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Lesson 4 - Time Management, Planning

1.1.2024, , Izvor: Verlag Dashöfer

Lesson 4 - Time Management, Planning

Even if you are not a manager in your professional life, you probably still have to use managing and organization skills. In any business area, these are very important.

Personal Time Management does not solve your problems, it reveals them and provides a structure to implement and monitor solutions. It enables you to take control of your own time - how you use it is then up to you.

Moreover, it is very useful and practical when managing various projects - as you will find out in this lesson. After scheduling has become a habit, you can adjust it and things are bound to go smoother.

Another important personal skill connected with management is stress management. Stress is not only negative, many people need stress to give better performance and they cannot imagine life without it. But the truth is, that not managing stress can have serious consequences.

We will discuss these topics and much more in following lesson. Get from it as much as possible!

  1. 1.1. Objectives of the Lesson
    • - to get a closer look on the topics of management; time management, project management and stress management
    • - to practice using appropriate language and to learn new vocabulary connected with time management, ability to spend time effectively, project management, projects, scheduling projects, monitoring staff, stress and managing of stress, positive and negative influence of stress, etc.
    • - to revise and deepen the knowledge of modal verbs, with special attention to expressing possibility and obligation
    • - to revise and learn new and already known vocabulary and phrases

Listening

2.1.Time management

What is Personal Time Management?

Exercise1: Listen to the following speech of Mr. Andrew Zeman who talks about personal time management.

Exercise2: Listen to the speech again and take a look at the transcript of the speech below. This transcript has been structured in order to make listening easier for you. There are some gaps in the text, fill in the missing words:

Transcript of record:

What is Personal Time Management?

Personal Time Management is about controlling the use of your most valuable (and__________) resource. Consider these two questions: what would happen if you spent company money with as few safeguards as you spend company time? When was the last time you __________ a review of your time allocation?

The absence of Personal Time Management is characterized by last minute rushes to meet dead-lines, meetings which are either double booked or achieve nothing, days which seem somehow to slip unproductively by, crises which loom unexpected from nowhere. This sort of environment leads to inordinate stress and ________of performance: it must be stopped.

Poor time management is often a symptom of over confidence: techniques, which used to work with small projects and workloads, are simply reused with large ones. But inefficiencies, which were insignificant in the small role, are ludicrous in the large. You cannot drive a motorbike like a bicycle, nor can you manage a supermarket-chain like a market stall. The demands, the problems and the payoffs for increased _________ are all larger as your responsibility grows; you must learn to apply proper techniques or be bettered by those who do. Possibly, the reason Time Management is poorly practiced is that it so seldom forms a measured part of appraisal and performance review; what many fail to foresee, however, is how intimately it is connected to aspects, which do.

Personal Time Management has many facets. Most managers recognize a few, but few recognize them all. There is the simple concept of keeping a well-ordered diary and the related idea of planned activity. But beyond these, it is a tool for the systematic ordering of your influence on events; it underpins many other managerial skills such as Effective ________ and Project Planning.

Personal Time Management is a set of tools, which allow you to:

  • - eliminate wastage
  • - be prepared for meetings
  • - refuse excessive workloads
  • - monitor project progress
  • - ________ resource (time) appropriate to a task's importance
  • - ensure that long term projects are not neglected
  • - plan each day efficiently
  • - plan each week effectively

And to do so - simply with a little self-discipline.

Personal Time Management is about winning the “Eff“ words: making them apply to you and your daily routines.

The three “Eff“ words are:

  • - Effective - having a definite or desired effect
  • - Efficient – _________ with minimum waste or effort
  • - Effortless - seemingly without effort; natural, easy

Exercise 3:

Write the answers to following questions.

  1. What is time management about?
  2. What is characteristic for absence of personal time management?
  3. What are the three “Eff“ words?

Time Management Tips

We all complain that we do not have enough time. It does not really matter whether we are employees or employers, bank clerks or top managers.

Lots of us do take part in time management courses to learn how to organize our time.

Tim Mortom is a senior lecturer and he runs a seminar on how to manage time.

Here are some of his tips:

Use a diary (British English) / calendar (American English), to plan your week and day. What is really perfect for this is a personal organizer (many applications on your phone can be used for this), or a calendar you have in your PC (might be a part of your email).

Make the plan as realistic as possible, and do plan it in advance. Do not just make a list of things you would like to manage. Think it over and prioritize them. Underline the things with the highest priority and work on them first.

Do jobs at the realistic level of quality in time available. It is not good to have things done on time but with low quality, or to have every detail compiled with highest care but not on time. Try to balance time, quality and cost as well. Do not aim for perfectionism when there is no need for it.

Avoid distractions and interruptions, which divert your attention from doing what you had planned.

Exercise 4:

These are definitely not all the time management tips. Can you think of three more tips?

Reading and Writing

3.1. Project Management

3.1.1. Projects

A project is a

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