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By Dona Dezube

Four-time U.S. Olympic steeplechase runner Henry Marsh attended law school while caring for his infant son, yet still trained on 28 barriers and seven water hazards spread across a 3,000-meter racecourse. The author of The Breakthrough Factor: Creating Success and Happiness Through a Life of Value (Fireside, 1998), Marsh also serves as national program director at Franklin Covey in Salt Lake City.

The key to time management, he says, is knowing your priorities and allocating your time accordingly. "I don't run across too many people who aren't busy. I can increase the efficiency of their business by putting a date planner in their hands, but if the increase in their business efficiency doesn't relate to what matters most to them, who cares?" he asks.

Marsh’s early life priorities were very clear. He wasn't in the top 10 percent of his law school class, but he managed to graduate and make the Olympic team. His infant son is now 20 and doing missionary work for the Mormon Church. Marsh notes that business tools have changed over the past two decades, but the principles of time management are the same. The Internet is fabulous, he says, but it can be overused. Day planners, when used without the proper perspective, will only make you more organized, not more productive.

Start With Number One

If we have a clear picture of the end result, we know how to go on.

So how do you get a grip on life and your time? Marsh advises the following:

• Determine what matters most to you. Define your values and your role in life, and then create intermediate and long-range goals that will help get you where you want to go.
• Start each day with a task list, labeling everything according to its priority and its relationship to your big goals.
• Make an A-list of things that are going to get done--or you're not going to bed.
• Then build a B-list of things that should get done--but you'll sleep if they don't.
• And add some Cs, some "when-pigs-fly" items, just to humor yourself.

Why not just make a plain, old-fashioned, “to-do” list? Because you might tend to skip over the longer, more unpleasant tasks in favor of the fun and easy ones. So, once you're chugging along with your A-B-Cs, guard against people who derail your productivity by filling your day with off-task meetings and phone conferences. If you sit in meetings and yap on the phone all day, you won't have any time left over to complete the items on your prioritized daily task list.

"Schedule first things that are important to you. If you do not fill those in once a week before you fill in the other stuff, they won’t happen," Marsh explains. "The whole key is prioritizing, keeping the big picture in mind, scheduling those big rocks in and letting other things fill in according to priority. Do not let yourself be controlled by what seems urgent.”

Keep Everything In Focus
Marsh is pretty much the king of focus. When he got to the starting line of his 1984 Olympic final, he had already gone over the race many times in his mind. His visualization, of course, could not have included the spectator who jumped out of the stands and started running down the track behind Marsh. While other runners lost time looking back at the overzealous fan, Marsh kept his eyes on the prize. He came in fourth--so exhausted he had to be carried off the field on a stretcher after the race.

"We all get these obstacles thrown at us, but if we have a clear picture of the end result, we know how to go on," he says. He should know.