SESSION 1 WORKBOOK

Introduction and
Time Management
Audit
Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager Workbook Session 1

Session 1 Workbook
Introduction & Time Management
Audit

This e-booklet is published by Mind Tools Ltd, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street,
London EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © Mind Tools Ltd 2009-2013. All rights reserved.

Version 1.1

This e-book is protected by international copyright law. You may use it only if you are a
member of the Mind Tools Club™. If you have any queries, please contact us at
members.helpdesk@mindtools.com.

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Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager Workbook Session 1

Table of Contents
Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager.................................................................... 4

Course Format ................................................................................................................ 4

Course Objectives............................................................................................................ 5

Session 1: Introduction and Time Management Audit ................................................... 6

1.1 Preparation ................................................................................................................ 6

1.2 Introduction ...............................................................................................................7

1.3 Where Does the Time Go? ......................................................................................... 8

1.4 Action/Priority Matrix – Is My Time Well Spent? ................................................... 12

1.5 Time Audit – Personal Development Sheet ............................................................. 15

Moving On ......................................................................................................................... 16

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Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager Workbook Session 1

Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager

The aim of this course is to help you master the core skills you need to be a highly
effective manager of time, and therefore an exceptionally productive and effective
individual – both in your workplace and in your life outside work. This course is for
anyone who has ever wished for one more hour in the day, or one fewer demand or
responsibility!

In the course, we’ll introduce you to the strategies and skills you need to gain mastery of
your time. You’ll be given many opportunities to practice the techniques presented on
your own work stack and schedule.

The course ends with an assessment. We’ll ask you to submit a select sample of the
homework and other assignments that you’ve completed over the duration of the course.
This process helps us verify that you know what to do –that you’re actually doing it!

We’ll send you full details of how to submit your work at that time. However, for
planning ahead on how you use your Session Workbooks, we will ask you to e-mail in
your completed Workbook pdfs, so we recommend that you complete them on-screen.

On successful completion of the assessment, we’ll be pleased to award the Certified

Effective Time Manager qualification. Please, therefore, do the preparation work and
complete the exercises – if you do, you’ll have no problems with the assessment at all!

Please note: This course draws on material within our Make Time for Success
course and our Life Plan Workbook, as well as from other Mind Tools time
management material. If you’ve already used this material extensively, please bear with
us, and use the course as an opportunity to review your knowledge and update your use
of the tools!

Course Format
Once you have completed this workbook, please email it to
timemanagerassessment@mindtools.com. If you prefer, and you’re taking the course
using the self-directed model described here:
http://www.mindtools.com/community/Premium/TimeManager.php, you can mail all
of your workbooks in together when you’ve completed all eight sessions in the course.

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Course Objectives
The objective of the course is to help you learn the key skills needed to manage your time
effectively by:

• Understanding the primary demands on your time.

• Learning to maximize your Return on Effort.
• Identifying your priorities.
• Learning to delegate effectively.
• Developing strategies to deal with interruptions.
• Striking the right balance between work and the other parts of your life.

Questions
If you have any questions about this course, please go to:
http://www.mindtools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3550.

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Session 1: Introduction and Time Management

Audit
Learning Objective: Introduce the course and its objectives, and help participants
discover what’s preventing them from managing their time effectively.

1.1 Preparation
1.1.1. Complete the Mind Tools Quiz: How Good Is Your Time Management?
http://www.mindtools.com/community/pages/article/newHTE_88.php

Make a note of the main areas for improvement that you identify through this.

1.1.2. Give yourself a ‘Time Management Moniker.’ This is a creative name that describes
you and the basic time management strategy or technique you struggle with the most.
For example, my moniker is ‘Procrastinator Extraordinaire.’ Over the years, I have
convinced myself I work best under pressure, when clearly that’s not the case!

My Time Management Moniker is

Briefly explain why you’ve chosen this name for yourself:

How do you intend to use this course to create a better ‘name’ for yourself in terms of
personal productivity, effectiveness, and career success?

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Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager Workbook Session 1

Now, please read the following excerpt from Mind Tools’ Make Time for Success!, and do
the exercises it suggests.

1.2 Introduction
“Time Is Life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste your time is to waste
your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it.”

– Alan Lakein

“No matter how much you do, you never seem to do enough.”

The Internet quip landed in Emma’s mailbox last year. It’s still sitting there. Emma, you
see, just can’t bring herself to delete it. “It is a silly little one liner,” she laughs, “but
somehow it captures the essence of my life.”

