Videos for Time Management

Time Management, Structure & Workflow
In your head, the list of things you have to do always seems much greater than it actually is. When you finally gather everything into a good task-management system - not just a daily to-do list, but a an organized structure to manage every obligation and ongoing project you have, both short- and long-term - you find that it isn't as bad as you thought it would be.

Your brain can't keep track of everything at once. We are receiving more information, from more sources, requiring more synthesis and demanding more from us, than at any other time in history. Our brains, though, are essentially the same as they were 100, 200, or 300 years ago. In the modern age, we need good external structures for managing our inputs and outputs in order to survive.

Email Etiquette
Email etiquette is about something more than being polite. The right way to handle email is to always give and demand a prompt response - not only when the job has been done or the question can be answered, but simply to acknowledge that the message is received and the task will be attended to. If you can't give a sender the information they need at the moment you receive their request, let them know when they can expect an answer from you. Do this yourself, and expect the same thing from other people. Hold people accountable, and while they may not change their habits with anyone else, they will at least change the way they behave with you.

Email, Tasks and Deadlines
Email can be a wonderful tool for productivity and communication, but it can also become an enormous drain on your resources if not used properly. Defending yourself from this slide into email entropy demands discipline on your part; and it also demands that you draw out some discipline from the people you communicate with. Email is not a real-time communication. You have an obligation to be very clear when you ask a question or request an action; you have a further obligation to demand a response from the person you email. You have to be clear that you need to know whether your message has been received. If you don't get the response you need from a recipient, it is your duty to follow up with that person until you do.

Improving Productivity of Meetings
"Meeting madness" is a problem for all of us at one time or another. In the same way that bad habits can settle into an individual's processes, teams and organizations can over time drift into bad habits of their own - behaviors that become almost standard procedure without being implemented or even acknowledged by anyone on the team. Meetings are important to any organization, but meetings can also be one of the biggest time-wasters out there. Every team should take a look at their meeting practices (spoken and unspoken) every once in a while, before nascent bad habits have a chance to spin out of control.

Time Management and Delegation
Effective delegation is a crucial component of good time management and team productivity. Don't assume that you have to have a title in order to delegate, though. Whether you are a manager with the authority to divide labor or you are negotiating with your manager or another employee to more efficiently share the workload, delegation is a part of what every team should be doing: working together to find the smartest ways to get things done.

Delegating is not the same as dumping. And particularly if you are a manager, delegating may actually mean more work for you, at least in the beginning - because you may have to train your teammate for something that seems quicker to just do yourself. But delegating, for a manager, should really be looked at as a developmental process. Letting any task linger as something that 'only you can do' is one of the surest ways to guarantee crippling your team's effectiveness at a critical moment in the future.

Time Management: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness
Refining and streamlining processes to get results as quickly as possible with a minimum of resources - efficiency - is very important in time management. But sometimes, if we're getting the right balance between efficiency and effectiveness, we may realize that, instead of spending time and energy to get a job done faster, we're better off not doing it at all. Efficiency is about procedure; effectiveness is about results.

Things change in organizations. Often there will be processes in place that were started at some point in an organization's past, for reasons that made sense for them at the time. As time goes on, however, the only reason for why some procedures are done in such a way becomes "well, we've always done it this way." In these situations, the effort spent working on finding new methods to do things, and on changing the team's perspectives about their continued goals, becomes a very effective use of an organization's time.

Stop Procrastination -- Time Management Tool
Beat procrastination with a 30-minute new-project jumpstart! The biggest and most important jobs often fall prey to the worst procrastination. In this clip from a 2011 workshop on time management and stress management, coach and trainer Roger Reece teaches how to beat the Procrastination Habit by dividing a project into a series of clearly-defined tasks. Roger shows how to use a "30-Minute Project Jumpstart" to ignite or reinvigorate stalled projects. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Manage Interruptions -- Time Management Tool
How to manage interruptions at work: Speaker & trainer Roger Reece teaches how to manage interruptions and avoid getting sidetracked in interactions with other employees at work. Roger introduces the "2-Minute Interrupt Rule," and describes how to use this method to avoid getting derailed by coworkers' interruptions, and improve communication with them at the same time. Using the 2-Minute Interrupt Rule, Roger teaches how to "train" your colleagues, in a positive and effective manner, how to better communicate with you.

Improve Workflow -- Time Management Tool
Using a workflow improvement plan, and the lasting impact of better time management: In this clip from a 2011 training seminar on Time Management & Stress Management, speaker and success coach Roger Reece details the simple, concrete steps to creating a workflow improvement plan, as a tool he uses with clients in one-on-one coaching. This is followed by an appeal to audience members to practice these steps individually, by the lasting impact of better time management skills beyond the work-day into every area of life and through the scope of a lifetime.

Time Management & Behavior Change
Time management is not about information. If, like so many people, you have read one or more books on time management, or have attended time management classes or seminars in the past, you may think you have nothing more to learn on the subject. But time management has nothing to do with what you know - in fact, what you know can hurt you. Don't fall into the trap of mistaking your understanding of the concepts of better time management behaviors as a substitute for the practical, day-to-day work involved in building those behaviors into habits in your life. Knowing is no substitute for doing. Time Management is not about information - it's about your behavior.

Time Management & Negotiation
Training people (with negotiation): Did you know that every day, as you're moving through the day, you are training people? Whether you know it or not - when the people around you are doing things that are irritating to you, if you let them continue to do those things, you are training them to do it. Speaker and coach Roger Reece teaches how to use negotiation to influence the behavior of the people around you. Roger explains and warns about the difference between nagging and negotiating, and demonstrates concrete examples of how both the Federal Aviation Authority and a married couple find effective results from positive use of negotiation.

Negotiate Priorities -- Time Management Tool
Can you negotiate with your boss? Negotiating with your boss is not only possible, it is essential to good time management. Your supervisor expects you to manage your workload, and to work with him or her to maintain an accurate and clearly-defined measure of output and expectations. Negotiating with your boss simply means having a conversation with them; taking just a few minutes, even in urgent situations, to share the details of your schedule and priorities, and to work together to balance these with your boss's expectations, can make a crucial difference - both in how your success as an employee is perceived, and in your own job satisfaction.

Delegate -- Time Management Skill
Learn to delegate! Learning to delegate is a vitally-important component of good time management. Delegating is an important skill for any employee to develop: delegation is not just for supervisors, and delegation is different than dumping. Put simply, delegation involves asking somebody for help. But asking for help can be hard to do. Many people avoid delegation out of a fear of showing weakness or an inability to perform. Also, real delegation involves training and valuable time, not to mention a certain amount of letting go of control. But proper practice of delegation yields significant rewards: reduced stress, increased productivity, and ultimately, a better chance at job promotion.