Personal and Professional
Developing
Personal Skills:
Time Management
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In this session you will learn to:
Clarify your goals and achieve them
Handle people and projects that waste your
time
Be involved in better delegation
Work more efficiently with your boss/advisor
Learn specific skills and tools to save you time
Overcome stress and procrastination
= really important point
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Remember that time is money
Ben Franklin, 1748
Advice to a young tradesman
Introduction
Time must be explicitly managed, just
like money
Much of this wont make sense until later
(too late?)
Lightning pace, heavy on techniques
Outline
Why is Time Management Important?
Goals, Priorities, and Planning
TO DO Lists
Desks, paperwork, telephones
Scheduling Yourself
Delegation
Meetings
Technology
General Advice
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Why Time Management is
Important
The Time Famine
Bad time management = stress
This is life advice
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The Problem is Severe
By some estimates, people waste about 2
hours per day. Signs of time wasting:
Messy desk and cluttered (or no) files
Cant find things
Miss appointments, need to reschedule them late
and/or unprepared for meetings
Volunteer to do things other people should do
Tired/unable to concentrate
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Hear me Now, Believe me Later
Being successful doesnt make
you manage your time well.
Managing your time well
makes you successful.
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Goals, Priorities, and Planning
Why am I doing this?
What is the goal?
Why will I succeed?
What happens if I chose not to do it?
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The 80/20 Rule
Critical few and the trivial many
Having the courage of your convictions
Good judgment comes from experience
Experiences comes from bad judgment
for many events, roughly 80% of the effects
come from 20% of the causes
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Inspiration
If you can dream it, you can do it
Walt Disney
Disneyland was built in 366 days, from
ground-breaking to first day open to the
public.
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Planning
Failing to plan is planning to fail
Plan Each Day, Each Week, Each
Semester
You can always change your plan, but
only once you have one!
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TO DO Lists
Break things down into small steps
Like a child cleaning his/her room
Do the ugliest thing first
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The Key to Good Time
Management
Urgent tasks demand your immediate
attention, but whether you actually give
them that attention may or may not matter.
'Important' tasks matter, and not doing them
may have serious consequences for you or
others.
Try using a grid, like the priority matrix, to
organize your tasks into their appropriate
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categories:
The four-quadrant TO DO List
Due Soon
(Urgent)
Not Due Soon
(Not so Urgent)
Important
Not so
Important
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The four-quadrant TO DO List
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Paperwork
Clutter is death; it leads to thrashing.
Keep desk clear: focus on one thing at a
time
A good file system is essential
Touch each piece of paper once
Touch each piece of email once; your
inbox is not your TODO list
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Desk 1
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Desk 2
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Speaker phone:
hands are free
to do something
else; stress
reduction when
Im on hold.
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Telephone
Keep calls short; stand during call
Start by announcing goals for the call
Dont put your feet up
Have something in view that youre waiting to
get to next
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Telephone
When done, get off: I have other
students waiting
If necessary, hang up while youre
talking
Group outgoing calls: just before lunch
and 5pm
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Reading Pile
Only read something if youll be fired for
not reading it
Note that this refers to periodicals and
routine reading, which is different than a
research dig
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Office Logistics
(Of course when you have one!)
Make your office comfortable for you,
and optionally comfortable for others
No soft comfortable chairs! Prefer
upright and dunctional chairs
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Scheduling Yourself
You dont find time for important things,
you make it
Everything you do is an opportunity cost
Learn to say No
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Learn to say No
Will this help me get desired GPA?
Will this help me get my masters?
Will this help me get my Ph.D?
Keep help me broadly defined
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Gentle Nos
Ill do it if nobody else steps forward
or Ill be your deep fall back, but you
have to keep searching.
Commitments with other students for
university projects
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Everyone has Good and Bad Times
Find your creative/thinking time. Defend
it ruthlessly, spend it alone, maybe at
home.
