Think Productive have teamed up with Train to Gain to offer your company a grant to access 3 places on our 1 day “How to Get Things Done” public workshop for just £50 (usual price for 3 places is £597 + BF)
For more information on the grant download the PDF by clicking here
For more information about our public workshops click here
I recently came across an article stating internets biggest distraction is Facebook. To many this won’t come as a surprise and a lot will add Twitter, Myspace, Youtube, Iphone apps and more to this list.
Time management courses are simple they analyse where your time is going and make sure the things your doing are working towards completing a task! We all come to a point in the week where we wish we had more hours in a day, an impossible feat. A time management course helps you to implement a structure/system so you have a greater understanding of what needs to be done and when, helping to create extra minutes in the day to do those “other” tasks which you end up pushing to the next day.
Often people say the problem for them not being able to get things done is ‘time management’ but actually it’s project, action, attention and habit management that are the real factors stopping them from reaching their goals, and a time management course looks into exactly these things.
Why wouldn’t you just read a time management book I hear you say? We would recommend you do read these books and there are some very good books on the top sellers list, our personal favourite is Getting Things Done by David Allen, a very insightful book with excellent tips.
However a time management workshop will be tailored to match your needs, something a book just can’t do. A time management course will help you implement these systems to your personal needs, for example in our “Getting Your Inbox to Zero” workshop we help get our participants inboxes to zero so when they leave the workshop they not only understand the system and why to use it, but MOST importantly how to use it to help them!
Time management workshop / time management course what can they help with?
• How to get things done
• How to keep motivated
• How to set and achieve your goals in life
• How to plan and work in a systematic manner so you’re not doing everything at the last minute and risking missing deadlines or delivering rushed, shoddy work
• How to reduce stress by feeling organized and on top of your workload
• How to avoid procrastination and avoidance
• How to get all you need to get done in your 9 to 5 job so you can leave work on time and have a better family life
• How to deal with distractions
• How to manage very large projects effortlessly
• Improve your health by reducing stress and allowing more time in the day for exercise
If you feel you are in need of some extra time management help check out our In-house workshops and Public workshop pages.
When you next have an office meeting – do it standing up. People with disabilities and minute takers can, of course, be seated if necessary.
Standing for meetings helps concentrate the mind and makes sure that people don’t talk for too long (with too many papers). If a meeting becomes longer than it is comfortable to stand, take a 15 minute break (to sit down) or reconvene the meeting at a later date.
Easyjet have their meetings standing up, and it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm.
At Think Productive, we love David Allen’s Getting Things Done – it’s one of the major time management systems we use both internally as a team and with our clients as part of our workshops. Here are 10 ways you know you’ve cracked it. Feel free to add your own as a comment too!
1. You think about clearing your email in the same way as you think about checking your voicemail
2. Wherever you go, you’ve always got a way to write things down
3. You know there’s a really important conversation you need to have with your partner so you put it on your agendas list
4. You read stuff you actually want to read when you’re on public transport or the dentists waiting room, rather than the free newspapers provided
5. When you think about where to go on holiday, your next thought is ‘what’s the next action?’
6. You have a favourite time or place to do your weekly review
7. You become the annoying person in a meeting who actually wants to know what the meeting is for in the first place
8. You feel relaxed and in control, despite having more projects on the go than anyone else you know
9. When you’re in the middle of a city centre with an hour or so to kill, you’ve got a list of shopping or culture possibilities to make sure the time is used productively
10. You don’t get overwhelmed about work at the beginning or end of the working week because you know your GTD system includes a thorough weekly review
If you want to find out more about GTD, buy the book here Or ask us about our workshop, How to Get Things Done.
Are you proud of what you do? Do you love your work? Stress-free productivity comes from developing a positive relationship with what you do.
If you want to find out how to get things done and love your work, check out our time management training that does so much more than all the conventional rubbish time management stuff you’re probably used to!
When people walk into a room for a meeting, they’ll pick up lots of things in the first few moments. They will only be conscious of a few of them but all will make a difference to how they feel and what they say and do when they’re in the room. If you’re the person chairing the meeting that matters a lot. So … be there a bit early so you can prepare the space:
remove old coffee cups and papers left over by the previous occupants of the room have a kettle boiling with hot water or prepared flasks so people can be welcomed with a cup of something warming;
Open the window if it’s stuffy, close it if it’s noisy;
Put chairs so there’s one for everyone you expect to come; if you’re not sure who’ll turn up, have some spare in the corner;
If there’s a flip chart, write up the name of the meeting, with the day and date maybe adding ‘welcome’ – so that when people arrive they can relax because they know straightaway that they’ve made it to the right place;
If you’re facilitating an awayday, you might bring some flowers to put in the corner or some chocolates to share round.
