People occasionally tell you, "Do that in your free time," but in fact there's no such thing as "free" time. Even when you're lying by the swimming pool, that's leisure time -- but it isn't free time.

To prove that all time has value, a senior executive at a large corporation in the Northeast asked everyone who attended a meeting to "punch in." At the session's end he calculated the total price of the meeting in manhours and converted these into dollars by prorating each staffer's salary. Indeed, for each $10,000 you make annually, a single hour is worth $5. And if you can save just one hour a day, you'll not only conserve thousands of dollars' worth of time each year but also give yourself opportunities to learn and do things that make your time even more valuable. That's why the most successful people are those who've mastered the time-saving tactics described here.