An advertising professional, a night-school MBA student, a good wife, and a fitness

enthusiast, Emma is constantly juggling responsibilities. She doesn’t mind the hectic
lifestyle. In fact, she enjoys the challenge. Her problem is that even though she is putting
in 101% to keep all the balls in the air, no one – including herself – seems particularly
satisfied with the effort she’s making.

The boss keeps hinting that she should take on more assignments. The professor feels
she is capable of scoring better grades. Friends grouch that she is never around. The gym
instructor grumbles that she doesn’t concentrate enough on her workout. And hubby
dearest has taken to humming “you’ve lost that loving feeling.”

Emma can’t help but acknowledge that their complaints are valid. Yet she is unable to
address the issues. This is her typical response: “I feel so frustrated. I am working longer
and harder every day, but never manage to achieve the results I want. Fitness, friends,
family, work and school; everything is important to me. How can I give up one to focus
on the other? Does it have to be an either-or situation? I am working more than ever, so
why am I still not managing to fit everything into my week?”

Does Emma’s story strike a chord? If yes, then welcome to the ‘World of Time Pressure.’
Here you are, just one of the billions of people who are clocking longer and longer hours,
yet don’t seem to be attaining results that match the effort they put in.
You don’t mind working hard. In fact, you’re busy all day, yet at the end of the day your
accomplishments don’t always reflect your efforts. You want to do more things, and
achieve better results, but as your time is limited to the same 24 hours a day, you don’t
know how to make this miracle happen.

You know the key here is to boost your productivity levels, but somehow you just can’t
manage the trick. You put in greater and greater effort, yet the Rate of Return on that
Effort doesn’t increase; rather, it declines. You attempt the stress management tips that
you come across, but they don’t seem to bear much fruit.

In the end, you become frustrated, and you fall back on the old formula of working still
harder; but it just seems to make the situation worse. That blasted Return on Effort
keeps sliding. And gradually, as responsibilities mount, you start getting sucked into the
classic time-stress trap.

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You find yourself rushing through life, without even taking a breather to consider where
you really want to go. You get stuck in a situation where, faced with relentless demands
at work, you constantly abuse your body to get it all done. And when you return home,
completely wiped out, the relationships and activities that are supposed to be renewing
you feel like yet another tiring duty.

Overwhelmed by responsibilities, you start viewing life as a trail of unfinished tasks.

Unanswered letters, unvisited friends, unwritten articles, unsatisfactory relationships,
and unread books haunt the quieter moments when, if at all, you take a moment to
evaluate where you are.

Is there a way to boost your productivity? Is there any way you can make time for all the
things you want and need to do? Is there a way to beat the time-stress trap?

There is…

1.3 Where Does the Time Go?

Knowing where you spend your time is the first step in allocating it properly. If you
haven’t tracked your time before, I’m pretty confident that once you start really
monitoring it, you’ll be surprised where it goes. For example, do you really know:

• How much of your day is spent on productive work?

• What percentage of your time you spend on the things for which you are
responsible?
• How much of your day is wasted on interruptions, and then recovering from those
interruptions?

To answer these questions you can use an Activity Log.

This is a four-column table that you use to record everything you do for a predefined
period of time. Typically, you would use an Activity Log for a week, and record your daily
work activities.

This log is really important because our memories get fuzzy, and our estimations of time
are typically not that reliable. By using a running log to keep track of your time, you can
see where your time really does go.

To fill in an Activity Log, simply record the time at which you start an activity, describe
what you’re doing, and then record how long you stayed on task. Every time you change
activities, you need to record the time, description, and duration.

As you complete an activity, ask yourself how valuable it was to your goals and the
organization as a whole. Ultimately, you want to spend the majority of your time on high-
value items, and minimize low-value activities as much as possible.

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Here’s an example of a typical day at the office:

Time Activity Duration Value

(High/Medium/Low)
8:00 am Check emails. 15 min Med
8:15 am Team meeting. 10 min High
Chit chat in the hall after the
8:25 am 15 min Low
meeting.
8:40 am Check phone messages. Return calls. 15 min Med
8:55 am Get coffee. 10 min Low
9:05 am Software project. 20 min High
Consultation: Colleague comes to
9:25 am door to discuss the presentation we 40 min Med
are making to the Board next week.
10:05 am Take break in staff room. 15 min Low
10:20 am Check for new emails. 10 min Low
Reorganize software project
10:30 am 30 min High
materials, and get back to work.
Provide staff member with
11:00 am directions/ideas for the work they 10 min Low
are doing.
Software project –Try to get back to
11:10 am 10 min High
work.
Boss calls, wants to talk to me about
11:20 am 10 min Med
the software project.
Refocus on the software project
11:30 am 40 min High
work.
12:10 pm Lunch 65 min Med

Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your daily activity log. You may
be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low-value jobs!

