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Transcription of interview with Michael Linenberger on December 23, 2013.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Michael Linenberger is an expert in time management.
Heís written a lot of books and many of them have been number one bestselling books including
the One Minute To-Do List
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Linenberger on Arutz
Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: One of your best books is probably known as the One Minute To-Do
List.
Whatís that all about?
Michael Linenberger: Thatís one of my favorite books, the One Minute To-Do List because itís
an incredibly simple yet powerful to-do list approach that you can do on paper, you can
do it in Outlook and other software.
You can do it on your smart phone and it truly does get your day and believe it or not, it
can actually get your email also under control and the way it works is you segment your doís
in email into three urgency zones that are very unique, not like what youíve seen before
and it really does help you get your day under control.
Douglas Goldstein: Whatís different about your model other than segmenting into three,
we all have high medium and low priority tasks donít we?
Michael Linenberger: I discovered after years of using the old systems that they didnít
work very well and so I did a lot of research.
I was a vice present at Accenture, that huge management consulting firm and I needed a
way to solve this problem for my staff and for me.
I did some psychological research and I discovered that there are some key ways you can divide
your work up into these urgency zones and the urgency zones are very unique and they
allow you to segment the energy that you apply to each zone and you will find that with a
lot less effort, you are getting to those most important things and the things that
drop off the end of the day are your very least important things and you know what a
difference that makes.
Douglas Goldstein: Is that model still something thatís relevant today?
Michael Linenberger: Itís relevant but itís just to say that you are going to do that
is almost impossible because what happens is you will leave one of those classes and
you will go back to your office and start doing that and within about 4 hours, your
fighting fires again.
So I found that what you need to do is you need to manage urgency head on.
You need to attack urgency head on, get it under control so that you can then clear the
air and get back to your most important thing so unless you manage urgency directly you
are not going to succeed at that and thatís what this One Minute To-Do List does, it gives
you three urgency zones and an approach to do that.
Douglas Goldstein: Efficiency and not wasting time are high up on my priority list but sometimes
I feel when Iím talking to other people about and like either their eyes are actually rolling
back in their head or I just feel that they are.
Is it a personality thing for people like you and me or is this something that you can
inspire people to force them do?
Michael Linenberger: Yyou donít want to force anybody to do anything.
I wait until people come to me and a lot of people do come.
I donít have to do any marketing because there are tons of people who need this and
then hear about my system and say ìOh I need this.
Itís working for you.
I want it for meî and the thing is itís so simple.
The trouble with a lot of these systems is you have to study them for weeks and you have
to create these huge binders full of all your to-doís, contacts or calendar and thatís
not what this is.
This is a really simple technique that you can get started on.
The reason I called it the One Minute To-Do List is you really can get going on it in
about a minute or two and the results speak for themselves.
So if you worried that itís overkill, itís going to drive you crazy with all the new
processes to memorize, itís very easy.
Douglas Goldstein: There are different philosophies of whether you should plan where you want
to be in a hundred years and work your way backwards and then you are constantly thinking
about the long term goals as opposed to some people would say ìNo you should think of
your 3 to 5-year goalsî and then there are the Pandits who talk about one year goals
and then I had actually heard people say ìJust wake up in the morning.
Plan your day and then tomorrow you will plan a new day.î
Michael Linenberger: Itís somewhere between there, the approach I use.
First of all I agree that it is nice to stop and do that kind of long term planning and
then I think we all should do that once a year or so, do the long term planning and
then have the list and your goals they refer to but this is more tactical.
This is more ìAll right, so whatís on fire?
How do I get it out of fire?
How do I then focus on the important things that we need to get done this week and beyond?î
And there is this third zone that I call over the horizon where you can store longer term
things but keep them out of sight, accept for once a week and so by segmenting those
three zones, you can focus on those really urgent things but still have a view of the
longer term
things if you want.
Douglas Goldstein: A lot of the to-do list that the people are used to are taking a yellow
pad and writing down what you have to do and maybe prioritizing it and crossing it out
every time you finish something so you get that incredible satisfaction, but I know that
you teach a lot of people how to do this in Outlook.
