Leadership Institute: Take Back Your Life – Tools and Strategies to Gain More Time

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By Sheryl S. Jackson

Putting your laptop on a desk and working on it while the seminar leaders talks is normally not accepted behavior at a professional conference but for Mitzi Short’s Take Back Your Life^TM seminar, it was a requirement.

In a day-long, hands-on seminar, attendees learned how to organize and prioritize tasks in their personal and business lives by focusing on objectives and utilizing Microsoft Outlook as a tool.

While learning how to use the many features of the software is important, the most critical lessons learned are best practices on how to schedule their time, determine priorities and better manage their work and personal time.

Setting up meaningful objectives, strategic projects that support objectives and strategic next actions to keep projects moving forward can all be handled in Outlook, but the toughest task is to learn to start with and keep tasks tied to objectives, Short said.

A few key questions that should be asked any time you are asked to add a job or task to your to do list are:

What is it?
Do you know exactly what you are being asked to do? If not, do you know who to contact for more information?

Is it actionable?
Is there an action you can take to accomplish the task? Or, is it a request for more information?

Does it tie to one of my meaningful objectives?
It is very hard to say no to a co-worker, Short admitted. If, however, you have your meaningful objectives set, and the new project or assignment doesn’t fit, use that as your basis to say no, or offer an alternative way to help your co-worker.

Of course, e-mails are a major distraction in everyone’s workday but Short recommended setting aside one or two times a day to process e-mail, then going through all of it in one sitting. While processing your e-mail utilize the four "Ds" to clear your inbox:

Delete – if it does not relate to any of your meaningful objectives;
Do It – only if you can complete the task in two minutes;
Delegate – send to another team member or someone in your department;
Defer – send the e-mail to your task list and schedule the time needed to respond, collect information or perform assignment.

Grouping all tasks into batches and handling them at one sitting is very effective way to manage time, Short advised. "Highly productive people do like things together."

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