You may also see that you’re energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A
lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and
the quality of your nutrition. The Activity Log gives you a basis for experimenting with
these variables.

Your analysis should help you to free up extra time in your day by applying one of the
following actions to most activities:

• Eliminate jobs that your employer shouldn't be paying you to do. These may
include tasks that someone else in the organization should be doing, possibly at a
lower pay rate, or personal activities such as sending non-work e-mails.
• Schedule your most challenging tasks for the times of day when your energy is
highest. That way your work will be better, and it should take you less time.
• Minimize the number of times a day you switch between types of task. For
example, read and reply to e-mails in blocks once in the morning, and once in the
afternoon only.

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• Reduce the amount of time spent on legitimate personal activities such as making
coffee (take turns in your team to do this – it saves time, and strengthens team
spirit).

On the following page you’ll find a blank activity log. You can print copies of this to use in
the homework assignment for this Session, or you can fill in this pdf directly.

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Activity Log Template

Value
Time Activity Duration (High, Medium or
Low)

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1.4 Action/Priority Matrix – Is My Time Well Spent?

So far, we’ve looked at the value of the work you’ve been doing, and put your activities
into three broad categories: high, medium, and low value. You need to dig a bit deeper
and figure out where your real priorities lie. This will help you determine which actions
you should keep doing more of, and which ones you should drop completely.

The reason for doing a time audit is to allocate your time more effectively. Therefore, you
need to have a systematic way to identify the activities that are high priority, and the
ones that are not. A great tool for this is the Action/Priority Matrix. Using this
framework, some of your previous evaluations regarding the value of your work might
change.

The Action/Priority Matrix is a simple diagramming technique that helps you choose
which activities to prioritize (and which ones you should drop) if you want to make the
most of your time and opportunities.

By choosing activities intelligently, you can maximize your time and opportunities.

However, by choosing badly, you can quickly bog yourself down in low-yield, time-
consuming projects that can limit opportunities, and stop you moving forward.

The Action/Priority Matrix divides your time into four categories based on how much
impact the activity has, and how much effort it takes.

High “Quick Wins” “Major Projects”

Impact

“Fill Ins” “Thankless Tasks”

Low

Low High
Effort

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If you plot effort on the x axis, and impact on the y axis, you get:

• Quick Wins – these are projects that return high value for the time and effort you
put in. The more quick wins you can accomplish, the better.

What are some Quick Wins you can achieve in your current role?

• Major Projects – these are the high-impact, high-effort projects you are working
on. These are the time-consuming projects that need to be done. Making sure you
spend your time efficiently is really important for good time management. It’s easy
to let these types of projects swallow major portions of time.

What are the Major Projects you are currently working on?

• Fill Ins – low impact and low effort combined mean this is the stuff you should be
doing in your spare time. If you don’t have any spare time, these tasks just won’t
get done!

What Fill-In tasks do you find yourself working on during the day?

• Thankless Tasks – these are the activities that give meaning to the phrase, ‘work
smarter, not harder.’ If you’re spending lots of time and effort on something that
will give you a low return, there’s no reason to continue. Either it doesn’t really
need doing, or someone more experienced, better qualified, or more junior should
be doing the work instead.

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What Thankless Tasks are you doing that you can/should get rid of?

Using the information you gain from this exercise, you can then start to put together a
plan to maximize the time you spend on high-impact activities. Remember, using time
efficiently means working smarter. While hard work is necessary, your aim is to do
enough in the Quick Win category to keep moving your career forward, and to keep
opportunities open to you.

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1.5 Time Audit – Personal Development Sheet

Use the following questions to help you formulate your overall personal productivity
and effectiveness improvement plan.

Identify the setting where you will apply this skill – office, home, both?

Identify specific behaviors you will use to put this skill into practice. What tools will
you use to make sure you follow through with your commitment to improve your
personal productivity and effectiveness?

What are your indicators for success? How will you know you are improving?

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Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager Workbook Session 1

Moving On
If you’re following the tutor-supported model for this course (see
http://www.mindtools.com/community/Premium/TimeManager.php) please email this
workbook, once you’ve completed it, to timemanagerassessment@mindtools.com.

Materials for Session 2 of the Mind Tools Certified Effective Time Manager course can be
accessed here:
http://www.mindtools.com/community/Premium/TimeManager.php#2

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