentrating
on European philosophy and its impact on the connection between
time and money in Western civilization. Analyzes the social
and political processes involved in conceptions of time in ancient
and medieval tradition and sets them in the context of contemporary
political and philosophical debates centering on the thought
of Kant and Marx. Paperback. $62! |
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| Competing Against Time : How Time-Based
Competition Is Reshaping Global Markets
by George Stalk, Thomas M. Hout With many detailed examples
from companies that have put time-based strategies in place,
such as Federal Express, Ford, Milliken, Honda, Deere, Toyota,
Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, Citicorp, Harley-Davidson, and Mitsubishi,
the authors describe exactly how reducing elapsed time can make
the critical difference between success and failure. Give customers
what they want when they want it, or the competition will. Time-based
companies are offering greater varieties of products and services,
at lower costs, and with quicker delivery times than their more
pedestrian competitors. Moreover, the authors show that by refocusing
their organizations on responsiveness, companies are discovering
that long-held assumptions about the behavior of costs and customers
are not true: Costs do not increase when lead times are reduced;
they decline. Costs do not increase with greater investment
in quality; they decrease. Costs do not go up when product variety
is increased and response time is decreased; they go down. And
contrary to a commonly held belief that customer demand would
be only marginally improved by expanded product choice and better
responsiveness, the authors show that the actual results have
been an explosion in the demand for the product or service of
a time-sensitive competitor, in most cases catapulting it into
the most profitable segments of its markets. |
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The End of Certainty : Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of
Nature by Isabelle Stengers, Ilya Prigogine
Reviews Science Editor's Recommended Book In this
intellectually challenging book, Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine
tackles some of the difficult questions that bedevil physicists
trying to provide an explanation for the world we observe.
How is it, for instance, that basic principles of quantum
mechanics--which lack any differentiation between forward
and backward directions in time--can explain a world with
an "arrow of time" headed unambiguously forward? And how do
we escape classical physics' assertion that the world is deterministic?
In a sometimes mathematical and frequently mind-bending book,
Prigogine explores deterministic chaos, nonequilibrium thermodynamics,
and even cosmology and the origin of the universe in an attempt
to reach an explanation that can reconcile physical laws with
subjective reality. Where does anyone find the time to
write a book like this, much less read it?
Most physicists, from Newton to Einstein to Stephen Hawking,
have described the universe as deterministic and ``time-symmetrical''--with
the corollary that time, probability, and free will can only
be illusions resulting from human ignorance. Because that
view conflicts with much of philosophy and common sense, it
has contributed to the alienation of science from the rest
of human culture. Prigogine moves toward ending that alienation
by affirming the reality of time, arguing that advances in
the physics of nonequilibrium processes and unstable systems
now make it possible to revise the basic laws of physics ``in
accordance with the open, evolving universe in which mankind
lives.''
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| Fast Cycle Time : How to Align Purpose,
Strategy, and Structure for Speed by
Christopher Meyer. "Meyer argues that fast cycle time is
achieved not by working faster, but by aligning the organization's
purpose, strategy and structure. He demonstrates how the product
development cycle must become a learning laboratory in which
the four continuous elements "Design, Fabricate, Assemble, and
Test" are analyzed with the intent to improve strategy in the
next business cycle. Analyzing strategy and core processes enables
management to detect and correct problems earlier, and leverage
knowledge for improved innovation and increased value for customers.
Many years of practical experience have shown Meyer and his
colleagues the wisdom of a paradox—that to speed up you often
have to slow down." |
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First Things First : To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave
a Legacy by Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill (Contributor),
Rebecca R. Merrill (Designer) First Things First shows
you how to look at your use of time totally differently. Using
this book will help you create balance between your personal
and professional responsibilities by putting first things
first and acting on them. Covey teaches an organizing process
that helps you categorize tasks so you focus on what is important,
not merely what is urgent. First you divide tasks into these
quadrants:
- Important and Urgent (crises, deadline-driven projects)
- Important, Not Urgent (preparation, prevention, planning,
relationships)
- Urgent, Not Important (interruptions, many pressing matters)
- Not Urgent, Not Important (trivia, time wasters)
Most people spend most of their time in quadrants 1 and 3,
while quadrant 2 is where quality happens. "Doing more things
faster is no substitute for doing the right things," says
Covey.
Stephen Covey amazes me. He has made a fortune and gained
a tremendous following by restating the obvious. This book
is an expansion of the first of the "seven habits."
I'm glad, if mystified, that Covey's work inspires so many
people.
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Being & Time by Martin: Heidegger,.
One of the landmarks of 20th-century philosophy, Heidegger's
1927 treatise is thought to have been the inspiration for
such subjects as psychoanalysis, existentialism, ethics, hermeneutics,
and more. This new translation by one of Heidegger's students
offers the text in a more precise and understandable English
than earlier editions.
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| Complete Idiot's Guide to Winning
Back Your Time Hardcover, 244 Pages, Macmillan Publishing
Company, Incorporated, January 1996 ISBN: 0028610393 Author:
Heady, Robert K. Time waits for no one nor can anyone get more
of it. This book offers a way to take back what you've got.
This friendly, comforting guide is filled with invaluable insight
and advice that puts perspective on time and teaches in a stepwise
fashion how to regain control over this valuable commodity.
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| Black Holes
& Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy Trade
Paperback, 619 Pages, W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated,
January 1995 ISBN: 0393312763 Author: Thorne, Kip S. Description:
In this masterfully written and brilliantly informed work, Dr.
Rhorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech,
leads readers through an elegant, always human, tapestry of
interlocking themes, answering the great question: what principles
control our universe and why do physicists think they know what
they know? Features an introduction by Stephen Hawking. |
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