Introduction

It was approximately three weeks before my father passed away from cancer when we received the first prepublished copy of this book. We were working hard to finish it; we both knew we were running out of time.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. We were at the Snowbird Ski Resort, his favorite place on the earth, where he spent as much time as possible. He loved nature; he called it God’s medicine. We were sitting on his balcony at 8,100 feet looking up at the mountains. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun was just west of the mountain peaks and there was a slight breeze that made the aspen tree leaves flicker back and forth. It was beautiful.

Suddenly we got a call from the front desk. “Trapper, your package has arrived.” I rushed to the lobby to retrieve it and gave it to my father. He was like a kid in a candy store filled with excitement. He couldn’t wait to sample the goods.

He opened the book to a random page and began to read.

“Three Incredible Gifts. Getting down to the most basic of basics, you need to realize that each day we are given three incredible gifts.

They are

• The gift of time, without which activities cannot be executed.

• The gift of personal energy, essential for doing the activities.

• The gift of choice, to determine what activities we will do.”

He took a long pause, and with tears in his eyes said, “Cancer has taken all three gifts from me. It’s taken my gift of time; I don’t have much left. It’s taken my gift of personal energy; I have none. And it’s taken my gift of choice; I no longer can choose my activities.” Three weeks later on his birthday, he passed away.

I often think about that day because it changed my life. It gave me a new perspective on these three incredible gifts that so many of us take for granted. We often get caught up with low priority activities and lose sight of what’s truly important to us.

You don’t have to experience cancer to maximize these three incredible gifts.

• Manage time wisely. Plan your day around your high priorities in life. Balance time between family, work, self, and service and always be present when engaging in conversation with others.

• Increase your personal energy. Our bodies naturally go through a repeating energy cycle every 90 to 120 minutes. Do one activity for about 90 minutes, followed by a lighter activity for 15 minutes to recover and sustain your energy throughout the day.

• Get what you want out of life! You can have it or not, based on the activities you choose. Choose wisely.

And above all, whenever possible get lost in moments. It’s then that you truly experience life.

Father Time

In 1986 my father, Trapper, changed his career. He joined Dr. Charles R. Hobbs to be one of his Time Power seminar facilitators. He was fortunate to have Charles as a mentor. Charles was a leader in time management strategies and a major influence in initiating the time management training wave that continues even today. His Time Power seminar has become a classic and continues to have life-changing impact on its practitioners, including me.

When Charles sold his company to Day-Timers^®, Inc., Trapper was invited to work directly for Day-Timer^® at its corporate offices in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Serving as a consultant to and for Day-Timer^® further solidified his interest in the subject of time. Through the Day-Timer^® connection, he had the opportunity of talking time with hundreds of corporations and organizations.

He later started his own consulting firm and, shortly thereafter, met William A. Guillory, PhD. Bill invited him to coauthor the book Tick Tock! Who Broke the Clock?, and they became friends. Bill, a scientist and gifted educator, challenged Trapper and helped him in numerous ways. He used to joke, “Bill makes me think so hard I always have a headache after we’ve been together.” Since my father’s passing, I, too, have become friends with Bill and consider him a mentor and friend. His ideas have been a major influence in the development of this book.

In 1998 I began providing a consulting service to my father’s company and later joined the family business. I was fortunate to have been mentored by Trapper in time, life, and business. He was more than a father; he was “father time.”

Fast forward. Today we find ourselves swimming in a cyber sea, filled with unbelievable technology. We have BlackBerrys, iPhones, iPads, Androids, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Siri, and more than 500,000 apps in the App Store. Yet people still can’t manage their time.

After 23 years as a time management consultant, logging more than two and a half million miles in the air, training many thousands of individuals, Trapper figured it was about time we write this book—about time.

So get ready! Here is a quick-fix approach to today’s time dilemma that doesn’t take more time to learn than the amount of time it saves.

Mark Woods