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83 - Time management tools

from Section 3 - Activities and tools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2018

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Summary

Time management tools

THERE ARE A wide range of tools and techniques that are referenced both on the internet and in the literature which you can use with your teams and individuals to make the best use of time and improve productivity. This Tip cannot cover everything – there are 61 tools listed on the Mind Tools (2016a) website alone – but it will introduce some key techniques and resources to suit a range of needs, circumstances and preferences. This will help you and your teams become more organized, remove stressors and improve productivity.

If you have an individual who is struggling with managing their workload, feels overwhelmed and misses deadlines, you should help them to identify the work that they have to do before they can start the task of getting organized. It is worth bearing in mind that this preparation phase can be time consuming, so you will need to make sure that the individual has some time put aside to get to grips with what needs to be done. A number of techniques and templates are listed on the Mind Tools (2016a) and Business Balls (Chapman, 2016) websites, which you can use with team members to help them to identify their pressure points.

The Eisenhower principle

The Eisenhower principle (Mind Tools, 2016b) is useful to help identify and prioritize all tasks. The name originates from President Eisenhower's approach to task management. In his 1954 speech Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches he quoted Dr J Roscoe Miller ‘I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent’ (Mind Tools, 2016b). This simple technique can be really useful for those who feel over whelmed with the amount of work that they have to do which may impact on their productivity. Initially, create a full list of all tasks activities and then place each task into one of the four categories shown in Figure 83.1.

Once the most important and urgent tasks have been identified, these can be added to the to-do list and scheduled in order of importance. Other tasks can be scheduled for a later date, delegated to others or removed from the list altogether.

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Publisher: Facet
Print publication year: 2016

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