Time Management · Web viewUse the resources, questionnaires and exercises below to explore time management and productivity. Navigate to a specific section below or start from the

Make a copy of this worksheet template and share it with your coach.

Time Management & Productivity WorksheetUse the resources, questionnaires and exercises below to explore time management and productivity. Navigate to a specific section below or start from the top.

Time ManagementHow do you spend your time?Proactive vs. Reactive

Productivity and FocusProcrastinationPriorities

Define Your Big Rocks, Little Rocks and SandConsider the Eisenhower Principle to Further Categorize or Prioritize Your WorkConnecting Priorities to Your Daily Work

Defining Your Workstyle

Time Management and Productivity Tips and TricksInbox ManagementCalendar ManagementMeeting Management

Test your assumptionsAudit your meetings


Time Management What does time management mean to you?

How do you stay organized and track how you spend your time throughout the week?

How do you set goals for what you want to accomplish throughout a given day or week?

How often do you accomplish your goals or tasks for a given day or week?

How do you think about blocking time or setting boundaries to accomplish your top priorities?

What would need to change for you to be able to manage your time successfully?


How do you spend your time?Instructions: Review your calendar from the last two weeks. If your calendar is not a good measure of your time journal or track your time for the next two weeks to answer the questions below.

How do you spend your time throughout an average work day?

How often are you in scheduled meetings?

How often are you in ad hoc meetings or conversations?

When do you have free time to work on your responsibilities?

When are you responding to what others need from you?

How would you be ideally spending your time throughout an average work day?

Proactive vs. Reactive“If you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own" – Stephen Covey

What does it look like if you are managing your time proactively?


What does it look like if you are managing your time reactively?

What is all of the proactive work you did throughout these last couple of weeks?

What is all of the reactive work you did throughout these last couple of weeks?

What organization can you add to make the best use of your time for each? (IE where can you block time and only commit to responding to tasks during that time, or where can you hold time to commit to your proactive work?)


Productivity and Focus

ProcrastinationProcrastination is working on anything but the highest priority, most impactful or most important work.

Piers Steel, one of the most renowned theorists on procrastination, defines types of procrastinators as:

● Thrill seekers- those that enjoy the rush of waiting until the last minute to do the work● Avoiders- those who avoid the work due to fear of failure of disapproval● Undecided- those who lack information or decision making authority to move forward● Impulsive- those who are easily distracted and work on other things.

Soure: Procrastination Typologies

Adam Grant talks about pre-crastinators who do all of the planning to get the work done but procrastinate truly starting the work. You could also call these productive procrastinators.

There needs to be a balance between avoiding work and being so impulsive to every urgent item or over planning the work at hand that you can be productive on the most important work at hand.


How often do you accomplish your goals or complete your top priority work?

What distracts you? Do you have productive distractions?

When do you procrastinate - can you identify a pattern?

What leads you to procrastinate?


Have you already identified methods that help you stop procrastinating?

Priorities Step 1: Review these Resources

● 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary ● Big Rocks, Little Rocks ● Eisenhower Principle ● How do you currently prioritize your work?

Step 2: Review and Complete the Exercises Below

Define Your Big Rocks, Little Rocks and SandSand are the small quick tasks that have minimal consequence if you do not complete them but retract from your goals. Little rocks are tasks with minimal impact if accomplished quickly. Big rocks are your most valuable and high impact priorities.

If we start by filling our day with the sand we will never have enough time for all of our big rocks. If we start with our big rocks we have enough time to accommodate everything.


Big Rocks are our important work, the most valuable use of our time.

Considering the Big Rocks, Little Rocks video above which of your work are:Big rocks (Most valuable and high impact priorities)?

Little rocks (Tasks with minimal impact if they are accomplished quickly)?


Sand (Small or quick tasks very minimal consequences but detract from priorities)?

How do you currently plan or fill your day? Do you have room for the big rocks? Why or why not?

How could you plan for the big rocks first to optimize your time? What specifically would you do?

Consider the Eisenhower Principle to Further Categorize or Prioritize Your Work In the Eisenhower Principle Covey suggests to do work that is important but to do it while it is not urgent, needing immediate completion. We should manage the work that is important and urgent, begin to identify and anticipate fire drills. We should delegate work that is not important but urgent and limit or put off work that is not important and not urgent.


How do you define urgent?

How do you define important?

What of your work is important and urgent? How could you better anticipate or manage this work to save time for your planned important work?

What of your work is important but not urgent? How can you better focus on this work?


What of your work is not important but urgent? How can you delegate this work?

What of your work is not important and not urgent? Why do you need to do it? How can you prioritize the work accordingly or stop doing it?

Connecting Priorities to Your Daily WorkWhat are the company and team objectives? How does your work align with the company and team objectives?

What are the most important tasks and responsibilities of your role? Your team’s roles?

Who are the stakeholders in your work? Who is impacted by your work?


Do you know which responsibilities should be prioritized above all others?

(No) 1 2 3 4 5 (Absolutely)How so?

Do you plan your week and your day to reflect the priority of your tasks?

