Squeezing More Time Out of the Day

Time management is said to be the secret of the wealthy. Clearly getting more accomplished in less time should be every salesperson's goal. How would you feel about life if you had more sales AND more time for yourself? So, short of adding a couple of hours to the day, how can ACT! help us better manage our selling day?

One feature that often goes overlooked is ACT!'s ability to slice each hour into smaller time blocks. If your schedule looks like it has no holes in it, working with smaller time blocks may allow you to schedule additional activities. This is particularly helpful if you schedule all your "calls" for unique time(s) of the day. Smaller time blocks may also save you from the annoying conflict resolution dialog box when activities overlap.

To slice your day into smaller bites, from the "Edit" pull down menu select "Preferences". Choose the "Calendars" tab. Behind this tab are two fields for "Calendar increments". The default is typically 30 minutes for the daily calendar and one hour for the weekly calendar. By selecting a shorter period of time (15 minutes perhaps) you will add additional time blocks to the daily and/or weekly calendar.

The choice of time duration for the daily calendar increment will also become the default duration for the "Schedule Activity" dialog box "Time:" function. Consequently, a word of caution, slicing your day into time blocks too small will cause you no end of frustration scrolling through an inordinate number of time blocks on your way to scheduling an afternoon activity.