These kind of things will give people the message ‘you matter’. So if you really do think they matter, let people know – by the subconscious messages they receive. And if they know that you think they matter, they’ll probably be more forthcoming in the meeting – because they’ll know that you think what they say matters too.
Think Productive provide workshops in chairing meetings training. Our workshops are designed to help you get the most out of your meeting, our goal is to help you making meetings magic
See Time to Think – listening to ignite the human mind; Nancy Kline; Ward Lock Chapter 11
Here at Think Productive, we’re so tired of bad Time Management Training! We’re on a mission to make Time Management Training much more relevant, by helping people to appreciate that we no longer live in a neat, 9-5 world where we get to the end of the day and everything’s done. With information overload comes infinite possibility and alot of the old models for Time management don’t reflect this. So here’s the thing. Think about your attention and energy as much as your time. Is what you really need actually email training (or for your colleagues to improve their email etiquette!). Either way, check out our Getting Your Inbox to Zero and How to get things done workshops – we’ll help you to do just that and as a result, love your work!
I recently caught up with Rasheed Ogunlaru, who runs the ‘Making it as an Entrepreneur’ workshops at the British Libary’s business and IP Centre (which is a great place to check out if you run a business and are based in London, by the way!). Here, we talk about what makes an entrepreneur and some of the things to think about, particularly if you’re thinking about making the plunge to setting up your own business in the middle of tough economic times.
It’s that time of year when the thoughts turn to summer breaks. Here are a few thoughts about how to ensure you work and relax as usefully as possible!
1. Clarify before you go! Leave 2 days free in your calendar immediately before you go away. Get clean and clear: Get your email inbox down to zero, delegate what you can, work out what won’t die if it’s left for a couple of weeks. This wrap up time will allow you to make a great list of priorities for when you return, giving you peace of mind that the world won’t end just because you didn’t turn up at the office for a couple of weeks (bad news for the egotists amongst you, but it really won’t!)
2. Checklist it! Keep a note of what needs doing before you go away (the cat needs someone to feed it, someone needs to push your post through the door, someone needs to deputise on that meeting, your team needs to keep on top of that project). With a lot of these things, it’s the thinking and remembering that takes the mental energy and causes the stress. So keeping this as a checklist means it’ll be so much easier next time you go away. Keep the checklist stored on your calendar a month or so before you next plan to go away and you won’t lose it.
3. Capture and Collect whilst you’re away. If you’re one of those people who spends half the time on holiday still with their mind racing at 100 miles per hour (I’m guilty of this – it takes me several days to truly change gear!) then don’t just let it happen. Take a small pad and pen, and capture all those great ideas that you’ll start to have once you relax. And if you capture the thoughts that might be nagging you AND you trust that you’ll do something with what you’ve captured once you get back, you’ll get that stuff off your mind and enjoy your break.
4. The only mentions of ‘check in’ or ‘desks’ should be at the airport. Don’t try to check in on progress with colleagues whilst you’re there. If you’ve truly allowed yourself 2 days of good, uninterrupted thinking time before you leave, you should have everything delegated. Remember, productivity and connectivity are not the same thing. Resist your addiction to being connected. And in the same vein, turn off email and internet on your phone – it will help you enjoy the view, and you’ll be better rested on your return.
5. Clarity when you arrive back. When you arrive back, full of new ideas, refreshed but with a mountain of email to process, the 2 week-old list, plus new stuff flying at you, the worst place to spend those first seven hours is in meetings. Block out the first few hours on your return to get back in control: process the emails, get back up to date, catch up on what else has been happening and plan ahead. If the day of meetings is completely unavoidable, then for your own sanity, do this on your own time on the Sunday evening – not something we advocate for everyone, of course, but hey, some people have those kind of jobs..!
When the trains all get delayed due to bad weather, we all have a tendency to start cursing and ultimately waste a lot of time on unproductive activities. Here are a few thoughts about how to make sure you avoid that the next time you find yourself stuck!
