Time Management and Productivity:
We All Need More, How Do We Get It?
Thirty FWA members and guests met May 17th in San Ramon to hear Andrea Hoban, Senior Manager of Training Programs at Robert Half International, share her time management expertise with the professionals in the room attempting to balance work, family, and hopefully fun.
Her recommendations included 1) writing a “to remember”’ list to help de-clutter the mind, 2) combining this list with the work task list to see everything in one place, 3) organizing the list by importance, and 4) tackling accordingly. Lists are easy to create with Outlook Calendar’s Task List, OneNote, or iPhone. Andrea recommended dividing life’s responsibilities into four quadrants labeled “important,” “not important,” “urgent,” and “not urgent.” This way one can see items that are important but not necessarily urgent (such as values, relationships, results, and leadership) as priorities that can easily be overlooked if not included in one’s organizational plan.
For further study, Andrea recommended the following books:
- “Getting Things Done,” by David Allen
- “The Power of Full Engagement,” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
- “Bury My Heart at Conference Room B,” by Stan Slap
- “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” by Dale Carnegie
—Contributed by Kelly Lovlien