i first read this book eight years ago. it was referred to me by a colleague after i was complaining about my poor time management skills. on his recommendation, i got it and read the chapters dealing with time management (trying to be time-thrifty and all). i employed the techniques described, saw some gains but after a year still felt i wasn't achieving much. i returned to the text and re-read those initial chapters making sure i wasn't missing something. this time i continued reading and found that the real meat was actually not in the pages i first read, but all around them.

time management in itself is quite trivial. franklin quest (a company that this author is one of the founders of) has shown the world that effective time management has two simple steps:
step 1. if you have something to do, write it down.
step 2. if you have written something down, do it.
franklin quest, through their franklin planners, has made scillions of dollars on those two simple tenets. but what i learned in my second reading of hyrum's book is that yes, getting more done with your time is simple, but it is what you choose to do in that time that is the hard yet infinitely important part.

this book is responsible for the state of my marriage. this book is responsible for the state of my career. this book is responsible for the relationship i have with my children. without this book all of these things would obviously still exist, they would just be much less than they are, on all counts. there are many books out there that deal in these matters. i've read others like it but they haven't spoken to me as this one has. for this reason, i have re-read this book at the beginning of each year for eight years now. each time i walk away re-committed. i also walk away realizing how fluid life is. every year i have to tune and refine how i operate because my life is never the same two years in a row, especially now with children underfoot.

i'm not entirely sure why i have never included this on this list. i guess because it is quite different than the other works cited here. but 2007 was a tumultuous year and spending time in this book was therapeutic beyond words so i reckon hyrum has certainly earned a spot here for his role in my world. so i thank hyrum for divining it and i thank chris for leading me to it.