Time Management Skills: Group Productivity Issues

Time management training tends to focus on individual workplace productivity; and while that's all well and good, most of us actually work within team environments. It's not a good idea, therefore, to just ignore the productivity issues affecting your coworkers. Your team workflow process can't function smoothly if the individual parts are broken. Raising awareness of group productivity issues requires little more than circulating an informal survey among your teammates, and then distributing the results. Simply ask something like, "What are your X biggest time management challenges?" You can make "X" any number you like, depending on how much time and resources you have to dedicate to the issue. Needless to say, your team's manager bears the ultimate responsibility for maintaining an … [Read more...]

Top Ten Time Management Traps for 2012

Top Ten Time Management Traps for 2012

These days, despite technology intended to make life easier, we tend to work harder and have less discretionary time than ever before. Why? After 20 years speaking at conferences and implementing productivity-improvement programs at Fortune 1000 companies, I've come to recognize certain nemeses most of us face repeatedly. While clients do occasionally surprise me with the nature of their time management headaches, about 95% of the time, the traps they find themselves mired in fall into the same familiar handful of categories. So to kick off a productive 2012, let's take a look at the ten biggest time traps faced by the modern worker. I'll discuss the common variations of each, and offer some advice on how to overcome them. Trap #1: Prioritization Setting workplace priorities is by … [Read more...]