time management

This is my results of the "How Good is your time management" Quiz. From mind tools website.
Time to set a goal of improving this score...
To re-do in 8 weeks.
Total score was 40
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_88.htm
Goal Setting
(Questions 6, 10, 14, 15)
Your score is 10 out of 20   
To start managing time effectively, you need to set goals. When you know where you're going, you can then figure out what exactly needs to be done, in what order. Without proper goal setting, you'll fritter your time away on a confusion of conflicting priorities. People tend to neglect goal setting because it requires time and effort. What they fail to consider is that a little time and effort put in now saves an enormous amount of time, effort and frustration in the future. Mind Tools has two great articles on goal setting that are must-reads for everyone. If you are serious about time management, we suggest you start with Personal Goal Setting and The Golden Rules of Goal Setting . We also recommend Treasure Mapping . 
Prioritization
(Questions 1, 4, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15)
Your score is 25 out of 35    
Prioritizing what needs to be done is especially important. Without it, you may work very hard, but you won't be achieving the results you desire because what you are working on is not of strategic importance. Most people have a "to-do" list of some sort. The problem with many of these lists is they are just a collection of things that need to get done. There is no rhyme or reason to the list and, because of this, the work they do is just as unstructured. So how do you work on To Do List tasks – top down, bottom up, easiest to hardest? To work efficiently you need to work on the most important, highest value tasks. This way you won't get caught scrambling to get something critical done as the deadline approaches. For information on how to start prioritizing your tasks, see our articles onActivity Logs , Prioritized To Do Lists , Prioritization , The Action Priority Matrix , and The Urgent/Important Matrix .
Managing Interruptions
(Questions 5, 9, 11, 12)
Your score is 8 out of 20   
Having a plan and knowing how to prioritize it is one thing. The next issue is knowing what to do to minimize the interruptions you face during your day. It is widely recognized that managers get very little uninterrupted time to work on their priority tasks. There are phone calls, information requests, questions from employees, and a whole host of events that crop up unexpectedly. Some do need to be dealt with immediately, but others need to be managed. Two excellent tools that discuss how to minimize your interrupted time are The Urgent/Important Matrix and Managing Interruptions . However, some jobs need you to be available for people when they need help – interruption is a natural and necessary part of life. Here, do what you sensibly can to minimize it, but make sure you don't scare people away from interrupting you when they should.
Procrastination 
(Questions 2, 10, 12)
Your score is 4 out of 15   
"I'll get to it later" has led to the downfall of many a good employee. After too many "laters" the work piles up so high that any task seems insurmountable. Procrastination is as tempting as it is deadly. The best way to beat it is to recognize that you do indeed procrastinate. Then you need to figure out why. Perhaps you are afraid of failing? (And some people are actually afraid of success!) Once you know why you procrastinate then you can plan to get out of the habit. Reward yourself for getting jobs done, and remind yourself regularly of the horrible consequences of not doing those boring tasks! For more help on recognizing and overcoming procrastination see our guide to Beating Procrastination .
Scheduling
(Questions 3, 7, 12)
Your score is 6 out of 15   
Much of time management comes down to effective scheduling of your time. When you know what your goals and priorities are, you then need to know how to go about creating a schedule that keeps you on track, and protects you from stress.  This means understanding the factors that affect the time you have available for work. You not only have to schedule priority tasks, you have to leave room for interruptions, and contingency time for those unexpected events that otherwise wreak chaos with your schedule. By creating a robust schedule that reflects your priorities and well as supports your personal goals, you have a winning combination: One that will allow you to control your time and keep your life in balance. To learn specific scheduling skills, see Pickle Jar Theory and Scheduling Skills

Project management 101 : Thoughts from May workshop

18th May 2013


It was great to hear about project management today. So it was reinforced that projects are important in organisations to make sure we're doing work that matters. I believe this is true, I know from my own experiences that amongst all the everyday services we provide it is difficult to implement changes and improvements and I think creating each of these ideas for improvement into a project would allow this to happen.

