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April 27, 2006
Tips & Tactics for Sharpening Organizational Skills
Marie Radford, Professor at Rutgers University's SCILS, managed to pack a half-day workshop into 50 minutes. Clearly, she's very organized.
Marie started with a very useful question: Why should we try to be better organized? First, being better organized relieves stress. Second, it leads us to generate more effective results at work, which in turn leads to career advancement. Finally (and maybe most importantly), being better organized gives us more time for fun.
Attendees completed a two-part activity, based on Stephen Covey's philosophy of Beginning With The End In Mind. We were asked to reflect on the past two weeks, and then on the past 6 months, and to write down three activities (both at work and off work) that gave us the most satisfaction. We were then asked:
How could you organize yourself to do more of the above?
What specific steps would you have to take to have more time for the above?
The second part of the activity involved creating a specific plan, creating specific behaviors to achieve those goals.
Marie asked us to focus more of our energy on assessing what our priorities are each day upon arriving at work:
1) Spend 15-30 minutes creating and prioritizing your daily to-do list before opening up e-mail.
2) Use incremental target dates -- this is essential for big projects.
3) Look ahead one week, and one month, and fill in your calendar as you go along.
To set priorities, do the following:
1) Set priorities by following Sean Covey's Time Management Matrix:
I: Urgent & Important
II: Not Urgent, but Important
III: Urgent, but Unimportant
IV: Not Urgent & Unimportant
Get your tasks in Category I done first, then make and commit to a plan for accomplishing tasks in Category II. Tasks in Categories III and IV should be avoided, delegated, or thrown away/recycled.
Two great ways to jettison tasks in Categories III and IV:
1) Delegate -- relinquish your control freakish nature and let others have a chance to help you, and to shine. Train your colleagues and supervisees as necessary -- they really do want to help you!
2) Learn To Say No -- this is difficult, but essential. Master the art of saying things like, "Thank you so much for thinking of me for this project; I really can't commit to any more projects right now."
The top two books Marie recommends for gaining control over paperwork at home and at work are Barbara Hemphill's Taming the Paper Tiger at Home and Taming the Paper Tiger at Work.
I will post again if Marie is willing to have her handout made available online.
Posted by at April 27, 2006 4:35 PM
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