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"OK, good enough. Date's over -- get in the car."

The mistake people make is in assuming that this means rigidly budgeting your time down to the minute, but I've found it's the opposite of that -- it's being able to adjust on the fly and still get everything done on time. Because trust me, a minute-by-minute schedule will get blown apart by noon -- the real world is too messy for that. So mastering time is less about having a book that carefully tracks every minute of the week and more about having an incredibly clear idea of your priorities. Are you working on the thing that actually needs to be done first, or are you working on the thing you find most interesting? If you just spent the last two hours arguing with somebody on the Internet -- are you sure there's nothing else higher on the list you could be working on? Because this is how busy people do it: They learn how to juggle the important things and, more importantly, how to walk away from time-sucking bullshit.

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From there, it's a series of trade-offs and adjustments. "This report has to be done by 9 a.m. But my kid is sick, so let's get her stable and taken care of first. Then, we can shuffle out the homework part, because she'll be out of school tomorrow anyway, and slide my work into that slot instead." And if you find yourself going so balls to the wall that you can't find a spare hour or two for yourself to just sit back and relax, you still need more practice. Relaxing is one of the things you have to stick on the priorities list, just like everything else.