I found this book and interesting interview with the authors
http://www.jkp.com/blog/2012/04/interview-gary-spolander-linda-martin-successful-project-management-in-social-work-and-social-care/

I will try to get hold of this book, as I believe it could be quite useful.


Our project: Our team are working on a project about training DSWs in autism, mental health and behaviours of concern. We are working well as a team and we spent a great deal of time today deciding what the project is and how we can do it within the time frame. I feel much more confident as we have reduced the scope of the project to provide information about what the evidence says should be in this sort of training and then comparing this to what is currently available. Now I am actually interested in contributing to the literature reviews.

Personal reflections from today: I am really enjoying this workshops, having time to meet with others in the same role as me and developing new ways of thinking. I can see there is heaps of ways to apply this to my work and develop new services and team processes through projects.

Reflections - a structure to develop this skill.

When helping my partner with a job application I came across the use of the acronyms CARL and STAR to think about and reflect on skills.

I think this will be useful in my role as a team leader and practice support provider to help others and myself become more reflective of their skills and actions.

For each of your skills write a skills statement as follows:

Context: the context or situation in which you believe you demonstrated the skills

      a university or workplace group activity, for example)

Action: what you did to solve the problem, lead the group, advance the project

Response: how others involved reacted to your actions, recognised your contribution

Learning: what lessons you drew from all of this, and how you them would do things differently in future as a result

or

Situtation: set the context for the

Task: what you were required to do

Action/Approach: what you did to solve the problem

Result: how others involved reacted to your actions, recognised your contribution

Situation

What was the situation? This is a brief outline of the situation faced and your role.

Task

What were the main issues involve with the situation?

What needed to be done?

What task/s needed to be achieved and what was the desired outcome?

What obstacles had to be overcome?

Action

What were the steps you took to complete the task?

This will include allocation of resources, people involved etc.

Results

What was the outcome?

How did it change things at work?

What lessons did you learn from this event?

Developing emotional intelligences - acknowledging introverts

10th May 2013

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the Myer-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, following trying out the tool during the first session of the Essential Leaders Program.
I identified myself as ESFP with this descriptor:
Outgoing, friendly, and accepting. Exuberant lovers of life, people, and material comforts. Enjoy working with others to make things happen. Bring common sense and a realistic approach to their work, and make work fun. Flexible and spontaneous, adapt readily to new people and environments. Learn best by trying a new skill with other people. http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/the-16-mbti-types.asp#ESFP

It was quite easy for me to choose between the preferences, and i agree with the descriptor, so therefore think that this must be fairly accurate. In doing the MBTI I realised that quite a lot of people in my life are introverts; my partner, colleagues, maybe my children. The same week TEDtalks sent me this video:

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

I became aware that some people need a quiet moment (narrowing stimuli) in order to process and time to think their thoughts through before sharing them; something quite alien to my unfettered charm. I found that giving people time sometimes pays off, especially in personal relationships. I am having more difficulty applying this to supporting staff who are introverts. It is a difficult balance when the type of work and the environment, ie the huge caseloads do not allow the introvert time to think. Sometimes I wonder if they use their personality type to deflect and avoid work tasks that they dislike. I  am thinking about this a lot in order to help some of the introverts I am working with.

In thinking about this I have found some interesting articles
http://www.halogensoftware.com/blog/the-psychology-of-introverted-employees-understand-them-to-manage-them-better/

http://www.amanet.org/BLOG/post/How-to-Manage-Your-Introverted-Employees.aspx#comment

http://blog.readytomanage.com/coaching-introverts/

I am going to read and reflect on these. There's a plan.

