This one-day workshop teaches people how to organize themselves and their tasks, how to prioritize what they do, how to deal with interruptions, distractions, and procrastination, and how to execute their daily plans and task effectively. The primary purpose of this class is not merely to teach the basic principles of Time Management, but to give participants a sense that they are not constantly overwhelmed, and to take some pleasure from the hard work that they do.

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PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP: This course teaches busy people in changing companies how to sort out the critical, high payoff aspects of their job and get them done, while at the same time managing the flow of other tasks and time demands that routinely come their way. We demonstrate a method for organizing the events and activities of such a day, and for making smart choices and choosing effective personal strategies even when one is not completely in control. This workshop makes the expression “Doing More With Less” more than an empty slogan by showing knowledge workers how to reconfigure the work that they do.

THE WORKSHOP CONTENT: The course covers these topics:

  1. It begins with a basic 10-point model as an overview device for getting participants to examine and diagnose their own time practices.


  2. It then shows participants how to identify, reliably and precisely, the high-payoff tasks and functions of any job, how to give them an “A” priority, and then set about getting them done.


  3. It then demonstrates the difficult trick of selecting among typically competing priorities, surprises, and emergencies, in order to choose the right one rather than the screaming one, and offers strategies for dealing with next level priorities that do not make the first cut.


  4. It demonstrates a way of insuring that core tasks are not constantly crowded out by minor daily crises, and shows people how to stop fighting fires.


  5. It teaches participants how to deal with the endless and frequently legitimate interruptions and time demands of other people, particularly those of their bosses, peers, and family. A significant part of this course is given over to helping participants handle conflicting demands on their time and attention, by showing them how to speak up for their authentic needs, by engaging in interest-based negotiating, problem-solving, compromises, and other forms of deliberative conflict resolution. It shows them how to achieve outcomes that are workable and fair to everybody.


  6. It shows effective ways for controlling the flood of low-level maintenance chores, which tend to provide little value while driving out more significant activities or more important events.


  7. It offers a quick review of a few relevant time management techniques, particularly those dealing with the management of reading, paperwork, e-mail, v-mail, as well as the general flow in any job of information and transactions.


  8. Finally, it shows people how to make a start in changing their habits of choosing their priorities, using their time, and allocating their work. Most of all, it shows them how to stick to their resolves and master their life.


We concentrate on helping participants establish order in their work, especially on those days when everything seems like a priority. This includes the creation of goals, schedules, operational short cuts and the like. Mostly it means emphasizing techniques for responding to the interruptions and time demands of others, for refusing to take other’s monkeys on our backs, and for dealing with the mountains of paperwork and work rules that abound in every organization.

THE WORKSHOP FORMAT: This workshop begins with several exercises in self-analysis and stocktaking. Participants are asked to identify their own time wasters and the kinds of poor work habits that typically draw them away from their best priorities. They then begin to construct alternative work habits and structures, and then practice these skills in small groups where appropriate. Other skills are developed through pencil-and-paper exercises that each participant completes in private during the course.

Principles, tools, and techniques are taught in brief lecturettes, followed by group exercises and case studies that allow participants to apply the ideas they have learned to real situations.

Finally, we provide all participants with a diversity of information and ideas on this subject through films, readings, and a variety of take-away handouts.

WHO AND HOW MANY SHOULD ATTEND: Anyone who performs managerial, professional or technical work can benefit from this course. People who have deadlines to meet, feel under pressure to produce, and have some discretion about the work they do and the sequence they do it in will unquestionably benefit from this workshop.

Eighteen to twenty-four participants are an ideal class size.

THE LENGTH OF THE WORKSHOP: This is a one-day workshop.

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