Time Management Tips

Manage Your Work, Don't Let It Manage You

Goals of Time Management 

• To be able to have control over your life - manage your time, don't let it manage you!
• To be healthier and happier (less stress).

Seven Suggestions for Effectively Managing Your Time

1. Be Organized

·         Use time saving tools: appointment calendars, "to do" lists, e-mail, answering machines, file folders, etc.

·         Have an organized workplace (do not waste time constantly looking for your work).

·         Use your appointment calendar for everything, including listing study time.

·         Use "to do" lists for both long-term and for each day/week.

2. Plan Ahead (Schedule it and it will happen!)

·         Determine how long your tasks will take (do this before agreeing to take on a task!)

·         Consider whether any activities can be combined.

·         Determine if big tasks can be broken down into smaller tasks that may be easier to schedule (such as studying for exams and visiting the library as part of an assignment to write a term paper).

3. Prioritize Your Tasks

·         Use an A-B-C rating system for items on your "to do" lists with A items being highest priority.

·         Set goals for both the short term and long term as to what you want to accomplish.

·         Look at all of your "to do" lists to gauge the time requirement and whether additional resources will be needed to accomplish them (if yes, schedule time to obtain those resources). Do not postpone the small tasks (a sense of accomplishment is good and overlooked small tasks can become larger tasks.)

4. Avoid Overload

·         Include time for rest, relaxation, sleep, eating, exercise, and socializing in your schedule.

·         Take short breaks during study and work periods.

·         Do not put everything off until the last minute (for example, do not cram for exams).

·         Learn to say "no" when appropriate and to negotiate better deadlines when appropriate.

5. Practice Effective Study Techniques

·         Have an appropriate study environment.

·         Split large tasks into more manageable tasks.

·         Read for comprehension, rather than just to get to the end of the chapter.

·         Be prepared to ask questions as they come up during study, rather than waiting until just before an exam.

·         Do the most difficult work first, perhaps breaking it up with some easier tasks.

·         Don't wait until the last minute to complete your projects.

·         Read the syllabus as soon as you get it and note all due dates (and "milestone" times) on your calendar.

·         Be a model student! (be attentive and participative in class, and punctual, prepared, and eager to learn)

6. Be Able to be Flexible

·         The unexpected happens (sickness, car troubles, etc.); you need to be able to fit it into your schedule.

·         Know how to rearrange your schedule when necessary (so it doesn't manage you - you manage it).a

·         Know who to ask for help when needed.

7. Have a Vision (why are you doing all of this?)

·         Don't forget the "big picture" - why are you doing the task - is it important to your long-term personal goals?

·         Have and follow a personal mission statement (personal and career). (Are your activities ultimately helping you achieve your goals?)

·         Know what is important to you. (What do you value most?)

·         Have a positive attitude!

http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/nellen_a/time_management.htm

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Writing 3 Task

My Saddest and Happy Moments

Experience is a knowledge or skill that comes from doing, seeing or feeling things. There are many kinds of experience and they become different moments in our life. We keep some of the moments in our mind while some others are not. Some of them that we keep well in our mind are happy moment, frightened moment and even sad moment although we want and try so hard to forget it sometimes but we are not able to do that. I will tell about saddest moment and happy moments of my life.

The saddest moment of my life happened on Thursday, January 1^st 2009. That is the day when my father passed away. On Wednesday night, December 31^st 2008, I and my family made a little party for new year celebration but my father cannot join us because of his illness. He had been suffering complication disease for a year and it was getting worse so all he can do is lying on the bed. At that night, my mother asked me to snug up my father’s bed and pillow him. Then I went to his bedroom and did those orders. I remember his sleep position at that night even until today. On the next day, I woke up at 07.30 a.m. and I did not know why my feeling was not good at that morning. I went to my father’s bedroom to check his condition as usual and found he is still in the same position as well as last night. I tried to call his name to wake him up but there was no answer. I thought he was sleeping tight so he cannot hear my call but I doubt about it. Then I went to my mother and told her about it. She was surprised and immediately went to the bedroom. She tried to wake him as I did, but there was still no response. Then she held his hand to check his artery while I laid down his head on my thigh. My mother cried because she cannot feel any beat from his artery. At that moment, we knew that he already passed away. We got nothing to say, we just cried eyes out. I cannot believe that we celebrate the New Year in a grief but the fact is that really happened. That day is a hard day for my family. Our paterfamilias leaves us but life must go on. We try hardly to accept the fact. One thing that I will never forget is he asked me to look after my mother as best as I could before he died and I will not disappoint him.

Where there are sad moments there are a happy moments. The happy moments of my life are the days when I was in senior high school. It was two years ago and I was in third grade. That was very joyful and unforgettable. I spent my adolescence with a lot of fun with my friend, made our own stories and they become a great memory of our life that we miss the most now. We spent our days by sharing almost everything. I still remember all of delinquencies that we made at that time like went out of class while the teacher was teaching and went to the canteen, cheating in the examination and made a hullabaloo in the class. One thing that I love from my friends is they still care about their study although they are naughty. There are so many of them give amazing achievements for our school including me. Those make our teachers like us. Actually, there are not only stories about our delinquencies and togetherness but also story about love and I really love this one. I found my first girlfriend in senior high school. She is pretty and kind so that is why I am very proud of being his boyfriend. There is so many questions arose from my friends about our relationship. The one that very annoying is “why does she want to be with errie?” I know they were joking but it really annoy me sometimes. In short, our relationship was ended by her two weeks after our graduation but I will not tell why because it is private. There are still many stories about my senior high school that I do not tell about. Whatever they are, I will always keep them in my mind as a part of me because they only happened once in my life.

