I wrote a draft of this as an email to someone, so I figured I should blog it.

I call it Bruner's Corollary (to Maslow's Hierarchy) on Time Management. Abraham Maslow was a smart guy best known for something called Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, which can be summarized as "first things first," or in the human condition, breathing, food and water are more important for survival than love, art, morality, etc. As a metaphor, it's popular in business management, to the extent that posthumously a bunch of his ramblings have been cobbled together as Maslow on Management, which I own but haven't had time to read (yes, I see the irony).

Along those lines, I've come up with a corollary for time management. Time management is one of those things we'd all like to get a better handle on. On the advice of a friend, I bought David Allen's Getting Things Done. Hoot! I got about three chapters in and I felt like was enrolled in a college course for which I'd missed two or three prerequisites; insanely complicated methodology.

The Bruner Corollary on Time Management is much simpler and can be summarized thusly:

Step 1) Whatever it is, ignore it.

Step 2) If it is important, it should call you back.

It's also a great filing system:

Step 1) Set whatever it is on the giant pile of paper on your desk.

Step 2) Months later, find time to plow through the pile and realize, to your great relief, that most of it is no longer relevant and can be thrown away.

Probably like many of you, I get a redonkulous number of emails daily, way too much to deal with, particularly if I hope to accomplish anything else. So I kind of graze. If you're my wife or my boss, or my boss's boss or the CEO (yes, I'm a peon), I'll probably read your email right away. If you're anyone else, I'll try to get to it when I can. That may be never.

The way I figure, if it's important, you'll probably email me again. Better yet, you'll call. If you don't know my phone number, and you don't show enough initiative to figure it out, whatever you want can probably wait. It's not as important as breathing or eating or sleeping, is it? And if it's not that important, how important could it really be?

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