Uber Kung-Fu Time Management

2nd May 2013 

Time management is hard at the best of times but needing to have "uber kung-fu time management" that seems like a step too far for me. This term has intrigued me and after a long discussion with my partner where we picked apart the semantics we agreed that we don't want uber kung fu time management; literally meaning super (uber) intense (kung) work (fu) of time management. I don't believe time management should be intensive or super work. Philosophically uber could also mean to take it to the next level, or going above, lacking gravity, what you want to be at the top of your mind and attention. This is more like what we want. I want my time management to be broad, natural, habitual, effective without intense work, not something that fills my head but a way of being that creates a smoother path for the work that follows, more like a 'tao', a path or even a 'meta-tao' , a way of being . So i think i will aim for "meta-tao time management". 

So how do i start this meta-tao time management? Well trialling some of the strategies presented in the Diploma of management course.
 
I sat down to do a "mind sweep", something i found very tricky to initiate in the first ELP workshop, and found myself having to stick to one area of my life. So I opened the work drawer, you know the drawers in the filing cabinet in your head, and started writing a to do list. This is something i usually avoid as i hate having multiple to do lists that never get crossed off. So how do i remember everything i have to do? Well I don't! Things get forgotten, some things get remembered too late, and sometimes i do remember and things do get done. Although i planned to do a 'mind sweep' this was definitely not a 'mind sweep' as I left all the other areas of my life untouched in my head (home finances, parenting, maintaining relationships, housework, cooking, errands, toy library work, hobbies, dreams, plans). So I successfully pushed all these thoughts to the side and just thought about work. I started referring to notebooks, diary entries and emails to try to get a complete to do list.

Once this was done I went about dividing the list in to categories; grouping client work, practice support, service development work and team work tasks together in different coloured highlighters.

My next plan was to then divide all the tasks into an Urgent/Important matrix. 
There was not one task that i felt was not important on the list. So i then grouped the work based on time frames. 

So my Matrix looks something like this 

Urgent
News service quotations
Responding to enquiries about services 
Client work - reports
                        - preparation for appointments within next 2 days
                        - follow up from appointments within last 4 days
Data collection (within 2 days) 

Important
  Practice support 
 peer support 
Maintaining data base (spreadsheets of services)
Developing processes
Client work without a specific timeframe
Managing CPD opportunities for team and self
Planning and preparing team meetings
Follow up from team meetings 
Planning and preparing client work 


I have found this a time consuming but ultimately useful tool. I feel I have now got some guidance for myself about how i should prioritise my work. It will be interesting to see how I manage to apply this to my work. 

I now need to work out the work times that distract me from these priorities and try to eliminate the time i spend on these tasks. 

Meta-Tao Time Management here i come :)

Inspired by conductor, Benjamin Zander. Thoughts from session 1.

25th April 2013 

Today was the first workshop for the Essential Leaders Program. Daunted, unsure what to expect and how much work is will be, I arrived at the first session wondering if I had made the right decision to sign up for this course. I feel privileged to be offered this opportunity and the timetable fitted in with my childcare arrangements, I had no choice but to say yes and grab this ELP with both horns. So here we are after the first session.

Without looking at my notes or having reviewed anything in 6 days, since the workshop this is what I have taken with me:

Benjamin Zander - How to give an A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N_Fu4nZ7gI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKEBygQic0

To say when things go wrong or when you are wrong, or make a mistake "How fascinating" head held high arms up, proud of yourself for being brave enough to make mistakes! I thought this talk was inspirational.

Managing is a messy business. You can't stop the mess in the day but you can make sure you do work that's matters. I often feel overwhelmed so I am looking forward to spending more time focussing on developing strategies to manage the work. Today has been great for that I am looking forward to putting some of these into practice.


Doing work that matters, really resonated strongly with me. I remember saying this back in 2002, when I quit a better paying job to go back to disability work, as I felt that that work mattered more. Feeling I can make a difference in someone else's life has been my driving force. So I need to get organised so I can do work that matters as a team leader. Do work that will make a difference to our clients and to my colleagues so that they can enjoy doing work that matters, that can make a difference in someone else's life! :)

Oh, and I've heard people saying "Happy Anzac Day" today. I'm not sure that is the right sentiment....hmmmm???