They’re based on two assumptions that no longer work. The first is that you don’t know how to manage your time. Let’s say you’re asked to attend a Time Management seminar at work. You’ll be given a method that’s designed to apply to as many people as possible, so it may have little to do with your type of job. Some jobs are routine, and we do
same thing every day. Other jobs feature constant varietyCoaching is better method, because it’s individualized, and if it’s a good coach, they’ll be asking you lots of questions.
I would ask you things like this:
1.When DO you manage your time well. 2.When you are in charge of project, how do you manage your time? 3.If you had 8 hours of uninterrupted time – no phone, no meetings, no knocks on door – how do you think you would manage your time? 4.When you are planning a vacation you’ve waited for all year, how good are you at managing your time and being organized? 5.How would you tell someone else to manage their time?
Barring such things as ADHD, you’d probably discover that you know how to manage your time under certain circumstances, so it’s fallacy that you don’t know how to manage your time, and a group seminar is particularly unuseful to you because it will never bring this point to surface. Nor will it tell you how to apply strengths you have to situations where your time becomes “unmanageable.” Bear in mind that your time becomes unmanageable not because of lack of skills on your part, which brings us to second fallacy. The second fallacy is that you can be taught to manage your time because it’s rests on false assumption that your time can be managed. You can only manage yourself in reference to your time.
In today’s world where change, communication and information are accelerated, and responsibilities are exponential, there is no one “way” to manage time.
The skills you will need to rely on are Emotional Intelligence competencies, and they will cure problem, not treat symptom.
Emotional Intelligence covers such competencies as flexibility, creativity, intuition and resilience. This means that what you are building is not “time management skills”, but ability to function amidst chaos, inadequate data, imperfect human beings, uncertainty and pressure. We are as much trapped by technology and people as we are assisted by them. On a good day, your computer, cell phone, airline, team plan, and project team will make things run more smoothly than in past, and you will accomplish your goals for day.
