The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: Achieve More Success with Less Stress: Foreword by Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can't Ignore You

by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Quick Reference Guide included with over 30 online tools and 40 done-for-you routines Is it possible to keep up on life, let alone enjoy it, when you’re overloaded and overwhelmed--with work, with errands, with emails and texts, and with relationship responsibilities? You get things done, but do you get them done well? Do you have enough time for other people--and for yourself? The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment takes you beyond simple time management to provide you with the skills and outlook you need to completely revamp the quality of your life. You'll learn how to reorient your mindset and use simple routines to accomplish more than you ever dreamed possible. Packed with tips and advice about how to overcome crippling emotions like guilt, let go of the compulsion to be perfect, and overcome the most common obstacles to a life well managed, this powerful, holistic, total-life guide is founded on three powerful Secret #1: Clarify Action-Based Priorities
Determine what's most important to you and define exactly what you will do to invest in those priorities Secret #2: Set Realistic Expectations
Shift expectations of yourself and others from the realm of the ideal to the realm of the possible Secret #3: Strengthen Simple Routines
Develop healthy habits so the flow of your life moves effortlessly toward your highest goals A renowned authority in her field, Elizabeth Grace Saunders illustrates exactly how her methods work through case studies of time-coaching clients, and she provides a quick-reference guide of real-life example routines on everything from exercising regularly to moving forward on a dreaded project. The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment does more than help you make the best of the time you have. It gives you the tools, insight, and guidance you need to overhaul your entire life. Praise for The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment : "You don't just need to manage your time, you need to invest it. This book offers key insights on what it means to live life well by getting things done and enjoying the ride." -- Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times bestselling author of MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There "If you lack grit--which most of us do--read this book. Elizabeth's practical insights on how to strengthen good time investment habits can help you develop the focus, discipline, and tenacity you need to achieve success." -- Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, author of Succeed and Nine Things Successful People Do Differently "I love the main thesis of this book--that time management is less about managing your time and more about managing your emotions. That alone is a good reason to read this book." -- Peter Bregman, CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., and author of 18 Minutes "From the very phrase 'time investment,' you know this book is something special. Direct and powerful and easy to implement, Elizabeth has a key ingredient to your success right here." -- Chris Brogan, CEO of Human Business Works and New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Impact Equation “If you are going to go from ordinary to extraordinary success, you need to invest your time in your top priorities. Elizabeth teaches you how to do just that.” --Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council “This book can help you move past your blocks, invest your time wisely, and ultimately transform your life in the process.” --Jenny Blake, author of Life After The Complete Guide to Getting What You Want “This book is magical.” --Ash Kumra, cofounder of DreamItAlive.com; author of Confessions from an Entrepreneur series; and public speaker

Genres: Productivity, Nonfiction, Self Help, Personal Development, Business, Psychology, Personal Growth

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

About Real Life E®
Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E® a time coaching and training company that empowers individuals who feel guilty, overwhelmed and frustrated to feel peaceful, confident and accomplished through an exclusive Schedule Makeover™ process. She is an expert on achieving more success with less stress. Real Life E® also increases employee productivity, satisfaction and work/life balance through custom training programs.

McGraw Hill published her first book The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success with Less Stress. Elizabeth contributes to blogs like Lifehacker, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and the 99U blog on productivity for creative professionals. She was selected as one of the Top 25 Amazing Women of the Year by Stiletto Woman.

Reviews

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 2013 and written by the founder of an internationally renowned coaching company.
I enjoyed this book because it addresses perfectionism and explains how it can actually stand in the way of real productivity. It brings awareness over facts - that you've got just 24 hours in a day no matter how much you wish it to be otherwise, so forming routines is the best strategy to adopt. I loved that the way success defined in this book is a personal one, unbound by societal pressures. It encourages us to address our emotions, which are often the main cause of self-sabotage and it encourages realistic optimism and rewriting our internal monologue. All in all a great and worthwhile read.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Are all time management books written by such bubbly optimists? I felt like this was something some friends in high school and I would have written to make fun of time management books, except this really got published. The ideas weren't bad, but the delivery was difficult for me personally.

