Time management is a funny thing, its basis in "to do lists" and the world and its friend claiming to have the greatest time management tool available and claim to make you work smarter, not harder etc.

Only problem being is that not many of them have any practical worth in the fact that we use them for one week and then discard them. It seems to be fashionable to always be "busy". Ask anyone you know and in all probability, they will have "so much to do". Is this a social factor? Or is it that we really have too much on our plates?

If we are really honest with ourselves, can we justify every waking minute and quantify it as "busy"?

Beyond "To-do" lists, where do we go from to get more out of our time? Why do we feel the need to be busy all the time?

Are we giving ourselves a get out of jail free card? By saying that we are busy, eventually we will believe it ourselves, even if we are not.

Why can't we get the right work life balance that we all so desperately need? Is this the best we can do? Or can we do better?

As Trainers, we need to design training effectively to the needs of the learners. Deliver that training and what's more, greater pressure is being placed on us to play an active and consistent part in evaluating that training.

Now given that a training session can last from one hour to several days, and its concentrated time (when you are training, you are training, you cannot do anything else). How can we be expected to perform anything else?

Plan your work and work your plan Firstly, Identify the times you will be in training/designing/evaluating. Identify the time you have outside this. Tasks that can only be done by you e.g. Training delivery, design is your targeted time. Tasks that need to be done, but not necessarily by you is your maintenance time e.g. administration, evaluation

Take the straight line approach Identify the quickest way to your objective and take it

Focus your energies on one thing at a time A reason that we don't get enough done in a day is that we try to do so much at one time. Focus on one thing at a time and keep doing it until you have got to where you want to get to.

Know the value of five minutes It's shocking how much you can get done in a short period of time. For example, you get out of training and decide that "its too late to start anything now". Go ahead and start it, chances are you'll get further than you think

Ask yourself the question

Ask yourself "what is the best use of my time at the moment?" Rarely, the best use of your time is mindlessly chatting to colleagues (usually about how busy you are ironically enough!)

Take responsibility

You are ultimately responsible for the management of your time, not anyone else. You merely rent your time out to activities. If you find that your time is being taken away from you, stop renting your time out to that source

Allow time for rest

Don't neglect your rest time, If you are not well rested, you will not perform, try to avoid working late too often. You can do this by following the above pointers

More about Time Managers at www.supremacytraining.com