Have you ever been totally overwhelmed by a massive task confronting you? Ever felt daunted by the thought of even making a start on such a massive quest? I thought so. Read on...

Recently I suffered a serious injury. I won't bore you with the details other than to say that I underwent major surgery that required many weeks of recovery and painful rehabilitation.

While all that was happening, do you think people stopped demanding things of me? Did companies and utilities stop sending me accounts with strict payment deadlines? Do you think that any of the banks that I deal with stopped expecting me to make the regular repayments on my investments? Did I still have mountains of correspondence flooding into my office and through my Post Office address?

All these things continued to happen. My temporary incapacity was of zero interest to all of them.

My desk looked like a bomb had exploded on it. The in-tray was overflowing. There were notes and reminders taped, pinned and pegged everywhere. My cell phone had dozens of messages saying, "Call back urgently." One person even used the term "super urgent." I rolled my eyes north on that one. My emails were almost bursting my computer apart. Every day the normal humdrum of life kept banking up on me.

I think you get the picture. What could I do? I could hardly move. All I could manage was to try to be patient while everything piled up. Let me say - patience has never been one of my greatest virtues. It was a very depressing time. The mind was willing, the body was not.

Every day the biggest thing on my agenda was rehabilitation - every three hours for half an hour. Oh, and I forgot to mention about several good-natured friends who would drop in unannounced and soak up several hours of my time - cutting right across my strict rehabilitation schedule.

My recovery was slow but steady. But the correspondence and other demands just kept piling up.

What was I going to do? Just looking at the massive amount of work confronting me made me want to do anything else - like pack up and go for a vacation to get away from it all. But eventually I would have to come back and then the task would be even worse.

I needed a plan of attack, a system.

Right then I invented a concept which I dubbed "The Power Hour."

Here is how it works:

First, I got rid of all distractions. I took all the land line telephones off their hooks and I turned off my cell phone. Telephones are the greatest time thieves and distracters that I know. Next, I stopped answering the door. I didn't care who it was. I didn't even look. I closed the door to my office and set a clock with a timer on my desk.

"The Power Hour" was invoked. I even began announcing it to myself. "Power Hour has started." Basically, I did as much as I possibly could for exactly sixty minutes. No distractions, no cups of tea, no snacks, no bathroom breaks, no goofing off. My total focus, concentration and effort went into clearing my backlog of work for one power hour. Total activity.

You can amaze yourself with the amount of work that you can plough through in a Power Hour.

Back it up with another Power Hour later in the day. Give it everything you've got. Repeat the process. One Power Hour on, several normal hours off. Do the same the next day.

Soon the work starts to disappear. This will give you even greater incentive.

So, next time you are faced with a huge task, try the Power Hour technique. One concentrated hour at a time. You will amaze yourself with how much you will achieve.

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