What made you write the book The Triad of Time?

We live in a world whose rhythm has ever increasingly accelerated. The general feeling is that someone has fired up the turbines and made time go by faster. The family ends up taking the back seat, limited to Saturdays and Sundays at the most. Personal plans are replaced by more urgent needs – and, thus, it is natural for people to realize that they don’t take care of themselves.

This setting may seem extreme, but it is a reality for a lot of people in this new era in which we all live. The question is: is it possible that there isn’t an alternative for this reality? Is it possible to have a more balance life, focused in making our biggest dreams come true?

A life where there is time set aside for your relationships and more important activities rather than urgent actions to be taken? More solid constructions than fires to put out? A life with peace of mind and control, based in your greatest purposes and with the feeling that time is passing by at the right pace? Would all of this only be a distant dream?

This has been a constant search for thousands of people throughout the world and a challenge for Time Management specialists (this, it seems, has become an extremely popular expression during the last few years). This is exactly what this books deals with. It speaks of the search for an alternative, of a second chance for many people to take on a new standard of life, with more quality, accomplishments and less stress.

But why another book about time management amidst so many already out there?

Indeed this was the question I asked the most before beginning to write this book. What good would another work about a theme already so widely disseminated? The challenge would be to create something different, modern, and easy to apply and that would provide quick results.

This book is the result of three years of work in the identification of problems and the needs of people in relation to the usage of their time, in the development of technologies to improve productivity, in the study of time administration methodologies, and in the elaboration of new concepts on the theme.

What tips does the book offer?

You won’t find here a book about tips, motivation or magic formulas. This work is based in the result of a research conducted with more than 3.000 people, in different countries, about current time management and personal productivity problems and needs. This research revealed that many practices and theories that had a great results some years ago no longer worked. Others would need to be reformulated and new ones should be created.

So, what does the book deal with?

This data provided a base for the development of a new methodology, focuses in the needs of workers in this new era in which we all live. A more modern approach, which offers a complete and holistic vision of the human being.

This methodology comes to be with the support from an adequate tool – a software – that will aid the methodology’s adoption by people interested in it. The basic premises for its development were: keep it simple and objective, focus it in the realization of personal goals and, finally, make use of the technology present in the modern world in benefit of people – and not as a weapon turned against them.

How is the book’s layout?

This book is divided into two parts. The first one shows the need for personal changes so as to assume a new standard of life and a critical analysis of the current time management models.

You will find throughout the book that “manage your time” is nothing more than the ability to make choices. At every instant, you make choices between what is important, what is urgent and what is circumstantial. If today you feel that you don’t have time, this is the effect of your choice of not having time, may be unconsciously or even consciously.

The second part deals in detail about the methodology, where there is an entire chapter dedicated to each phase, showing concepts and examples of application.

Explain a little better the concept of important, urgent and circumstantial.

The concept of the Triad of Time divides time into three spheres: urgent, important and circumstantial. It condemns the simultaneous existence of important and urgent activities, what ends up suggesting a change of a paradigm established decades ago and used by the great time management thinkers. The Triad will work as a result indicator of the application of the methodology.

What is important is not urgent, it is connected to something relevant to the person. In the other hand, what is urgent must be done at that specific moment or within that time frame.

A simple example: “someone needs to go to the cardiologist for routine exams. This is important. Now, when someone is having a heart attack, his visit to the cardiologist is urgent because his life is at risk at that moment. The important has become urgent in this case”.

The book comes with software?

Because of my profession and formation, this work could not left without a tool that could really help people’s lives. Every so often we read very important articles and then cannot put them into practice. For this reason, I decided to provide the book with software, one that could be downloaded from the Internet to help people’s lives. It is using technology for our benefit.

It helps to identify what is urgent, important, and circumstantial in our life and to perform the choices and direct them. Now, for the people who do not want to use the technology, it is possible to print similar forms in Word to attach them to regular calendars.

Define the book’s goal.

The first goal is to awaken the need to dream and to have time to make dreams come true, the second one is to provide a reflection about your life, about what is right and what needs to be so. To find out what you really want for your existence and your legacy, what is important and what can make a difference today and in the future. I will be very pleased is this material works like a mirror in order for you to see yourself from another angle, so as to make it easier to think about new solutions.