Find your dead time. Schedule meetings,
phone calls, and mundane stuff during it.
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Interruptions
6-9 minutes, 4-5 minute recovery five
interruptions shoots an hour
You must reduce frequency and length of
interruptions (turn phone calls into email)
E-mail noise on new mail is an
interruption -> TURN IT OFF!!
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Cutting Things Short
Im in the middle of something now
Start with I only have 5 minutes you can
always extend this
Stand up, stroll to the door, complement,
thank, shake hands
Clock-watching; on wall behind them
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Time Journals
Its amazing what you learn!
Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments
for between 3 days and two weeks.
Update every hour: not at end of day
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Fred Brooks Time Clocks
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Using Time Journal Data
What am I doing that doesnt really need to be
done?
What am I doing that could be done by
someone else?
What am I doing that could be done more
efficiently?
What do I do that wastes others time?
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Procrastination
Procrastination is the
thief of time
Edward Young
Night Thoughts, 1742
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Balancing Act
Work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion
Parkinsons Law
Cyril Parkinson, 1957
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Avoiding Procrastination
Doing things at the last minute is much
more expensive than just before the last
minute
Deadlines are really important: establish
them yourself!
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Comfort Zones
Identify why you arent enthusiastic
Fear of embarrassment?
Fear of failure?
Get a spine!
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Quit Making Excuses
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Delegation
No one is an island
You can accomplish a lot more with help
Most delegation in your life is to office
staff and secretaries
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Delegation is not dumping
Grant authority with responsibility.
Concrete goal, deadline, and consequences.
Treat your people well
Office staff and secretaries are an executives
lifeline; they should be treated well!
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Challenge People
People rise to the challenge: You should
delegate until they complain
Communication Must Be Clear: Get it in
writing Judge Wapner
Give objectives, not procedures
Tell the relative importance of this task
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Sociology
Beware upward delegation!
Reinforce behavior you want repeated
Ignorance is your friend I do not know
how to run the photocopier or the fax
machine
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Meetings
Average executive: > 40% of time
Lock the door, unplug the phone
Maximum of 1 hour
Prepare: there must be an agenda
1 minute minutes: an efficient way to
keep track of decisions made in a
meeting: who is responsible for what
by when?
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Technology
Computers are faster but they take
longer --Janitor, UCF
Secretaries are better than answering
machines; where are the costs & benefits
of a technology? (transcription)
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Technology
Laptop computer (and docking station)
You can scavenge time & work anywhere
At work, you still have internet access
one machine in your life is the right number
WWW; only do things once (post them)
Google (now with image search!)
Digital Library (personally # of my visits to
library have reduced drastically)
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Magic E-Mail Tips
Save all of it; no exceptions
If you want somebody to do something, make
them the only recipient. Otherwise, you have
diffusion of responsibility. Give a concrete
request/task and a deadline.
If you really want somebody to do something,
CC someone powerful.
Nagging is okay; if someone doesnt respond in
48 hours, theyll probably never respond. (True
for phone as well as email).
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General Advice: Vacations
Phone callers should get two options:
If this cant wait, contact XYZ at 555-1212
Otherwise please call back June 1
This works for Email too!
Vacations should be vacations.
Its not a vacation if youre reading email
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General Advice
Never break a promise, but re-negotiate them if
need be.
If you havent got time to do it right, you dont
have time to do it wrong.
Recognize that most things are pass/fail.
Feedback loops: ask in confidence.
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General Advice
Kill your cell & television (how badly do you
want tenure or your degree?)
Turn money into time especially important
for people with kids or other family
commitments
And above all else eat, sleep and exercise!
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Action Items
Get a day-timer (or PDA) if you dont already
have one
Start keeping your TO DO list in fourquadrant form or ordered by priorities (not
due dates)
Do a time journal, or at least record number of
hours of television/week
Make a note in your day-timer to revisit this
talk in 30 days. At that time, ask yourself
What behaviors have I changed?
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