Time Management Activities

The speaker suggests a prioritization technique for time management. They advise having individuals list their top 10 priorities related to their job and then reviewing and itemizing the top four in order. They give an example of sales reps often not listing prospecting as a priority. The technique helps understand how people manage their time and allows for implementing a time management system like blocking. Now, there are many activities you could use. I'm going to give you one that I would encourage you to start with. Sit down with your people, sit down with an individual, the process is the same. This is a prioritization to time management coaching technique. Have everybody list out their top 10 priorities as it relates to their job and really review it. Let me give you an example. When you go to a sales organization where it's transactional, maybe like inside sales where they're selling products or services, but maybe they have a lot of prospecting they need to do. You know what's amazing? How many sales reps don't even list prospecting as a top priority? Because it's something they typically don't enjoy because it's filled with a lot of rejection, totally get it. So what you're going to do is have people list out their top 10 priorities, review those, then have them itemize the top four they would do, and in which order of prioritization. This goes to critical thinking. This will also go to your understanding of how they're managing their time. Now, we did this at a sales organization and we had over 80 percent of the people not list prospecting even though the sales leader said it's the number one thing they need to do. Here's the funny thing about employees. They will often change their job description, they just won't send you the memo. Then once you have that top four, sit down with each person and really review it, certainly make suggestions, yet it will give you insight to how they're spending their time. Then you can implement a time management system like blocking, 20-30 minute increments. Let's start here, let's prioritize this. Let's schedule this on Mondays and Tuesdays or what have you as it relates to your business.