Time Management for Trainers

Time management is a funny thing, its basis in “to do lists” and the world
and its friend claiming to have the greatest time management tool available
and claim to make you work smarter, not harder etc.

Only problem being is that not many of them have any practical worth in the fact that we use them for one week and then discard them. It seems to be fashionable to always be “busy”. Ask anyone you know and in all probability, they will have “so much to do”. Is this a social factor? Or is it that we really have too much on
our plates?

If we are really honest with ourselves, can we justify every waking minute
and quantify it as “busy”?

Beyond “To-do” lists, where do we go from to get more out of our time? Why
do we feel the need to be busy all the time?

Are we giving ourselves a get out of jail free card? By saying that we are
busy, eventually we will believe it ourselves, even if we are not.

Why can’t we get the right work life balance that we all so desperately
need? Is this the best we can do? Or can we do better?

As Trainers, we need to design training effectively to the needs of the
learners. Deliver that training and what’s more, greater pressure is
being placed on us to play an active and consistent part in evaluating that
training.

Now given that a training session can last from one hour to several days,
and its concentrated time (when you are training, you are training, you
cannot do anything else). How can we be expected to perform anything else?

Plan your work and work your plan
Firstly, Identify the times you will be in training/designing/evaluating.
Identify the time you have outside this. Tasks that can only be done by you
e.g. Training delivery, design is your targeted time. Tasks that need to be
done, but not necessarily by you is your maintenance time e.g.
administration, evaluation

Take the straight line approach
Identify the quickest way to your objective and take it

Focus your energies on one thing at a time
A reason that we don’t get enough done in a day is that we try to do so much
at one time. Focus on one thing at a time and keep doing it until you have
got to where you want to get to.

Know the value of five minutes
It’s shocking how much you can get done in a short period of time. For
example, you get out of training and decide that “its too late to start
anything now”. Go ahead and start it, chances are you’ll get further than
you think

Ask yourself the question

Ask yourself “what is the best use of my time at the moment?” Rarely, the
best use of your time is mindlessly chatting to colleagues (usually about
how busy you are ironically enough!)

Take responsibility

You are ultimately responsible for the management of your time, not anyone
else. You merely rent your time out to activities. If you find that your
time is being taken away from you, stop renting your time out to that source

Allow time for rest

Don’t neglect your rest time, If you are not well rested, you will not
perform, try to avoid working late too often. You can do this by following
the above pointers

More about Time Managers at http://www.supremacytraining.com

Source by Rich Lucas