Timelock: How Life Got So Hectic and What You Can Do About It - Hardcover

Ralph Keyes is the author of fourteen books. His bestseller Is There Life After High School? was made into a Broadway musical that is still produced in this country and abroad. Chancing It was a New York Times Notable Book. Timelock was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and excerpted in Reader s Digest. John Jakes called The Courage to Write one of the two or three best books on writing I ve ever read. Keyes has appeared on Oprah Winfrey, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, ABC World News Tonight, and twice on 20/20. On National Public Radio he s been interviewed by Susan Stamberg, Robert Siegel, Noah Adams, Neal Conan, and Terry Gross (on Fresh Air, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation). Keyes was one of Bob Edwards's first guests on The Bob Edwards Show on XM Radio. People Magazine has featured him twice. His own articles have been published by magazines such as Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Self, GQ, Newsweek, Parade, Sports Illustrated, Car and Driver, Harper s, and Human Behavior. An article he co-authored won the McKinsey Award for Best Article of the Year in the Harvard Business Review. Keyes is listed in Contemporary Authors, Who s Who in America, and Who s Who in the World.

According to Keyes, "timelock" is the state of having so many demands on our time that it's impossible to extract one more second from an overjammed day. He traces the incredible shrinking day from the invention of the sundial to the proliferation of electronic agendas. Technology enables us to do several things at once, but as Keyes points out, any time saved is actually lost in reduced ability to concentrate. --Working Woman

Keyes presents a scary shopping list of what can happen to people who work too much. My favorite was a short section on the risks of fast eating. Not of fast food -- the danger of fried, sugar-ridden junk food is old news -- but of gobbling food so rapidly that it isn't chewed adequately and gets stuck in your throat. --M. G. Lord in Newsday

Keyes offers a thoughtful list of approaches to change in his final chapter, "The Timelock Antidote Handbook." Some highlights: Decelerate -- slow down. Achieve more by doing less; when you do too much, you do nothing well. Unlearn how to do two things at once -- your concentration will improve. Pay attention to yourself -- and to others. And my favorite: Plan life, not time. --Linda Wright Moore in the Philadelphia Daily News