The other day I attended a meeting of other training professionals. As is our custom at these monthly get-togethers, the leader posed a question and we went around the room in turn giving our answers.

This month’s question was “what weakness do you have that you would like to take a class on?”

Amazingly, out of the 14 professionals at the meeting, three main subjects kept recurring:

 – staying focused on the right tasks / time management

 – conflict resolution

 – work / life balance

I found it interesting that out of the dozens of weaknesses that people can have, we kept hearing the same three over and over from among ourselves.

I was reminded of a column I wrote several years ago entitled The Time Management Ink Blot. In that piece I stated that “time management is not a cookie cutter proposition. What works well for one person does not work for someone else.”

Many at our meeting had weakness in the areas of staying focused / time management, but even then each person’s weakness was slightly different than that of the next person (thus validating my inkblot theory.)

Because of this, I want to laugh out loud whenever I hear of someone teaching a time management workshop. Forcing people to follow a specific method designed by somebody else is not my idea of the time management training.

In fact, I don’t think it’s realistic to conduct time management training that presents only one method. Instead, it would be fair to hold events that are a presentation of time management ideas. Additionally, actually getting somebody to incorporate good time management habits is a highly individualized effort that requires follow-up and accountability.

Personally, I function best when I spend 15 or 20 minutes each morning thinking through the activities of my day, prioritizing them, and assigning a “by when” time of completion for each item. When I skip that short planning time because I’m “too busy,” I invariably have a less productive day — and end up losing that 20 minutes anyway (and usually much more).

Apparently I’m not alone. The most-often mentioned weaknesses at our meeting revolved around focus and planning.

So — what might this suggest about other workplace professionals? How much more effective could we be if more people truly spent time planning and organizing the activities of their day?
 

Share This

Filed in Work, Business, Training, Motivation, Management, Workplace