A rose on time is far more valuable than a $1,000 gift that's too late.

- Jim Rohn

Hey, despite my many research-backed rants on why you should spend more time with customers, the bottom line is that there is a limit, and you need to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient manner.  The trick here is that this should also be applied when realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don't know the solution to a problem, the best kind of support member will get a customer over to someone who does.  Don't waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!

- Gregory Ciotti for HelpScout 

When you shift focus from one task to another, that transition is neither fast nor smooth. Instead, there is a lag time during which your brain must yank itself from the initial task and then glom onto the new task. This shift, though it feels instantaneous, takes time. In fact, up to 40 percent more time than single tasking - especially for complex tasks.

-Jim Taylor, Ph.D, for psychologytoday.com

Continuous improvement, or CI in shorthand, is a management approach that gained currency in the 1980s and 1990s.  With a CI culture, nobody in the organization ever thinks, "OK, now that we've achieved this year's cost targets, let's just run things steadily for a bit, no more changes."  A CI culture implies there's always a next idea or a next step, however small.  And it says that if you're not moving a little bit further forward in some way, there's a danger you'll start slipping back - if not in absolute terms, then relative to your competitors.  You have to be paranoid about complacency.  

And with a CI culture, nobody ever thinks, "OK, there's more to do, but I'll wait a few months and assemble a good, long, meaty to-do list, then I'll really go for it, I'll make a sprint for the tape."  A CI culture says do even a little bit today, don't wait for a major event, a big process - if you do, there's a risk it won't happen, it could become too monumental and hard to handle.

- Andrew Wileman, Driving Down Cost

At some point in your life I bet you have taken some form of a time management class.  Mine was the original Franklin Covey time management seminar, where you purchased the Covey planner of your choice and then learned how to effectively use it with the Covey system.  Over the course of several years, I think I owned and attempted to use each planner size they made in hopes of finding the perfect solution for my needs.  Obviously, something wasn't working, and I was searching for a workable answer.