Elizabeth Grace Saunders - The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: Achieve More Success with Less Stress: Foreword by Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Praise for The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment

As Elizabeth lovingly but pressingly reminds us, You cant give to others what you dont haveparticularly when it comes to time. She eloquently moves us past traditional and outdated concepts around time management and instead lays a compelling foundation for time investment so that we can all focus on what matters most to our individual lives and careers. This book is clear, compelling, and action-oriented, with a brilliant mix of stories, principles, reflection questions, and action steps to help you move past your blocks, invest your time wisely, and ultimately transform your life in the process.

JENNY BLAKE, AUTHOR OF LIFE AFTER COLLEGE:
THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

This is much more than a time management book. Elizabeth possesses deeply meaningful expertise in helping others to design the fulfilling, peaceful lifestyles of their dreamsand she shares it all in this incredible resource. Whether you simply need help fine-tuning your schedule, or youre ready to make massive shifts that will catapult you to places your soul has always longed to go, youll get there with the ingeniously personalized systems, tools, and advice in this book.

AMANDA AITKEN, FOUNDER AND CEO, THE GIRLS GUIDE TO
WEB DESIGN AND BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE WEB & BRANDING

This book is magical. To achieve your dreams, you need to define actions allowing you to invest in your priorities. Elizabeth helps you do that and also to strengthen the routines that make these actions automatic.

ASH KUMRA, DREAMITALIVE.COM COFOUNDER, CONFESSIONS
FROM AN ENTREPRENEUR SERIES AUTHOR AND PUBLIC SPEAKER

If you struggle with using your time efficiently, then you have to read this book. Elizabeth provides fantastic tips about how you can stay on top of things without being stressed out.

HASSAN OSMAN, PMP-SENIOR MANAGER AT CISCO SYSTEMS
AND BLOGGER AT WWW.THECOUCHMANAGER.COM

If you are going to go from ordinary to extraordinary success, you need to invest your time in your top priorities. Elizabeth teaches you how to do just that and to make it as easy as possible through simple routines.

SCOTT GERBER, FOUNDER OF THE YOUNG ENTERPRISE COUNCIL

Copyright 2013 by Elizabeth Grace Saunders. All rights reserved. Printed in China. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-180882-8
MHID: 0-07-180882-5

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Dedicated to all those who hope for change
and are willing to pursue peace,

And to the dream of a world full of people who
feel peaceful, confident, accomplished, known,
and loved because they invest their time wisely.

To best explain my enthusiasm for Elizabeth Grace Saunders and her provocative ideas about life management, I need to rewind the clock to the year leading up to our first meeting. At the time, I was a graduate student at MIT. I had, by that point, published a pair of advice guides for college students.

My academic strategies worked well. I knew this because I had painstakingly researched them and had a growing collection of case studies to support their effectiveness. College, it turns out, is not as hard as students would like us and, more important, their parents to believe. Even relatively simple habits can spark big improvements. Consider, for example, the concept of a Sunday ritual. This strategy requires you to sit down with your calendar on Sunday night and plan your week ahead: Figure out what is due, what work needs to be done, and when youre going to do the work. To adult ears, this sounds absurdly straightforward, but to the typical overwhelmed student, it can be life-changing.

My books teemed with stories of relaxed Rhodes Scholars and valedictorians who finish studying by dinner. The growing student stress problem, I argued, was due to lack of information. Students struggle because no one taught them how to be good students. If you gave me a few hours to explain better strategies, I believed I could transform any student into a high-scoring, low-stress star. Because I had just launched a blog, I decided to use it to publically prove my point. I announced that I would take on a group of overwhelmed undergraduates, transform them into model students, and post about the whole process.

It was this decision that led me to Leena (Leenas name was changed to preserve her anonymity)which is where my story veers off the expected path and puts me on a collision course with Elizabeth and her ideas.