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time management

Those three innocent little words—“Got a minute?”—may be
stealing your life, a few minutes at a time.

You can stop this time-erosion, and you can probably do it
without hurting anybody’s feelings. But hurt feelings or not, you
need to take back control of your day.

Let’s take it from the top, from the moment somebody asks
“Got a minute?” and see if we can work out a response someplace
between, “Why, sure. Take all you want” and “Buzz off.”

What’s Wrong with “Buzz Off”?

It won’t win you many friends—or customers, of course. But
beyond that, it may be inappropriate. You may want and need to
have the conversation being offered you.

You have the right to decide.
That’s the key to effective time management in a sentence. You
have the right to decide how you spend your time, which is to say
that you have the right to decide what you’ll do this minute.
To make an intelligent decision, you need two critical pieces
of information:

1. What does the caller want to talk about?
2. How much time does the caller want to talk about it?

When you have this information, you can decide if and, if so,
how long to talk.

You have the right to ask.
In fact, you’re not very smart if you don’t.
There are lots of nice ways to do it. “How may I help you?” is a
good one, since it focuses on the needs of the caller while eliciting
the information you need. You can no doubt come up with several
more to fit various situations. If you need to, write them down on
a 6 × 9 card and keep them by the phone as a reminder and a cue
card until you feel natural asking.

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