I would like something a little more inspiring and down to earth I know what to do (turn off internet, stop writing Goodreads reviews, have fewer children), I would just like someone to more practically tell me how to do it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many blogs advise you to 'set aside time to do X' (whether X is to get adequate sleep, plan your day, work on side projects, network, and so on!), but it's never really made clear exactly HOW to do this. In this book, Elizabeth Saunders lays out the entire thought process of creating a habit or adding a routine to your day which covers all aspects - practical, logistical, and emotional. The first part of the book lays the foundation by discussing how certain feelings can affect how you deal with things - understand the emotions behind what you do (or don't do) and you can learn how to deal with them. Before, I knew what habits I wanted to build, but had trouble implementing them and also getting back on the horse after some kind of emotional disruption. After reading this book, I understand myself and my patterns better, and have been able to make forward progress on some goals of mine which I've been blocked on. This is an excellent book and extremely actionable!

[Juan Castro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just like you guard your money from others, you should guard your time from others too.
The first secret to effective time investments is to make action-based priorities.
Prioritize:
1. What makes your life successful?
2. Acknowledge and address your emotions that drive your behavior. So you don't self-sabotage.

Cultivate a positive mindset, is essential to achieve your goals. Start with gratitude. Monitor your self-judgment thoughts and start reprogramming them. Meditate.
Set realistic expectations about how much you can do. Accept how you are and not how you wish you were. Stop perfecting the small things and focus on the bigger picture.
Becoming realistic buys you freedom.

Strengthen simple routines. They make you less overwhelmed limiting the number of choices you make daily, liberating mental space for important things.
Choose an action. Visualize the routine (anticipate possible barriers with a plan B). Plan ahead. Go do it. Don't seek perfection, seek consistency. Rinse and repeat.

To achieve your goals, seek help and ask for it! (Joining groups work good too).

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book delves into the psychological reasons why we don't start that project or thing that we always say we want to do but never seem to do. Ms Saunders gives advice on how to overcome them and goes beyond being productive at work into being productive at life. She makes you look at your whole life and gives equal value to wanting to have relationships, time with your family, spirituality and actually enjoying your life to being super productive and successful at your career. She also gives easy to customize routines and advice to get going past the thinking into the doing stage. Ms Saunders also goes into how not everyone is the same when it comes to time management and how to work with the person you are and those who have a different "time personality" than you. Overall a very good and useful book.

[Rich Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. I didn't read all of it. I read about 80% thoroughly, but then skimmed the remainder. Regardless, it's a good book if you aren't sure why you have time management issues and don't know what to do about them. It confirmed a lot of what I was already thinking. The requirement that you set realistic expectations and learn how to say no, but with good reason, not just because you should, is paramount theme throughout this book. If you are time-management-challenged, commit to reading this and doing the exercises. Once you figure things out, find, or develop, a system that works for you. It will be worth it. It has been for me.

[Jay French · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time management advice for those who felt that “Getting Things Done” is too structured. If you’ve read a dozen of these kinds of books before, well, this is another one. Fine if this is a new topic to you, otherwise, just good for reminders, mostly psychological/new-agey, on how to plan and value your time.

[Scott Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like a meta-analysis of existing time-management and productivity literature, and I've read much of the material being reviewed. There is a significant amount of value added, however, and I enjoyed the few original ideas.

[Quinns Pheh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of us live impulsively, driven by emotions like fear and guilt to try and cram as much as possible into our days. However, realistically, our time is limited and finite. If we ignore that reality, we could easily be stressed out and struggle with our relationships. This book suggests three secrets to better time management. These three plans include setting action-based priorities, ensuring that our expectations are realistic, and finally developing simple routines that help keep track.

[Chintushig Tumenbayar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Байгаа зүйлээ төгс төгөлдөржүүлэхэд цагийн менежментийн талаарх хүмүүсийн арга барил, техникийг туршиж үзэх, харьцуулан жиших үр дүнтэй санагддаг. Тэр ч утгаараа энэ номыг дундаас хэрэгтэй ганц санаа олж авахаар уншихад олон шинэ мэдлэг хуримтлуулж, заримыг нь хэрэглэж үзэхээр тэмдэглэж авлаа.

