I am currently delivering a short time management course at my company and would welcome any suggestions for running activities based around effective planning. This is where the course tends to fall a bit flat because the common notion is that the simple 'To Do' list is ample enough whereas this tends to be ineffective for more complex tasks and projects.
I'd like to encourage groups to think originally, creatively and wisely to get the idea that planning is fundamental to time management. Other than show examples of effective planning I am a little stuck for ideas as to how to liven the session up.
4 Responses
the best laid plans of mice and…….
Hi Andrew
1. Sorry this isn’t a straight answer to your question; you may have already covered this area but if you haven’t…
2. If you analyse most people’s failure to manage time well the more potent problems are not relating solely to to do lists and or planning but to distractions; some of these are generated by other people (boss, colleagues, customers, staff) and some are self generated (day dreaming, web-surfing, "but-first syndrome")
3. Rather than simply looking at planning issues, look at the rest of the casues of poor personal productivity. This includes doing the right things, doing things right, doing things in the right order, getting other people to do things for you, not doing things for other people when you shouldn’t, doing things the right way and others.
If you go to Waterstones you will find a book called Getting Things Done, one of the Business Secrets Series by HarperCollins (ISBN 978-0-00-734111-5). Cover price £6.99. It contains 50 tools to help improve productivity, including many of the tried and tested and some new and novel ones. It covers the planning issues you seek and a whole lot more stuff. Read through this book a couple of times and then..
Ask the delegates on the course what stops them from managing their time effectively…you will find that you have quite a few tools to offer them to overcome their problems……
(BTW you may notice if you look at the book (you can also see it on and get it from Amazon) that I wrote it….however I get no royalties from the sales so I don’t think I’m breaking the rules on this site about self promotion.)
Rus
http://www.coach-and-courses.com
Here are some time management downloads
Andrew,
If your needs are more time management issues than planning I have some free downloads in the Pic n Mix page of my website http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk click the free download tab first.
You will find a 50 point time management diagnostic, and 50 time management tips that have planning content, and a favourite of mine – the time splits exercise that helps people see how time is spent.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
andrew@andrewgibbons.co.uk
Time Management
Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of highly Effective People has a paragraph dedicated to the important issue of Time Management that I have found excellent. there is a great matrix that you could easily use that illustrates we need to plan spend time to save time later and become more efficient
. People divide their activities on the matrix into urgent / non urgent and important /non important. This gives a visual to help them consider their own tasks and consider/ understand where their time is being spent . The excercise really makes the points out that time needs to be spent ensuring that tasks that are non urgent but important are programmed in and done before they become urgent and important and demanding of our time and immediate attention. .
The conclusion is that by planning in activities and taking more proactive approach ie making time to plan tasks in and carry them out , even though they are not currently urgent is time well spent and much less stressful for everyone.
MGL
If you want a summary of Coveys book click here
Just to continue to be useful on this thread, my website http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk has a summary of Covey’s book along wih 29 others that may be of interest.
From the homepage click the book summaries tab.
I have a short 10 item time management slideshow for anyone who would like it…
Andrew Gibbons
andrew@andrewgibbons.co.uk