Day: January 30, 2013

According to time management expert Julie Morgenstern, work life balance is about viewing time as something tangible, recognizing your natural preferences, differentiating goals from activities and then diligently aligning your activities to your goals or eliminating them from your to-do list.

“Learning a technology is the easy part. Having the mindset to apply it, having the mindset and logic to process it, being thorough and detail-oriented while doing so, these are the critical skills.” A study by Career Builder helped identify the 10 most in demand skills of 2013 from the critical skills sets for the top jobs of 2013. Active listening and critical thinking ranked among the top five skills reconfirming specific processes are not so much the main focus skills. See what other skills made it to the list.

“Planning is about managing resources and priorities in an organized way. Management is related to leadership, and it’s related to productivity.” Three steps to better planning outlined in the article claims to improve management in business.

“The biggest and most destructive myth in time management is that you can get everything done if only you follow the right system, use the right to-do list, or process your tasks in the right way. That’s a mistake.” This statement correlates with a McKinsey survey stating that, “only 52 percent of 1,500 executives said that the way they spent their time largely matched their organizations’ strategic priorities?” Learn how a “management by six-box-to-do-list” aligns priorities across an organization in this article.

“Planning involves envisioning the results the organization wants to achieve, and determining the steps necessary to arrive at the intended destination–success, whether that is measured in financial terms, or goals that include being the highest-rated organization in customer satisfaction. The five key components of planning outcomes discussed in the article include: 1) efficient use of resources, 2) establishing goals, 3) managing risk and uncertainty, 4) team building and 5) creating competitive advantages. You will discover more fully how these aspects effect organizational success.

Nearly 300 hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin came up with an approach to changing habits that has yet to be surpassed.” This article focuses on his tried and true habits, such as “finish what is important and stop doing what is no longer worthwhile” and “always look for ways of doing things better and faster.” For Benjamin Franklin’s other ten habits, you can read the article from the website.

Time management isn’t just a personal-productivity issue over which companies have no control; it has increasingly become an organizational issue whose root causes are deeply embedded in corporate structures and cultures.” Within the article, time-management challenges and their solutions are discussed. Also, included in the article are results from a recent survey that speaks about satisfied leaders and dissatisfied leaders – “online junkies”, “schoomzers”, “cheerleaders”, and “firefighters” how they spend their time.