Time Management: Getting Your Day Back

How to Manage Your Time and Get Your Day Back

Professional Development Course Geelong

Course Overview

This one day, high potential program is an intensive workshop which focuses on the conundrum facing today's executives and managers: how to win back their work day. It's not about cramming your schedule with more tasks, it's about learning to identify the urgent stuff, prioritise the important stuff, and put in place sustainable systems that work in an office environment.

Overall, the training is more than an explanation of theory for being more productive, it's a set of concrete, immediately actionable tools for managing priorities, managing interruptions gracefully, and keeping your focus in the midst of workplace mayhem. Learners will create customised systems that are in line with their individual roles and the cultures in which they work.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, attendees will be able to:

Evaluate and assign tasks based on objective measures that differentiate between what is urgent and what is truly important

Create capture systems to keep from losing tasks whilst concentrating on what you are doing now

Use methods for setting boundaries that create a safe zone for effective time management without sacrificing professional ties

Improve delegation methodologies that enhance quality and capacity of the team

Implement professional manner of communication to handle requests and expectations

Create daily and weekly planning rituals to make room for unexpected requests without losing sight of your goals

Identify energy rhythms and match high focus work to peak performance times

What You Will Learn

Module 1: Priority Framework Development

Understand the distinction between reactive and proactive time management. Learn how to judge whether tasks contribute to strategic objectives, not just the item that's screamed loudest or arrived last in your inbox. Establish criteria for identifying what to address immediately vs. what can be scheduled or delegated.

Module 2: Recording and Organisational Systems

Learn to capture all incoming tasks, ideas, and requests, but don't lose focus on your current work. Again, create a trusted system, so nothing is falling through cracks, whilst avoiding ruining productivity by jumping from task to task all the time.

Module 3: Professional Boundary Management

Develop language to manage interruptions, requests, and urgent requests that turn plans on their head. Learn how to guard focused work periods whilst still honouring and growing collaborative relationships and Team dynamics.

Module 4: Assigning Tasks and Delegating Them

Know how to delegate effectively, what tasks to hand off, how to communicate what's expected and follow up in a way that ensures quality work without being a micromanager. Tackle delegation obstacles such as guilt and perfectionism.

Module 5: Strategic Communication

Build skills for managing up when supervisor planning causes downstream urgency. Develop skills for negotiating deadlines, communicating priorities and managing stakeholder expectations at any level.

Module 6 Energy and Schedule Optimisation

Pin down Peak Performance Periods and match complex cognitive work to energy patterns. Establishing buffer systems which can adjust for ad hoc requests whilst not taking the eyes off of the priority work. Develop sustainable routines on a daily and weekly basis.

Module 7: Implementation and Maintenance

Structuring mechanisms for continuous review and update of time management activities. Create tracking and resolution protocols for common implementation barriers.

Course Structure

Length: 7 hours (9:00 AM, 4:30 PM)

Type: Interactive workshop with hands on exercises

Location: Geelong training facility

Materials printed workbook templates digital resources provided

Session I (9:00 AM 12:30 PM)

Priority framework development

Capture system implementation

Boundary management strategies

Session II (1:30 PM to 4:30 PM)

Delegation and communication techniques

Energy optimisation planning

System Design and deployment Personal planning and deployment of the system

Summary

Through this course, time management becomes not a challenge that you need to constantly fight with, but a strategic weapon. Attendees get to walk away with immediately applicable systems that are specific to the work they do and position they hold. Practical rather than theoretical, the emphasis is on real workplace issues such as colleague interrupts, supervisor requests, and conflicting priority demands.

The training isn't about more hours or Mission Impossible type productivity, however, it's more about working more intelligently on things that actually matter. You learn how to protect your time and your priorities with confidence, whilst still having great working relationships.

The end result is giving professionals back the reigns of their workday, decreasing stress, and allowing them to make significant progress against their big goals. I gauged success not by the number of hours I worked but based on whether or not when I left work I felt like a professional and that my work was under control.