It's About Time

Irwin Winkler once mortgaged his home to finance a film. That film, "Rocky" (produced with then-partner Robert Chartoff), won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1976. Combined grosses of the "Rocky" series amount to more than $1 billion. Winkler started his career in the mail room of the William Morris Agency. Since then, he has produced more than 40 films, including Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (1990), "Raging Bull" (1980), and "New York, New York" (1977). He made his directorial debut in 1989 with "Guilty by Suspicion." Most recently, he directed "At First Sight" (1999), starring Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino. He has received 12 Academy Awards.

Julie Morgenstern

Professional organizer
New York, New York

I specialize in organizing. homes, Offices, filing systems, closets, schedules, estate sales: You name it, and I organize it. I've found that time management isn't just about getting organized; it's also about finding balance. When you're inundated with work and you feel completely overwhelmed, the best way to gain time is to add balance.

Four years after I started my business, I felt completely overwhelmed by work. I'm a single mom, and I started this business from scratch. It seemed like everything happened at once: The business grew almost too quickly. I had no hobbies, and I never had a good answer for the question "What do you do for fun?" I thought that for practical purposes, I should take up a hobby, so that I could speak intelligently about something other than organizing other people's lives. I chose dance, simply because it required a shorter learning curve than any other hobby that I could think of. (I used to be a dancer.)

Once a week, I would dutifully go to a swing-dance class. Suddenly, I had more time on my hands. I was more energized during the week. I moved through my tasks at lightning speed. When your life is unbalanced, as mine was, you feel like you don't have room to breathe. But when you take time to rebalance your life, everything gets easier.

Julie Morgenstern is the author of "Organizing from the Inside Out" (Henry Holt, 1998) and the founder and owner of Task Masters, a consulting firm. She and her staff have organized cluttered homes, offices, and schedules for such clients as American Express, Reuben H. Donnelley, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Prudential Securities.

Charles Rossotti

Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service
Washington, DC

People seem to think that they're being most productive when they're accomplishing a bunch of tasks. But I've found that the best use of my time at the IRS is to listen.

The IRS is a gargantuan organization that needs to undergo a lot of change. The only way that I can provide leadership in that process is by understanding how the organization operates and why it operates that way. There are 100,000 people who work for the IRS. Two years ago, when I walked through the door for the first time, I didn't know a soul. Before I was confirmed as commissioner, I spent six months traveling to all 43 regional-service centers -- just so that I could listen to people. So, when I finally did speak, I was able to do so authoritatively: I had a reservoir of knowledge to draw on. I had also taken the first step toward building the trust and respect that I'll need down the road, as we begin to reorganize.

Too often, people who enter the top echelons of organizations think that they're supposed to know everything. They think that they've been hired to provide an answer to every question. In fact, people sometimes just want you to listen.

Charles Rossotti is the first IRS commissioner to have experience both in management and in information technology -- and no experience as a tax professional. Today, his mission is to modernize the management of the IRS, which every year collects more than $1.7 trillion in revenue and which still operates on a computer system that was built mainly in the 1960s. Previously, Rossotti served as chairman of American Management Systems, a computer-consulting firm.

Felice Willat

Founder and director
Day Runner Inc.
Irvine, California

Time, as we now understand it, was created in the Industrial Age. Time is mechanical to us. It goes hand in hand with standardization, and we think that it helps us measure how efficient we are at work. Other cultures view time differently. I just returned from Bali, where time is viewed as circular: Life and death are seen as being closely related. The grandest day of your life is the day you die, and your passing is cause for a celebration.