Time Creation, as it is defined in this book, is another name for the science of chronemics, the study of how we use our time and of how we may use it more effectively. But it is more than this. It is a set of techniques for doing things in time-saving ways.

It is the purpose of this book to show you how.

These techniques are needed, now more than ever, because the world is going through a period of rapid change. If anything, the rate of change is increasing exponentially – that is to say, changes are affecting the way we live and work faster and faster each year.

So, the pace of life is increasing partly as a result of the rate of change and partly because that’s the way a high-technology, sophisticated society like ours functions. Developments in electronics, for instance, have enabled information to be produced in quantities and at speeds that seemed inconceivable not much more than a decade ago. The development of high-speed transport, particularly by rail and by air, has meant that, technology permitting, you can be on the other side of the globe in less than a day or across a country in a very few hours.

If we are to keep up with this rate of change and this pace of life, we need to acquire new techniques and skills that our parents and grandparents had no need for. Greater speed of activity is being thrust upon us whether we like it or not and we have two choices. We can ignore it and turn our backs on the world and go down bravely, or we can develop the techniques which will enable us to cope. Time Creation is for those who make the second choice.

Not that the objective is to make you even more like a headless chicken dashing hither and thither with no real sense of purpose, or a rat in a rat race which is being turned ever faster. It is, rather, to enable you to speed up those activities that can sensibly be speeded up and to identify ways of saving time in carrying out those that cannot. The objective is that, in doing this, you will become one of life’s laidback bears and be able to cope. In addition, you will be able to create some discretionary time – that is, time which you can spend in whatever way takes your fancy. You may use it to get more work done (especially if you work for yourself), or to think about work-related problems which you don’t normally have the time to think about, or to engage in your favourite leisure activity, or just to sit and daydream. The choice is yours. You may even use it to acquire greater mastery of Time Creation techniques.

These techniques are often essentially simple, common-sense ones that can be easily learned. They can be self-taught without difficulty, as you will see as you work your way through this book. Some of them have technical names given them by scientific researchers in chronemics or in some other sub-discipline of the behavioural sciences. Where this happens, they will usually also be given an alternative simpler name which those readers who wisely prefer to avoid all jargon can use. The purpose here is, in other words, to provide you with a very sound, practical guide to time-management techniques which you can use without having to rely upon the support of a tutor or counsellor.

There are, in fact, very few tutors available who could help you. Chronemics is a very young science and is not yet widely known in the UK. Indeed, speed has always been a neglected aspect of education and training. Many teachers still have a deep suspicion of techniques that help people to think faster, read faster, write faster or do anything else faster. They concentrate on teaching you to do these things well. They often give little thought to helping you to do them well and quickly. It is high time that speed was emphasised a good deal more strongly in our educational system than it has been hitherto.

This is not to argue, however, that everything should be done faster. We need to remember that sometimes it is better to slow down. One can only do this if one uses Time Creation techniques to create the time for doing so. Just as in driving a car, there are times when speed is appropriate and times when it is not. No one is arguing for speed for speed’s sake. It is as ridiculous to suggest, for instance, that you should read quickly all the time as it would be to suggest that you should read slowly all the time.

Given a reasonable (though by no means a fanatical) degree of commitment to applying the techniques, you should notice some benefit from Time Creation almost straight away. Some techniques work sooner than others, but they should all show results after a week or so if they are going to work. This last qualification has to be made because few of the techniques will work equally well for everyone. But even if only some of them work for you, this does not matter too much. Benefit will still be obtained from those which do work and this will help you to cope better with the rate of change and the pace of life. There can be no guarantee in any kind of training that any particular techniques will work equally well for everybody. Try each one out and build on those that work for you.

Most people will find that they can achieve a 25% increase in speed in most activities without any loss in the quality of performance. In some, like reading, a 100% increase is by no means uncommon and the benefits that can result from that kind of improvement can be immeasurable and lifelong. In others, the increase may only be 5% or 10% but even this is worth having. If something takes on average half an hour and there are three such activities a day, a 10% increase in speed (or reduction in time spent on each one) can save almost 55 hours a year. This can be the equivalent of 1½ working weeks, 11 five-hour games of golf, nearly 37 football matches or about 15 books read that otherwise would not have been enjoyed. If this is the kind of benefit which can accrue from a small increase in speed, you can imagine the benefits to be gained from using Time Creation techniques in all your daily activities at work and during leisure time. You may also begin to realise that time creation is designed not to imprison but to liberate.

You can start working on this book in a number of ways. You can read through all of it first before trying to put anything into practice. You can study the chapters in Part 1 (reading Chapter 1 first) and try to practise each technique as soon as you learn it. Or you can read Part 1 and then move to Part 3 and try to use the techniques on those skills where you are most in need of increases in speed. However, unless you have a particular preference in the choice of an approach, you will probably do best to work through the book from the beginning, chapter by chapter.

Before you start, however, it might help if we briefly review what you are likely to encounter in each part of the book. This kind of preview, in fact, should be the result of using the techniques described in Chapter 4 of Part 1 (anticipatory scanning techniques). It is nearly always easier to process information if you have some idea of its general nature in advance.

Part 1, ‘Time Creation Techniques’, presents the twelve basic techniques. Each chapter introduces a technique and shows you how to use it more effectively.

In Part 2, ‘Overcoming Problems in Using Time Creation Techniques’, most of the difficulties that you are likely to encounter in mastering the techniques are identified and ways of overcoming them are discussed. You will be able to pay particular attention to those which you have experienced and be able to take effective action to deal with them.

Part 3, ‘Applications in Personal Skills’, shows how Time Creation techniques can be applied in a variety of essential skills in order to increase speed of performance without experiencing loss of quality or efficiency.