worthwhile time management courses or seminars 1

[Tmoose]

I did some searching here on HtIMaGAiMW and was surprised to come up so empty.
Anyhow, does anyone have recommendations? Career path, Fred Pryor, 7 habits...., etc?

thanks

Dan T

 

[KBeitel]

Dan,

If you truly want to get control of your time look into "Getting Things Done (GTD): The Art of Stress-free Productivity" by David Allen. There are thousands of authors out there, each with their methods of management, but David Allen's philosophical methods do have science that backs it and he outlines a very simple process that he admits takes time & practice.(just like getting a blackbelt)


Take care & have fun!

Kevin
"Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A. Edison

 

[beej67]

http://www.xkcd.com/874/

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[msquared48]

I don't have the time to attend them.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask

 

[ampis]

zen to Done is quiet good and is free
also go through the site zen habits.

http://zenhabits.net/

 

[GregLocock]

But, but, we're engineers not motorcycle mechanics.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[ornerynorsk]

99.9 % of the seminars/books/programs etc that have been suggested or forced upon me have all been recycled tripe that mostly boils down to good work habits and good people skills. Managing your time wisely, choosing priorities and not neglecting the important-but-not-urgent category, working ahead and laying down foundations where possible, maintaining your network, etc. The proverbial "digging the well before you are thirsty" mentality and the like.

The upside is that most offsite seminars involve travel and refreshments!

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[TheBlacksmith]

I took career path course about 15 years ago. They advised to only plan 25% of your day if you want to complete your daily list and go home. The rest of the time will fill itself in with impromptu meetings, phone calls, e-mails and various crisis. Find that to be just as true today as when I took the course.

 

[tygerdawg]

(warning: gray-haired guy on a rant)

In the pre-electronic days I adopted the Day-Timers method and their little notebooks. It was simple, effective, and suited my workload & personality. Summarized here:
[ul]
[li]At beginning of day, take 10 minutes to plan your tasks for the day.[/li]
[li]1st level Prioritize them, A/B/C/P(ersonal)[/li]
[li]2nd level prioritize them within each A/B/C/P with 1/2/3/etc[/li]
[li]1st A1 task should be "make ToDo list" and check it off to feel sense of accomplishment. (Yeah, hokey, I know, but it works)[/li]
[li]Refresh & re-prioritize during the course of the day.[/li]
[li]Transfer uncompleted tasks to the next day (very unlikely you can get them all done anyway)[/li]
[/ul]

I haven't found much of anything that's any better. I've modified the fields of MSOutlook Task List to mimic these functions, but it's not as clean as Day-Timers.

The method also requires one to be ferociously jealous of their time and commitments. At one point, after getting beat up by the boss for not hitting deadlines, I did a time study for a month. It turned out easily 60% of my time was documented to be non-value added time (mostly idiotic meetings). The guy was smart enough to see this and restructured the group's workload to elminate most meetings.

For my part, I became very agressive about managing my time in meetings:
[ul]
[li]Send out meeting notices with a reasonably firm Agenda. ALWAYS. I don't attend meetings without an Agenda from somebody.[/li]
[li]Agressively manage the start time and grind through the Agenda items. It's absolutely necessary to keep the conversation on track.[/li]
[li]End on time with delegated Action Items, including items for further investigation.[/li]
[/ul]

With the advent of MSOutlook and it's too-easy-to-broadcast Meeting Notices, I have developed the reputation as The King Of Decline because I agressively manage my time and decline most meeting requests. I treat meetings as I would plutonium: sometimes useful, but always very dangerous. I have found through the years that most of the time, meetings are called by incompetent folks who need to hide their lack of technical ability behind a group discussion. Sad.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com