(No) 1 2 3 4 5 (Absolutely)How so?

How do you think about prioritization? What are you taking into account when you prioritize?

What does your to-do list look like? How do you stay accountable to your to-do list?

What is working and what is not? What can you change to better reflect your priorities?


Defining Your WorkstyleInstructions: Answer the questions below using the hyperlinked resources to dive deeper. What additional information does this give you are your workstyle and how you can manage your time and stay productive?

What is your preferred routine at work? How does your workday typically flow? For example, do you like to read through your email first thing in the morning or do you prefer to jump right into your most challenging task to get it done as quickly as possible? When do you like to have breaks?

When are you in moments of flow?

How do your habits and preferred routines fit in with your role and responsibilities and the culture at your company?

What are your habits around goal setting and sticking to goals? Do you need outer accountability to stick to goals or is inner accountability enough?


How does your social style and interactions (think about how you prefer to interact with people and your personality) impact your management style?


Time Management and Productivity Tips and Tricks

Inbox ManagementFollow these steps to practice inbox zero:Step 1: Bankrupt all inboxes - start from a clean slate and archive or delete all messages or notifications. Step 2: Build a list of actions that you can use to process through your inboxes. List each type of inbox you check throughout the day. Ex: (Email, Chat, CRM, ATS, Ticketing system, etc)

Step 3: Consider, what are the actions you take in this inbox? Examples:● Respond- for anything item that takes less than 3 minutes where can you simply respond

in that moment? If you are blocked and cannot respond in 3 minutes, why? Can you identify a trend in the items where you are blocked and cannot respond?

● Complete the task- for anything item that takes less than 3 minutes where can you simply complete the task in that moment? If you are blocked and cannot complete the task in 3 minutes, why? Can you identify a trend in the items where you are blocked and cannot complete the task?

● Read/ review- then deleting or archiving the message after reading it. If it did not require your eyes maybe it was just an FYI but maybe you should unsubscribe or have a conversation when you are CC’d but never read email.

● Defer- for any item that takes more than 3 minutes to accomplish or read to you to-do list to do later.

● Delegate- forward for someone else to complete.● What other actions do you take in each inbox?

What is your list of actions?


Step 3: Begin processing through your inboxes. Each time you look at your inbox scan to identify the actions you will take.

When you find yourself blocked and unable to complete an action what is occurring?Where can additional information from other parties make the message more actionable?

Where can the information from the message- hyperlinks, attachments, data or information make the message more actionable?

How could the subject lines, task description or any other information make the message more actionable?


Where can you ask for your team members support to better process through your inboxes?

Calendar ManagementReview your calendar for the week. ● Customize notifications● Use speeding meetings in google cal● Use scheduling tools like calendly ● Sync all your calendars so you do not need to look in multiple places● Set “buffers” between appointments when you need time to prepare● Block time:

○ for travel/moving from one place to another, lunch, etc. ○ for work or a to-do list

● Use colors to differentiate appointment types when helpful● Review your calendar ahead of time

Where can you apply these tips above?

Meeting ManagementWhat meetings do you have? What are their purpose? What is their priority/ need given your other work?


What meetings have notes that are sent around after that you can read? What meetings have people who attend that you can lean on for important readouts etc?

What is the meeting culture like at your company? Do they start on time? Are people prepared? Do they accomplish their goals? Too many, too few? Etc

What would you like the meeting culture to be like?

Why are meetings important?

What does your team think about your dissemination of information from meetings? What are some examples that support your assumption?

Test your assumptionsStep 1: Strategically observe behaviors over the next two weeks.


How do people behave in meetings or conversations, are your assumptions correct?

How does your team consume information you give them or respond to your organization/ work style? Are your assumptions correct?

Step 2: Talk to people and ask questions: Ask a few people whom you attend meetings what are their thoughts on those conversations (try to ask in various positions of authority).

What do they think about your meeting culture, is it effective?

Ask your team about your meeting style and the effectiveness of the information dissemination. What do they think?

Step 3: Research- do you have access to engagement survey data or past reviews or maybe informal reviews on glass door?

What does this information say? Any takeaways?


Audit your meetingsMeeting Name

● Attendees:● Frequency:● Length of time:● Purpose: decision making, informative, brainstorm?● Preparation: how do you prepare and what is necessary to prepare?● Priority (1-5 or 10) choose this last after you list them all or pick a priority and then

reevaluate.

Meeting Name● Attendees:● Frequency:● Length of time:● Purpose: decision making, informative, brainstorm?● Preparation: how do you prepare and what is necessary to prepare?● Priority (1-5 or 10) choose this last after you list them all or pick a priority and then

reevaluate.

Meeting Name● Attendees:● Frequency:● Length of time:● Purpose: decision making, informative, brainstorm?● Preparation: how do you prepare and what is necessary to prepare?● Priority (1-5 or 10) choose this last after you list them all or pick a priority and then

reevaluate.

Documents

Time Management · Web viewUse the resources, questionnaires and exercises below to explore time management and productivity. Navigate to a specific section below or start from the