"I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."
Old Aphorism
Everyone needs to deal with incoming “stuff” on a daily basis, whether they are mails, emails, calls, information packs, messages, your own thoughts or even random events like the breakdown of your car. We need to deal with a collection of unrelated stuff at work and at home using only “one” mind. If you increase your efficiency in dealing with these, you stand to gain enormously.
Many systems exits and numerous productivity books and courses attempt to impose one system or other to their audience. These systems prove to be effective at first, but seem to get forgotten over time and people fall back to their bad habits once more. Over time, as more systems are learned and tested, a sense of hopeless develops that no matter what time management system is used, the result is never good.
"This course is continuously updated to reflect the progress in productivity tools as well as new methodologies that help delegates to become more productive in the long term."
Our Approach
At Skills Converged, we deliver the Time Management course continuously and we have realised that imposing any particular system on delegates does not necessarily lead to increased productivity. As a result, we have tailored this course to make it as effective as possible not just in the short term, but also in the long term.
To achieve this, the course focuses on fundamental principles, guidelines, attitudes and organisation systems. Based on these principles and examples of such systems, delegates form their own system based on their own life style. In our experience, this has proven to be much more effective and even months after the course, our delegates report that they have become more productive as a result of this course. We are proud of this and continuously work to improve this course.
In this day-long highly practical course delegates will learn:
Attitude Towards Time
- How different people look at time and what are the implications of this
- What mental techniques can you use to increase your productivity?
- What is the impact of perfectionism on your productivity and how can you manage it?
- What stops you from starting a task and how can you overcome it?
- What techniques can you use to avoid procrastination?
- How to take advantage of "dead time"
- How to free your mind from thinking continuously about critical tasks
- How can you optimise your day based on your capabilities and your workload?
Planning
- How to set goals systematically to maximise your productivity
- How to set your mission statement based on everything you do in life
- Which planning style is better?
- How to brainstorm
- How to plan if you don’t like planning
- What is a bottom-up and top-down approach to productivity?
- What is the best way to plan in meetings to make the best use of time and produce a good plan?
Organising
- How to organise your physical and digital environments
- What reference system works best and what its critical qualities?
- What tray system works best?
- What calendar system works best?
- How to take advantage of GTD principles (Getting Things Done) to organise your life
- How to set up and use your calendar using the latest methodologies such as GTD
- How to priotrise your tasks based on urgency and importance
- How to use GTD with Microsoft Outlook
Dealing with People
- How to say “No” and be loved for it
- How many different ways to say "No" and what are advantages and disadvantages of each type?
- How to deal with interruptions politely and stay in control
- How to delegate to increase your productivity
- How many different ways can you delegate and when should you use each style?
- How to handle phone interruptions
- How to "engineer" your environment to minimise interruptions?
What kinds of trays are better?
How many trays should you use?
What should you use the trays for?
How should you label your trays or folders?
How should you organise your desk?
What filing system works best?
What are the best categories or contexts to use when organising your tasks?
How to manage the physical versus digital world
How to close "open loops" so you don't have to constantly worry about forgetting to do a task
Audience: Anyone
Prerequisites: None
Course Duration: 1 Day
Course Level: Intermediate
This course is followed by
Advanced Time Management where delegates can review their time management system systematically and make sure it remains efficient over time.