How do the tasks work in Outlook and is it similar to the pencil and paper method?
Michael Linenberger: I think itís much better and the reason why I think itís much better
than pencil and paper is that these days, at least in my world, 90% of my task request
come in through email and I think thatís true in a lot of the corporate world and so
if you are getting this task request with the details attached to the email on how to
do it, the beauty of Outlook is you can just drag and drop that email on top of the task
icon and that converts it into to-do with all of the body of the email in the body of
the to-do itself.
So two weeks from now when you work on it you donít have to go search for that email,
it is right there associated with the task.
Thatís the beauty of using the task system and now like only 5% of Outlook users use
the task system in Outlook.
I encourage people to do it, thereís this big icon in the lower left hand corner that
says task, click on it and start using it and I think you are going to love it and I
gave details on the book on how to do that.
Douglas Goldstein: What do you do with the garbage that you get in your email and some
of it is spam which hopefully our spam filters get rid of it for us, but I must get hundreds
and hundreds of emails a day, they are not task, they are just getting in my way.
How do you recommend dealing with that?
Michael Linenberger: I recommend taking passes over email inbox and this is what I do several
times a day, two passes.
First pass is to toss out all the junks so thereís not cloud in your vision and that
takes 10, 20, 30 seconds sometimes, maybe a little bit more but not much more then go
back and convert those emails to task that have action for you to do that you cannot
do right now or donít want to do right now and then file that mail away immediately and
then the rest of it is just informational.
I also found that a way you might tag it with some category names so I can find it easier
but in the book I mentioned I have a single folder filing system which is very fast, itís
saved so much time, itís a lot easier than you think once you start converting emails
to tasks.
Douglas Goldstein: What other apps or software that you recommend?
Michael Linenberger: For people who donít have access to Microsoft Outlook, I recommend
another software pack and itís free, itís an online pack, it also has apps that go with
it for the iPhone and other places.
That thing is called Toodledo and I have no business relationship with them, I just like
the software Toodledo and it can be setup really easily to work with the One Minute
To-Do List in that book that you can get a free download for, Iíll show you how to use
that software as well.
Douglas Goldstein: Would you hire someone who is not using this sort of system or do
you think that this level of organization today to be successful is an absolute prerequisite?
Michael Linenberger: I think itís easy to learn.
Yes, I would hire somebody and if they didnít have it place, really it takes a couple of
minutes to get them started and then I couch them a little bit within a very short amount
of time, you can get up and running on this approach.
I think anybody can learn this.
I teach seminars all over the world and quickly they turn around and I get emails back within
days, weeks, months later saying ìYou changed my life, Iím naming my first child after
you because of the amazing impact youíve hadî and itís gratifying.
Iím kidding a little bit but it is gratifying to see how grateful people are when this takes
place because when your inbox is out of control and your life is out of control, it creates
a huge amount of unnecessary stress and to see that stress lifted right after a class
or coaching somebody on it really feels good for me.
Douglas Goldstein: What can someone start with today if you want us to begin to get
organized?
Michael Linenberger: Iíll give you a 20-second lesson on the One Minute To-Do List.
Three zones, take out a piece of paper, put three sections on it, the top section called
critical now, put things there that are absolutely, positively to-do that you would not leave
work if they werenít done, only three to five items.
It can be empty.
In fact, if itís empty thatís great.
Second zone called opportunity now, put those things in there that you would work on today
if you have the opportunity but they are not critically due, up to ten days out.
If they are due beyond ten days, donít put them in that middle section, put them in the
bottom section which is called over the horizon and just list as many things there that are
on your mind that can wait ten days or longer, it could be much, much longer.
Thatís the essence of the One-Minute To-Do List, itís simple, it seems almost deceptively
simple.
You will be amazed to how well it works but just go do those three zones right now and
see what happens, more details in the book but thatís the essence of it.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people get a free copy right now of the One Minute To-Do List?
Michael Linenberger: Here is the URL where you can download a free PDF copy of the book,
www.myn.bz\free1MTD and then get the book.
Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
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