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Today’s Agenda
• Introduction • Review Goal Setting & High Return Activities• How do we spend our time
– Review logs
• Break• Prioritising• 4 Rules of Effective Planning and Organisation• Homework setting• 2 Interesting things to try
Review Homework (1) Goals
Task: Write down your goals and make sure they are SMART.
Example:
Submit a full draft of paper X to my PI by 4pm on Friday 6th July 2012.
Is this SMART?
What questions should I ask to check?
Some SMART Questions!
• Where am I now with this task?• How long has it taken me to date?• How long will it take me to complete this?• How certain am I about this – what are the risks
or uncertainties?• Do I really have the time when I consider the
other commitments that I have in the time allocated for this task?
• How important is this task compared with others I have?
Reviewing Goals
• Working in small groups of 2 or 3 take it in turns to explain your goals and seek feedback on them. Are they really SMART?
• Time Allocated 10 minutes
Task: Identify your top High Return Activities?
How can you test that you have identified a High Return Activity?
Check that it is an activity that is directly responsible for achieving your goals.
How can you measure whether you are doing them?
How can your PI measure whether you are doing them?
Review Homework (2) High Return Activities
Review Activity
By table - share your High Return Activities. • How similar / different are they? Is there a clear
reason why? • Are they linked to your goals?• How can you measure if you are doing them?
Researcher Maintenance
Conferences
NetworksReading
ToolsSkills Admin
Time Budget
Approx 44 working weeks / annum
Maintenance Time Allowance ?1 week – training and development
2 weeks – travel to & conference attendance
1 week – seminar / network event attendance
1 week – admin / IT issues
2 weeks – essential reading
2 weeks – proposal writing, peer review papers
9 weeks for maintenance
~ 20% of your time – 1 day/week – 1 hr 36 mins/day
What aboutplay time?
GOALS
To have my research published in Nature by July 2012
To co-author a book on carbon nano-tubes.
Milestones1.2.3.
HighReturnActivities
SMARTLong Term Short Term
GOALS
ResearcherMaintenance
Review your goals and high return activities
• Take a few minutes to individually reflect on the conversations that have just taken place and make a note of any goals that need a rethink / rewording
Critical questions
1. Am I doing the right activities?
2. Am I doing them at the right time?
3. Am I spending enough time on these?
4. Am I doing these activities in an effective and efficient way?
5. If no, why? What is stopping me?
Review Homework 3 – Time Log
Task – Record how you spend your time for a minimum of 3 days
Analyse this carefully - what activities should you eliminate, reduce?
- what activities do you need to do more of?
Group Task
Share your Time Logs in groups of 2 or 3.
Identify your three most significant time issues.
1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
How to deal with Key Issues?
1.
2.
3.
Effective Time Management – The 3 D’s
• Decision Making e.g.– What are my goals / milestones?– What do I need to do this month / week /day– Prioritisation – what is most importance?
• Discipline e.g. – Writing down and reviewing goals– Planning – What activities need to be done & when– Reviewing progress
• Determination e.g. – Seeing a particular task through to completion
Self Discipline
Your rules for how you behave that support you
Examples:• Exercise - I go for a run 3 times a week and play
football on Sundays• Work - I don’t look at my email first thing - I do
my most important task first• Coffee – I don’t drink coffee after 6pm because it
stops me going to sleep
Prioritising Activities
• Apply the 80 / 20 (Pareto) Rule– 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your
results
• What are the consequences– Long term thinking improves short term decision
making
• “Failures do what is tension relieving while winners do what is goal achieving” Dennis Waitley
– Is what I’m doing contributing directly to my goals?
Prioritising Activities
A = Critical
B = Important
C = Nice to Do
D = Delegate
E = Eliminate
Urgent vs. Importance Matrix
ImportantActivities
CriticalActivities
Distractions Interruptions
UrgencyLow HighLow
High
Impo
rtan
ce
What should High Return activities be?
If you have more thanone A activity on your list prioritise A1, A2, A3
GOALS
To have my research published in Nature by July 2012
To co-author a book on carbon nano-tubes.
Milestones1.2.3.
