Improving Your Time Management

Course details

Time and priority management is crucial in today's business environment. Time is a limited and expensive resource that requires as much, if not better, management than money. If time were money, how many people in business would spend it so unwisely and freely, without any focused pre-planning, prioritizing, or forecasting of the return on the investment? In today's hectic business world, many are still forced to do just that because they don't have the time to change their behavior.

This course is a practical time and priority management training for those who want to take more control of their workloads by organizing tasks, people and themselves more effectively. It also examines ways in which we can deal with, and manage, the things we find stressful.

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the value of effective time management for themselves, their teams, and their organization
• Clarify their own and their team's objectives, key areas of responsibility and priorities
• Identify and overcome the primary causes of poor time management for themselves and their team
• Identify time wasters and personal preferences that affect performance in the workplace
• Prioritize their tasks and cope more effectively with day-to-day demands and pressures
• Learn to plan ahead and use their time more effectively to increase personal and team productivity
• Release more time to manage and delegate tasks effectively
• Be more assertive and disciplined, thereby achieving greater control through improved personal organization and resulting in a healthier, more productive lifestyle both at work and beyond

Course Outline:

Pre- Course Assessment

Introduction and Learning Objectives

Discussion of Pre-assessment

Managing Your Job

• Managing yourself and the resources at your disposal
• What are you and your team trying to achieve?

Practical Time Management and Planning Activities

• Effective use of diaries, time planners, time logs, etc.
• Criteria for prioritizing - urgent and important
• Planning and scheduling your activities
• Managing time under pressure

Managing Yourself

• Your time management behavior - preferred working styles
• Highlighting personal 'time-stealers' and areas of weakness

Managing Others and Meetings

• Managing people: managers, colleagues, team members and customers
• Making the most of meetings as participant or chairperson

Effective Delegation

• The rules of effective delegation: overcoming personal preferences and prejudices
• Using delegation as a means of coordinating the workload of your team/department
• Delegation - freeing up your time and developing staff

Managing Stress

• Stress management
• Stress at work

On-Going Self-Development

Reviewing Your Management of Time at Regular Intervals

Overcoming Your Old Habits and Maintaining Your New Standards

Debrief