During the course of the average working day, you probably make a number of promises to get back to people -- some of them verbally, some in writing, sometimes simply as a personal promise to yourself.
Many of us are resigned to believing that there are not enough hours in the day to respond to everyone. The problem is that almost no-one tells the truth -- their time management system isn’t doing the job that they need it to do.
In the good old days, most folks simply didn’t interact with as many people as they do now. In the past year or two, consider how quickly your Facebook network has grown. How many expect you to get back to them about one thing or another? Many fail to respond to this increased expectation.
The real solution has to do with how you manage your time. Weak time management systems are made up by people who don’t manage their habits. At the highest levels of performance, the most productive people have upgraded their time management systems to the point where getting back to people is not a problem.
In fact, if you ask them to tell you who is on their list of people to get back to, they give you a quizzical look. It’s not something they try to remember. Instead, they rely on their time management systems to tell them when they need to get in touch with someone, and they just don’t need to remember who they are.