TasksTimeResourceRisks
GoalPlanningSheetsSMART
Goal Planning Sheets
1. SMART Goal
2. Benefits to be gained / Losses to be avoided
3. Potentials Issues / Problems and potential solutions
4. List activities and identify order, duration and deadlines
5. Identify ways to measure progress
6. Identify others involved
4 Rules of Effective Planning & Organisation
1. Have one system only for planning and organising.
2. Plan, review & schedule – monthly, weekly, daily
3. Do, Diarise or Ditch for communications
4. Stay tidy and organised
One minute of planning saves ten minutes in execution – Brian Tracy
Your system needs to be able to capture your goals, tasks and schedule
HAVE ONE SYSTEM ONLY FOR PLANNING AND ORGANISING.
Why?• You don’t miss anything• No double bookings• Enables you to see everything all together
RULE No. 1
You can use meeting / note books but make sure you transfer all your actions / tasks.
RULE No. 2 Plan, Review, ScheduleMonthly
Set aside 2 to 3 hours at the end of each month to plan, review and schedule the next months and the immediate month in detail.
• Review your goals – what are the key goals for this month?
• Prioritise - which of these are most important?• Plan how to achieve each of these in detail.• What will your high return activities be?• How can you measure if you are on track.
RULE No. 2 Plan, Review, ScheduleScheduling
• Use a big picture of time – month to view• Ensure all your timed commitments are there
– Meetings, training, seminars, teaching, • Schedule blocks of time to achieve your goals
and work on your high return activities.• Don’t fill up your schedule completely• If a task is going to take 1 hour or more then
schedule it
REVIEW – DOES THIS LOOK ACHIEVABLE?
RULE No. 2 Plan, Review, ScheduleWeekly
Set aside ½ hour at either the start or end of every week to review planning and schedule for week ahead
• Review your progress – did you achieve everything you planned? If not, why not?
• Review your commitments for the following week and ensure you have allowed sufficient time for any preparation / travel etc.
• Review your priorities – put them in order.• Revise schedule as required.
RULE No. 2 Plan, Review, ScheduleDaily
Spend 5 minutes at the start and end of each day reviewing planning
• Ensure you have a detailed time plan for the day and remind yourself what it is
• Ensure high priority tasks are done first – schedule these for when you work at your best
• Group small tasks – e.g. Communication• Review what you have achieved at the end of
the day
RULE No. 3
DO, DIARISE OR DITCH - for communications
• Set yourself some time each day to deal with correspondence– This could be twice a day / once a day– This should not be first thing in the day
• If the task arising is short and important i.e. less than 15 minutes then DO it.
• If the task arising is longer and important i.e. An hour or over then DIARISE it – schedule it in your calendar.
• If the task arising is not important then DITCH it.
RULE No. 4
STAY TIDY & ORGANISED - If it takes you more than 2 minutes to find something then you need to be more organised.
Goal Planning Sheet Example Exercise
1. Individually look at the example and review the Task Description section on page 2
2. In groups discuss how this would help you in scheduling this project
3. In groups discuss what problems there might be and how you would overcome them
Homework
1. Develop your own (single) system for planning and organising yourself.
2. Complete Goal Planning Sheets on some key goals to enable you to populate your planning and organising system.
3. Put into practice strategies for dealing with one or more of your most significant time issues.
4. Prepare an Annual Time Budget
Two simple/interesting things to try
• Listen to Baroque music e.g. Bach– Helps to improve concentration and creativity
• Use SCORE technique by Jim Fannin – Self-discipline– Concentration– Optimism– Relaxation– Enjoyment
Ref: Simon Reynolds
A thoughtmanagementsystem that improves productivity
Key Messages
SMARTGOALS
SMART Questions will enable you to check whether your goals are ACHIEVABLE & REALISTIC
A = Critical
B = Important
C = Nice to Do
D = Delegate
E = Eliminate
Decision Making, Discipline, DeterminationResearcherMaintenance
FOUR RULES................
1. Have one system only for planning and organising.
2. Plan, Review, Schedule Monthly, weekly, daily
3. Do, Diarise or Ditch
4. Stay tidy and organised
