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Time Management: Techniques, Tips & Tricks
- 1. Time Management: Techniques, Tips & Tricks Cindy Leonard Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University April 7, 2016
- 2. Cindy Leonard Consulting Team Leader Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management leonard@rmu.edu @cindy_leonard
- 4. You cannot manage time…
- 5. You can only manage yourself.
- 9. Exercise: GTD Brain Dump
- 12. Exercise: Solo Think & Write Which method do you find most appealing and how might you incorporate it into your current workflow?
- 13. Questions so far? LET’S TAKE A BREAK! WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT CLUTTER THINKING into DOING
- 17. Exercise: Make a List 1. What areas of your office need decluttering? 2. Which area is top priority? 3. Write down your first action step for that top priority area.
- 22. Changing Thinking into Doing
- 23. Changing Thinking into Doing
- 24. Changing Thinking into Doing
- 25. Changing Thinking into Doing
- 26. Changing Thinking into Doing
- 27. Exercise: Share Pair What’s the single-most biggest distraction to your productivity? How might you successfully deal with it?
- 29. Final Exercise
- 30. Get In Touch Anytime! Cindy Leonard Consulting Team Leader Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management leonard@rmu.edu @cindy_leonard
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to the workshop. This session is called Time Management: Techniques, Tips & Tricks.
- Here’s a little bit about me: Cindy Leonard, Consulting Team Leader at the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University. I manage the consulting and technology programs here. Why I do this session: I am a recovering pack rat who discovered minimalist lifestyle about 8 years ago and haven’t looked back I am a world-class procrastinator (blame it on Irish roots “Why put off until tomorrow what you can put until the day after tomorrow?”_ HOWEVER, I have a lot of dreams and goals in life – had to get organized!
- Agenda: Going to discuss three areas related to the greater theme of time management: Workload management techniques Reducing or eliminating clutter Changing thinking into doing ICEBREAKER / SHARE PAIRS 5 minutes: Find a partner. Why do you want to improve time management in your life? What outcome would you most like to see as a result of a behavioral change? Share with group – show of hands (volunteer to share)
- Note that I said behavioral change a few moments ago when I explained the share pair activity. Who remembers the movie “Click” with Adam Sandler? Would it be great if you could actually alter time? As it is, we cannot add or delete minutes, hours or days. We are unable to rewind or fast forward. Therefore, I always say “you cannot manage time”…
- You can only manage yourself. Given that truth, you alone have the power to change your life. You may have heard Tony Robbins say “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Einstein said it years before in the quote you see here. Yet, how many times do we repeat behaviors that we KNOW don’t work? For your life to change, you have to change it. Today I’m going to give you ideas you can test and try. If they work – keep doing them, if not, don’t be afraid to tweak them – or abandon and try something completely different.
- First item on our agenda: Workload management
- This is a productivity system that I’ve pulled from heavily in the past 7 years and used in my own career and personal life. HANDOUT: GTD diagram
- David Allen says that we spend too little time planning our work or what he calls “Processing work” before we tackle it. We tend to just dive in without a plan. He advocates that you should do a “weekly review” where you spend some time looking at everything on your plate and putting it through the diagram you see here (walk them through steps on the diagram) Another great tool he mentions that is part of the weekly review (but that can be done anytime you need it) is called the “brain dump” (Weekly Review is 1-2 hours a week, assessing all aspects of your work – add things to task lists, tie up loose ends; Look at calendar, projects, lists, loose papers, etc.) – not doing work during this time, but evaluating workload
- Do a GTD style brain dump exercise The first thing you have to do is get it all out of your head and capture it somewhere. Your brain is not meant to hold all of the stuff you have (or want) to do and keeping it all up in there will only serve to disappoint you in both the short and long term. Have the following headings for your list: Musts, Wants and Perhaps. Each of these heading represent the things you’ve committed to doing (Musts), the things you would like to do but haven’t committed to them yet (Wants), and the things you may want to do at some point but are far down on the priority list (Perhaps). In 5 minutes, without thinking about how or when to do the tasks, write down every task on your mind in the columns you think they fit best. After exercise, ask them how that felt? (Better, worse? Why?) Ask them to look at the GTD handout and mentally process the first item on their list – ask for a volunteer to do it out loud (NOTE: this second part is not from David Allen, but from GTD user Mike Vardy in an online article (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-to-do-the-ultimate-brain-dump.html))
- The Pomodoro technique involves setting a timer and working in short sprints with frequent breaks in between. Choose a task to be accomplished Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer) Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper Take a short break (5 minutes is OK) Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break
- Time boxing is popularly used in some project management methodologies. The idea is to assign a time period to work on a task or group of tasks. Instead of working on a task until it's done, you commit to work on it for a specific amount of time instead. This is my own calendar from a week last August where I spent a week doing research & development – I had a specific number of items I wanted to work on during this week, And I created designated times each day of that week in which to work on them. I use this technique regularly as well. The green items are my public calendar, that my co-workers can see (usually only put appointments on there). Red items are periods spent working on various tasks and projects. Yellow is personal tasks or work. (Only I can see the red and yellow calendar items.)