[Jakub Brudny · Rating 2 out of 5]

also not very helpful

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of time-management, resource-management, get-your-shit-together books, and this one has some of the best information that I've encountered. Definitely some repeat tips, but that's inevitable. I really enjoyed the journal questions and prompts, and the section on creating your own routines could be it's own book.

[Kelley Hazen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book. Elizabeth Saunders offers many reasonable and effective ways to manage time better. Get more done, feel more relaxed. She takes the time not just to solve the problem but to examine why the problem exists in the first place. The solution becomes about understanding ineffective behavior and why it exists. Solutions are more effective and changes can be permanent. The book includes an extremely helpful Quick Start Guide as well as many ideas toward actually formatting and visually identifying where change is needed and creating visual support to go about it. I felt like narrating this title was a gift!

[McKenna Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strengths: The book does a good job of showing the connections between our thoughts and feelings and our time management.

Weaknesses: A lot of the book is focused on habits, routines, and other things that people who have thought much about time management will already know.

This book is good for: people who want general ideas for improving time management and aren't trained in CBT and/or who don't have established routines. People who haven't read numerous books about habits.

This book is probably not good for: people who are thoroughly versed in CBT and/or habit formation but still struggle to recognize the passing of time like a normal human.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember agreeing with what she had to say, but not remembering a word of it. D:

[Synthia Salomon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time management is a priority for me with pandemic teaching (hybrid and remote) while being a mother and wife. I have goals for 2021 that are personal, family-oriented, and career-driven. This book was right on time and reinforced some strategies I’ve been tinkering with. “Most of us live impulsively, driven by emotions like fear and guilt to try and cram as much as possible into our days. But, realistically, we only have a finite amount of time. When we ignore that reality, we end up getting stressed and burned out, and all our relationships suffer. By applying the three secrets to time investment, we can completely transform how we live. First, we need to make action-based priorities. Second, we need to make our expectations realistic. And third, we need to develop simple routines that help us stay on track.

Actionable advice:

Choose a trigger to jumpstart your routine.

Sometimes starting an action can be the hardest part. That’s why it can be helpful to jumpstart a routine by coupling it to an action that you do anyway. For example, if you want to start jogging every morning, plan to head out the door as soon as you’ve had your first cup of coffee. It can also be helpful to plan the action you’ll do straight after the run, like jump in the shower. Integrating the new action within your existing routine will make it feel much more manageable.”

[Liz Gabbitas · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are worthwhile lessons in here, and I found some gold nuggets that I have applied. But reading it required some digging through sludge. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a specific time management problem you are trying to address.

However, I liked the idea that when you always feel like you're running out of time, you're really just letting non-priorities take up too much of your time. With conscious redirection, you can focus your energy where it matters to you and feel more confident about how you spend your day. Again, if you have a specific project or long-term goal you've been meaning to work towards but never have time to do, this is a great road map to making changes in your life.

[Corina Raileanu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main point is that for a better time management you need routines and the routines are based on priorities and to understand what are your priorities you have to do a lot of introspection. If you expect this book to serve you a recipe that you can start using tomorrow then this is not the right moment to read it. But if you want to understand what kind of time personality you are and why you're using the time the way you do and how can you change the paradigm then this book is for you. Extra points for the tools you can find on internet and the routines templates the book provides.

[Zhivko Kabaivanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment (2013) is a practical guide to living a life by design instead of impulse.

It provides step-by-step strategies for planning your days around the commitments that really matter to you, setting up effective routines, and finding people to help you stay on track.

It also reveals the importance of dealing with emotional baggage like guilt and shame, which can derail even the best-laid plans.

[Neeta Karnik · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all suffer from stress and anxiety. Most of the times, it is because we are poor at time management and have a rather negative perspective of ourselves and our achievements. This book is the light for you then on how to maximise your time and how to work your way through your day as well as the kind of relationship you need to foster with yourself.

[Jessy Shi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps it is because I had high expectations when I found out Cal Newport wrote the Foreword of this book (and I loved his books), but this.. was not great. It was kinda all over the place, and I honestly don't remember most of it when I'm done reading it. I guess the writer's ideas are kind of okay, but I could not say the same for the delivery of them

[Tony Loffreda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have studied time management for years and read meaningfull works on the subject (although you don't manage time but yourself in relationship to the time you have been allotted) but this is one of the best I have come across. It is an excelent read and I hardly recommend it to all.

