Managing Your Time and Priorities

Analyse your situation

• Why manage time and priorities? The return on investment in time and priority management.
• Assess your current approach.
• Identify and define time-recording tools.
• Sources of information.
• Information formats and media.
• Time wasters.
• Work–life balance.
• Cross-functional tasks.
• The feeling of losing control.

Prioritise your actions

Two tools for learning to prioritise tasks:

• Dave Gray's effort–impact matrix.
• Dwight Eisenhower's urgent–important matrix.
• Habits that increase productivity.

Delegating and deprioritising as powerful time management tools.

• Myths about delegation.
• The steps involved.
• The conditions required.
• The results.

Communication as an effective time management tool

• Communication difficulties.
• The elements of communication.
• The conditions for communication.
• Communication tools.

Practical tools

• The to-do list.
• The stop-doing list.
• Time blocks.
• The NPD method.

Exercises, practical cases and role-plays throughout the workshop days.

Teaching approach

This course is primarily interactive and uses a participative approach based on learners' active involvement.

Learning is hands-on, with exercises generally preceding theoretical input. After each exercise, the trainer leads a debrief in which participants reflect on:

• What they accomplished during the exercise.
• The exercise's learning and professional objectives.
• How they can apply the exercise in their work.
• How they intend to implement these principles in their daily professional practice.

Participants can also openly express reservations or concerns during these debriefs. The trainer and other participants can correct one another's answers or rephrase them more accurately. The debrief is therefore structured to maximise peer learning.

Practical work accounts for most of the course time.