Making Time

People say they can make time," a guy in the foyer of a restaurant was saying into the receiver of a pay phone. His voice had the desperate urgency of a man whose margin of excusability was quickly narrowing to nothing. "I have children, a job," he said. "I''ve tried to make time. It doesn''t work!"

Raise your hand if you have not at least occasionally felt the same way. Anybody? We thought so. Now tell yourself you''re going to exercise three times a week for an hour, minimum. Great idea, but when will you do it? "Lack of time is the number one barrier to exercise," says Bess H. Marcus, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Miriam Hospital and Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island.

In one sense, the guy on the phone was right: You can''t make time. There''s only so much of it in a day. But you can make choices about how you spend it. In fact, you already do, says Pam Kristan, founder of The Practical Matters, an organizational skills consulting firm in Boston. "If you''re not making decisions about your time consciously, decisions are being made for you," she says.

You have to control your time or it will control you—and the really important things in your life won''t get the attention they deserve. "If exercise is important to you, eliminate the idea that you don''t have time for it," says Denise Dudley, Ph.D., executive vice-president of SkillPath, a management training firm in Mission, Kansas. "Instead, say ''I do have the time—and I will find it.''" Here''s how, say the experts.

Uncover Hidden Time

"The best way to fill time is to waste it," a French author once said. You don''t have to kill time as ably as the French to appreciate that much of our existence is squandered on inefficiencies. Little pockets of hidden time are available to us throughout each day. All you have to do is tap them. Some ways to do it:

Take charge of the trivial. We waste 50 to 70 percent of our workday on unimportant stuff like drop-in visitors and phone calls. Get control by:

* Standing when someone enters your office to discourage unscheduled chats

* Getting straight to business with a question like "What can I do for you?" rather than inviting conversation with a more open-ended "How are you?"

* Making calls just before lunch or closing time, when there''s maximum incentive to keep talk short

* Eliminating phone tag by setting up appointments for call-backs

Energize the twilight zone. You know it and surveys confirm it: the hour between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. is one of the least productive times of the day. Take advantage by reserving late afternoon for low-key necessities like planning the next day or cleaning out your hard drive.

Get real. Studies find that most people optimistically underestimate how much time their tasks will actually take. When planning, don''t generalize from those rare occasions when all goes perfectly. Coldly plan for surprise setbacks and snafus. Then, for good measure, add 25 percent more time.

Identify black holes. Most workplaces have offices where material goes in and never comes out. The people inside may be overwhelmed, disorganized or both. Whatever the case, by sitting on stuff that eventually makes its way to you with a "yesterday" deadline, they''re holding you up and wasting your time. If the problem is an organizational one, it''s not your co-worker''s fault—maybe you''re too good at picking up the slack. Diplomatically make sure the boss knows about logjams; he''s the one best able to unclog them, but he may not know they exist.

Play a mind game. Create a sense of found time by imagining your boss decreeing that all workers spend an extra hour each week at a meeting. Then cancel the meeting.

Adjourn permanently. Regular staff meetings for "touching base" can kill hours at a stretch. But if there''s no specific reason to meet, there''s no justification for a meeting. Lobby your boss to eliminate all standing meetings in favor of short, issue-oriented conferences. When meetings are scheduled, establish not only a starting time, but an ending time.

Don''t do lunch. "Lunches are one of the biggest time wasters in corporate culture," Dr. Dudley says. "You cannot get out of one in less than 1½ hours." If the lunch is for pleasure or political gain, indulge. Often, though, lunches are simply a rote gesture that both parties erroneously assume is required. If clients have a simple business agenda, tell them you''d be happy to discuss it in a 20-minute meeting.

Keep your wallet closed. After TV viewing and eating, the most frequent leisure activity in America is shopping, according to a University of Maryland survey. "Shopping doesn''t just entail the actual buying," Kristan says. "It includes making decisions, returning items that don''t work out, assembling things, fixing them later if they break. If you spend less, you''ll find a lot of time opening up."

Simplify your workout. Finally, is the problem that you lack time for a workout—or for your workout? "The more complicated it is, the more impediments you''ll have to doing it," says Dr. Dudley. Do you have to drive a long way to a gym? Consider using weights at home. Are you doing three sets at each of your weight stations? Consider shortening your workout time by eliminating one set or doing fewer stations—you will need less time for each workout but may end up exercising more often.

Know Your Priorities

When it comes to actually doing what you want, nothing is more important than setting priorities. With a numbing array of activities, obligations and entertainments clamoring for our attention, having a sense of priorities helps us recognize what we truly value and then sift the treasure from the fool''s gold. Knowing you want to exercise isn''t enough. "Priorities aren''t about deciding what to do, but about saying no to the rest," Kristan says. Here''s what our experts recommend to get your priorities straight.

Check what you do. The things you actually spend your time on are, in fact, your priorities. But they may not be the priorities you would consciously choose. You won''t carve more meaningful time for yourself until you recognize that watching reruns of the old Dick Van Dyke Show on Nick at Nite seems to top your de facto list of important stuff.

Go on a mission. If you have a sense of long-term purpose, your most important tasks or activities will, by definition, be those that move you closest to your goals. To better focus on the overriding objectives that should govern your actions, write them down in a mission statement such as "I will be more fit." List different missions in order of importance. Before committing time to anything, ask: "How will this further my most important goals?"

Look to the future. When making decisions about how to spend your time, picture yourself six months from now. Ask yourself which choice will later make you feel the best, or which will create the most problems if you don''t choose it.

Distinguish urgent from vital. Important matters fall into these two categories. Urgent stuff clamors loudly for our attention: an impromptu meeting with a company honcho, a project that''s late, a knock at the door. We usually attend to urgent matters first, even though they''re often not important in the long run. Better to focus on what''s vital—tasks such as planning, staffing and organizing that have greater importance over the long haul and ultimately deliver greater satisfaction. (For a simple prioritizing formula, see "Foolproof Prioritizing.")

Get Organized

Organization isn''t about neatness. It''s about saving time. Consider that men spend an average of six weeks a year just looking for stuff. There has to be a better way. And there is, according to our organizational experts.

Begin life with the four Ds. Dump, delegate, do or delay. These are your options for incoming material. Avoid choosing "delay"; it leads to an overload of matters on hold, which you''ll waste time reconsidering later.

End the paper chase. Only 20 to 40 percent of the paper thrown at you each day is worth your concern. Sure you can file stuff, but there''s a cost there too: By one estimate, each file cabinet takes about $2,000 a year to maintain—and a lot of that cost is your time. Try to keep only material you''ll someday act upon by:

* Making files action-oriented. Establish a roster of slots numbered 1 to 31, one for each day of the month. If you can''t act on a memo immediately, put it in the folder for the day when you can. Every morning, pull out that day''s folder, and you''ll find a small number of purposeful papers at the ready.

* Putting all papers you don''t know what to do with in a box or slush file. Go back to this collection occasionally and throw out anything you haven''t needed for six months.

* Keeping your pile of unread material to six inches high or less.

Don''t overplan. In time-management circles, they''re called planner nerds: people who can''t go to the john without checking their daybooks first. Remember that schedules and to-do lists have their uses but are counterproductive when you''re constantly erasing and re-penciling as the unexpected inevitably occurs.