[Brad]

HBR Ideacast 3/21/13

[Paul Bard · Rating 2 out of 5]

The nice thing to say is I’m not the right audience for this book. It would help a female audience perhaps.

Appreciate the chance to read. The journal prompts seem helpful.

[Daniel Dawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really had high expectations for this book. However, it was simply okay. The author focused too much on the psychology of time and less on how to get stuff done. Didn't include the most important thing to know about time management: work expands to fill the amount of time you give it. A much better resource is Getting Things Done the Agile Way by J.D. Meier.

Quotes:
-"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about." (Dale Carnegie)

-"Like water running down a mountain riverbed or electricity coursing through wires, our habit patterns determine where we automatically invest most of our time."

-"People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings." -John Kotter and Dan Cohen, The Heart of Change

-"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired it the mind is not tired." -George S. Patton

-"We usually don't want to achieve or have something; we want the feeling that comes from achieving or having something."

-"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

-"To lower the force required to break inertia and to build momentum, pick a start time or trigger event. This keeps you from having to make the decision of whether this activity stands as your highest priority in the moment."

[Catherine Gillespie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’ve read any books on time management, The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: Achieve More Success with Less Stress won’t give you much new information. And if you’ve read more than one or two books on time management, I guarantee the “secrets” are not secrets to you. However, I did find a few worthwhile points in this book that might make it worth your time.

The first helpful idea I gleaned from this book was the need to keep an eye out for time malaise.

That’s not what the author calls it, but I love the word “malaise” and find it descriptive. Anyway, I thought Saunders did a good job explaining the different ways that our feelings and reactions to situations might be telling us that we need to re-evaluate how we spend our time. If we aren’t working toward our priorities, or if we’re allowing other people to spend our time for us, or if we’re not accomplishing the things we know are really important, we do feel effects, and often just recognizing that you’re under stress or that your priorities are out of order can help you to start solving the problem.

{Read my full review here}

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Figure we can all need some help in this area. People that are pretty type A will most likely learn that they probably already do some version of many of these things, but it's still valuable to look at other people's systems and strategies. There is a lot of very practical and specific advice here, some of it helpful. As someone that studies organizational change, I agree that the part about examining your emotions and how they govern what you actually DO, regardless of what you might say your priorities are, is the crux of everything.

I do think it's a fine line. Organizing and planning carefully saves time to a point, but you can tip over the line in gratuitous anal-retentiveness. My natural instinct is to plan and organize, but I learned that sometimes if you really want to get shit done you have to just sit down and start slinging shit around, or else you risk fetishizing your time planning more than gettin r done.

[Kelly Lynn Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book doesn't mess around with being coy. You can read the three steps right on the jacket flap. I appreciated that, because I hate it when a book hides its selling point in an effort to entice me. More than being up-front, though, the book is good. The author lays everything out in easy-to-follow steps, and provides tons of extra worksheets online. The third step is strengthening routines, and this was the most helpful to me. By carefully planning out routines, you can build habit strength and accomplish more of your goals. The example she gives in the book is of starting an exercise routine. She asks: What equipment will you need? How long will it take you to get ready? How long will you exercise? How long will it take you to shower after you exercise? Taking all of these factors into consideration makes it more likely that you'll succeed.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book the axis of which is: Secret #1: Clarify Action-Based Priorities. (Determine what's most important to you and define exactly what you will do to invest in those priorities). Secret #2: Set Realistic Expectations (<>) Secret #3: Strengthen Simple Routines (<>)

I found this book interesting, but I couldn't remember the three major points well. I didn't take the recommended time however to do the journaling the author recommends. Geared toward executives/entrepreneurs.

Recommended by Cal Newport (which is why I read it).

[Dave Bolton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was decent, but also made me appreciate all the work that must go into creating the refined systems in a lot of pop-management and self help books. All the elements of a "system" were there, but the presentation and explanation were not quite compelling. It all seemed like good approaches, but just needed a bit more polish and effort to really make it stick.

Still, I'll use some of the techniques here, so I'm not super worried about the packaging of them, it just won't reach a "tipping point" without it.