- Which method do you find most appealing and how might you incorporate it into your workflow? Ask for volunteers to report out after Think & Write
- Any questions?
- What is clutter? How do we define it (ask for answers from audience). Definition: 1) Things you don’t need. And 2) Things you don’t use. There are two kinds of clutter – physical and mental clutter. Physical clutter is damaging because you have to clean it, store it, organize it, work around it. Look at the desk in this picture. How does that desk make you feel? Mental clutter saps your energy and keeps you from focusing well.
- Dealing with physical clutter Start slowly – declutter one small area at a time (make a list of cluttered areas if you need to) Or, you could try recycling/giving away/tossing one item per day Another trick: Box up stuff you think is clutter (don’t need, don’t use) Label the box “to be recycled/disposed of” in 6 or 12 months (add the date) If you don’t use the items in the box in that time period – get rid of the box (don’t peek!!) Don’t forget about electronic files, email, etc. Digital clutter! If you do nothing else from this session – I challenge you to go back to your office & clean your desk. Remove everything and clean (shake that keyboard!) Sort stuff (things you use most often closest to you, least often farthest away) Get organizing products if you need to – there are all kinds available Put stuff back so that the things you use daily are in arms reach, stuff you use less often farther away, decorative stuff even farther away, etc. HANDOUT: Keep it or Toss it
- Exercise: Individual reflection What areas of your office need decluttering? Which area is top priority? Write down your first action step for that top priority area. Give them a few minutes to make the list. Once made, ask them to find a share pair buddy and share the list with that person. Finally, ask if anyone had items on their lists in common? (volunteers to share back)
- Dealing with mental clutter Explain male/female brain chemistry difference. (Wide flat bundle of neural fibers called the “corpus callosum” that connects our two brain halves. This bundle of fibers is literally larger in women, permitting more movement back and forth between hemispheres, permitting us to have A more frequent change in focus (pro) but also noisier brains (con). ) (Did you ever wonder why you lay awake at night going over your list while a guy will just fall right to sleep?) (Psychology Today, May 2012)
- EXERCISE: MIND MAPPING ACTIVITY (Work through mind mapping exercise – see my separate notes)
- Any questions?
- What gets in our way of productivity? What are two big obstacles? Hint, one begins with P and the other with D. (Procrastination and Distractions)
- Why do we procrastinate (ask for answers from audience, then read my list): Resistance to being controlled Fear of failure (perfectionism) Fear of success (self-Sabotage) Adrenaline rush / last minute Ambivalence (not sure want to do / not committed) Depression (affects energy, desire)
- Do you remember the movie What About Bob? Don’t think about everything you have to do – that’s overwhelming. Break things into small steps, then only focus on the next step. Other things to do: Be realistic about your time. Learn to say no. If you absolutely cannot say no, see if you can negotiate the deadline.
- What are some common distractions at the office? (ask them to call out) (ex: people, email, internet, social media, noise, etc.) What about working remotely, say at home? What are some distractions you encounter there? (phone calls, door bell, funner things like netflix, kids/family, etc.) Things you can try: Change office around Shut door Block out noise with headphones Let it go to voicemail Schedule time to check email and social media Block Internet access altogether during set periods of time (Cold Turkey, Anti Social, RescueTime – all under $15)
- I love this graphic, which can be found all over the Internet at this point via a quick Google search. HANDOUT: How to focus graphic (discuss the various branches on it)
- Choose a completely different share pair partner (someone new) and discuss: What’s the biggest distraction to your productivity? How might you successfully deal with it? (Do popcorn report out afterwards – volunteers sharing)
- When you get back to the office, visit www.futureme.org. Write yourself an email reminding yourself of your biggest takeaway from this session and what you want to work on. Set the delivery date for 6 months from today so you can review your progress in half a year.
- Thank you for attending this session! Please feel free to get touch with me any time if you have any questions.