Time Management Skills

Time management is a skill that takes a little discipline to master.  Those who master it successfully benefit from greater levels of productivity which leads to more opportunity to achieve important goals in their career they might otherwise have missed out on.  Working smarter, instead of harder, improves professional reputation, reduces stress levels and increases energy levels giving more job satisfaction.

On the opposite side, poor time management can be evident in a person’s approach to their work.  Some of the symptoms of poor time management skills which result in missed deadlines, inefficient workflows, loss of professional reputation and stalled careers include:

• Poor punctuality
• Frustration and impatience due to stress
• Having low energy levels and giving off low energy vibes
• A general lack of being organisation and clutter
• An anxious approach to work with high stress level
• A tendency to procrastinate – time management training

Time Stealers and Interruptions

The course identifies some of the common causes of things that we allow to interrupt our workflow and steal our time.  Although some of these things are beyond our control, we can mitigate some of the damage by anticipation and planning.  A recent study found that interruptions can account for up to 28% of our working day.  Interruptions can take the form of phone calls, email notifications or colleagues stopping by to talk to us.  The average office worker is interrupted every eleven minutes with the average interruption lasting between six and nine minutes.

You will learn ways to manage these interruptions and engage strategies in your workflow to stop them from detracting you from your work.  These strategies may be physical, such as removing empty chairs from your workstation.  They may involve turning off email notifications and practice to only read an email once before deciding what to do with it. This can be done by using the acronym DRAFT, or Delegate, Read, Act on, File or Trash.

Laws of Time Management

The course discusses the six laws of time management and suggests ways in which you can utilise them to get the most from your day.

• Carlson’s Law:  Uninterrupted tasks are more efficient than multi-tasking.
• Pareto’s Law: The 80 / 20 rule of time management and how to implement it.
• Parkinson’s Law: This is the theory that asserts work takes no longer to do than the time that you allocate for that work.
• Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Preparing for the unexpected
• Illrich’s Law:  This law identifies how individuals physical and intellectual abilities vary throughout the day.  Understanding how to to use this principle can increase productivity
• Fraisse’s Law: If you accept that time is subjective depending on what task you are doing, you can manage time more effectively. The theory claims that when a person is engages in an enjoyable tasks, time goes by faster then when they doing other activities.

This time management training will introduce time saving tools which will help you work smarter, not harder.  The course also looks at Harvard study, Who’s Got the Monkey. The study shows how to avoid taking on the responsibilities of others. You will learn strategies on how to give assistance while directing others to complete and retain responsibility for their own tasks.

The course concludes with meetings and ensuring they are used as productivity tools and do not also become time stealers due to bad planning.