How to Manage Your Priorities

Book description

In today?s competitive global environment?where people at all levels need to accomplish more, in less time, with fewer resources?the ability to manage priorities is key to personal and professional success. How to Manage Your Priorities, Second Edition, provides managers, team leaders, professionals, and others in the workplace with the tools to master this essential business skill. The second edition, revised and updated with a new chapter on technology-based tools for identifying and organizing priorities, teaches managers the critical benefits of managing their priorities and removing the obstacles that interfere with success.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. About This Course
  6. How to Take This Course
  7. Pre-Test
  8. 1 Why Learn to Manage Your Priorities?
    1. What It Means to Manage Your Priorities
      1. Why Learn to Manage Your Priorities?
    2. The Benefits of Managing Your Priorities
      1. More Productive Working Relationships
      2. Better Outcomes and Fewer Time-consuming Mistakes
      3. Improved Chances for Achieving Goals
      4. Increased Productivity
      5. Improved Work/Life Balance
      6. Reduced Stress and Improved Health
    3. What Gets in the Way?
      1. Failure to Identify Clearly What Is Important
      2. Vague Goals and Expected Outcomes
      3. Lack of Planning
      4. Poor Communication
      5. Conflicting and/or Unexpected Needs and Demands
      6. Failure to Recognize and Respond to Change
      7. Lack of Resources
      8. Striving for Perfection, Not for Results
      9. Failure to Think Creatively
      10. Organizational Problems
    4. What You Will Learn in This Course
    5. Recap
    6. Review Questions
  9. 2 How to Know What Is Important
    1. Why Focus on Goals?
    2. Linking Goals and Priorities
      1. Make Your Goals SMART Goals
    3. Relating Tasks and Activities to Goals and Consequences
      1. Consider Tasks and Activities in Terms of Goals
      2. Consider Tasks and Activities in Terms of Consequences
    4. Recognizing What Is Urgent and What Is Not
      1. 1. Urgent and Important
      2. 2. Not Urgent but Important
      3. 3. Urgent but Not Important
      4. 4. Not Urgent and Not Important
    5. Recognizing What Activities Have Greater Value
    6. Being Efficient Versus Being Effective
    7. Recap
    8. Review Questions
  10. 3 Strategies for Managing Your Priorities
    1. Use a System
    2. Focus on the Outcome and Clarify Expectations
      1. Guidelines for Focusing on the Outcome and Clarifying Expectations
    3. Evaluating Available Resources
    4. Determine What You Can Stop Doing
      1. Identify What No Longer Needs to Be Done
      2. Delegate Work You Do Not Need to Do Yourself
    5. Reduce Interruptions
    6. Anticipate Problems
    7. Manage Conflicting Priorities
    8. Take Care of Yourself and Manage Stress
      1. Warning Signs of Stress
      2. How to Take Care of Yourself
    9. Recap
    10. Review Questions
  11. 4 Planning and Scheduling
    1. What Action Planning and Scheduling Can Accomplish
    2. Components of an Action Plan
      1. What Is the Expected Outcome and What Is the Deadline?
      2. What Activities Are Necessary to Achieve the Outcome?
      3. What Resources Are Needed and Where Will They Come From?
      4. Who Else Needs to Be Involved and What Is the Nature of Their Involvement?
      5. What Factors Might Influence or Constrain the Way the Outcome Is Achieved?
      6. What Is the Sequence of Key Activities and What Are the Progress Checkpoints?
      7. Who Will Do What?
      8. What Problems Might Come Up and What Will Be Done to Handle Them?
    3. When Don’t You Need an Action Plan?
    4. Scheduling
      1. Realistically Estimate the Time Needed to Complete Each Task and Activity
      2. Identify Activities that Can Be Clustered
      3. Decide When You Do Your Best Thinking
      4. Leave “Lag” Time in Your Schedule
      5. Include Time for Thinking and Reflecting
      6. Allocate Sufficient Time for “Important, Not Urgent” Activities as well as “Urgent and Important” Activities
      7. Build in Personal Time
      8. Review and Revise Your Schedules Regularly
    5. How to Build a Schedule
      1. What If There Really Is Not Enough Time?
    6. Recap
    7. Review Questions
  12. 5 Working Efficiently
    1. What It Means to Work Efficiently
    2. Obstacles to Working Efficiently
      1. Doing Things You Enjoy Instead of Those that Move You Towards Your Goals
      2. Using E-Mail Unproductively
      3. Unnecessary Interruptions
      4. Disorganization
      5. Managing by Crisis
      6. Inefficient Delegation
      7. Saying “Yes” to Everything
      8. Unnecessary or Poorly Planned Meetings
      9. Procrastination
      10. Doing Things That Do Not Need to Be Done
    3. Tracking Your Time Wasters
    4. Strategies for Working More Efficiently
      1. Decide What You Can Stop Doing
      2. Reduce Interruptions
      3. Check Your E-Mail on a Schedule
      4. Reflect on Your Day Before It Begins
      5. Revise Your Priorities, If Necessary
      6. Seek Help
      7. Keep Up with Routine Work
    5. Delegating Successfully
      1. Tips for Delegating Work
    6. Using E-Mail Productively
      1. Tips for Using E-Mail Productively
    7. Recap
    8. Review Questions
  13. 6 Using Technology to Manage Your Priorities
    1. Tools to Help You Manage Your Priorities
      1. Computer Applications for Organizing and Scheduling
      2. Computer Applications for Managing Your Goals and Projects
      3. Tools for Working Remotely
      4. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
      5. Teleconferencing System
      6. Instant Messaging (IM)
      7. Text Messaging
      8. Palm Pilot
      9. BlackBerry
      10. Pocket PC
      11. Personal Information Manager (PIM)
      12. Short Message Service (SMS)
    2. Common Problems When Using Technology-Based Tools
      1. Reducing Technology-Based Problems
    3. How to Learn More About Technology-Based Tools
    4. Recap
    5. Review Questions
  14. Bibliography
  15. Post-Test
  16. Index

Product information

  • Title: How to Manage Your Priorities
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: March 2007
  • Publisher(s): AMA Self-Study
  • ISBN: 9780761214649