The Frightened Moment of My Life

One of frightened moments of my life is the day when a group of thief surrounded my house and I was in fifth grade at that time. It was about 02.00 a.m. in the morning when my father wake us up with a crowbar in his hand. Then my mother asked him why and he said that there are five men in our yard. He asked us to calm down and keep quiet while he checked the windows and doors to make sure that they are already locked. He peeked from a window to see what were the thief doing in the outside. My mother and I just can watch him from the bedroom. We are so afraid and subconsciously my leg was shaken. We cannot make a call to the police station because we did not have handphone and even a telephone at that time. So we just waited until the thieves leave, prepared our self for the worst and pray. Fortunately, our neighbor was still awake at that night and the distance between our houses is near. My father called him loudly and he answered. Then we told him what was happening in a loud voice. He understood and immediately made a call to the police station. The thieves hear the conversation between my father and our neighbor and they were too afraid then they decide to leave. Thank to Allah and our neighbor, we were saved.

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LEADERSHIP

Bass' Theory of Leadership

Bass' theory of leadership states that there are three basic ways to explain how people become leaders (Stogdill, 1989; Bass, 1990). The first two explain the leadership development for a small number of people. These theories are:

• Some personality traits may lead people naturally into leadership roles. This is the Trait Theory.
• A crisis or important event may cause a person to rise to the occasion, which brings out extraordinary leadership qualities in an ordinary person. This is the Great Events Theory.
• People can choose to become leaders. People can learn leadership skills. This is the Transformational or Process Leadership Theory. It is the most widely accepted theory today and the premise on which this guide is based.

Total Leadership

What makes a person want to follow a leader? People want to be guided by those they respect and who have a clear sense of direction. To gain respect, they must be ethical. A sense of direction is achieved by conveying a strong vision of the future.

When a person is deciding if she respects you as a leader, she does not think about your attributes, rather, she observes what you do so that she can know who you really are. She uses this observation to tell if you are an honorable and trusted leader or a self-serving person who misuses authority to look good and get promoted. Self-serving leaders are not as effective because their employees only obey them, not follow them. They succeed in many areas because they present a good image to their seniors at the expense of their workers.

Be           Know           Do

The basis of good leadership is honorable character and selfless service to your organization. In your employees' eyes, your leadership is everything you do that effects the organization's objectives and their well-being. Respected leaders concentrate on (U.S. Army, 1983):

• what they are [be] (such as beliefs and character)
• what they know (such as job, tasks, and human nature)
• what they do (such as implementing, motivating, and providing direction).

What makes a person want to follow a leader? People want to be guided by those they respect and who have a clear sense of direction. To gain respect, they must be ethical. A sense of direction is achieved by conveying a strong vision of the future.

The Two Most Important Keys to Effective Leadership

According to a study by the Hay Group, a global management consultancy, there are 75 key components of employee satisfaction (Lamb, McKee, 2004). They found that:

• Trust and confidence in top leadership was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization.
• Effective communication by leadership in three critical areas was the key to winning organizational trust and confidence:
1. Helping employees understand the company's overall business strategy.
2. Helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives.
3. Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee's own division is doing (relative to strategic business objectives)

So in a nutshell — you must be trustworthy and you have to be able to communicate a vision of where the organization needs to go. The next section, Principles of Leadership, ties in closely with this key concept.

Principles of Leadership

To help you be, know, and do, follow these eleven principles of leadership (U.S. Army, 1983). The later chapters in this Leadership guide expand on these principles and provide tools for implementing them:

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement - In order to know yourself, you have to understand your be, know, and do, attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening your attributes. This can be accomplished through self-study, formal classes, reflection, and interacting with others.
2. Be technically proficient - As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your employees' tasks.
3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions - Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. And when things go wrong, they always do sooner or later — do not blame others. Analyze the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.
4. Make sound and timely decisions - Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools.
5. Set the example - Be a good role model for your employees. They must not only hear what they are expected to do, but also see. We must become the change we want to see - Mahatma Gandhi
6. Know your people and look out for their well-being - Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your workers.
7. Keep your workers informed - Know how to communicate with not only them, but also seniors and other key people.
8. Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers - Help to develop good character traits that will help them carry out their professional responsibilities.
9. Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished - Communication is the key to this responsibility.
10. Train as a team - Although many so called leaders call their organization, department, section, etc. a team; they are not really teams...they are just a group of people doing their jobs.
11. Use the full capabilities of your organization - By developing a team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization, department, section, etc. to its fullest capabilities.

Attributes of Leadership

If you are a leader who can be trusted, then those around you will grow to respect you. To be such a leader, there is a Leadership Framework to guide you:

BE KNOW DO

BE a professional. Examples: Be loyal to the organization, perform selfless service, take personal responsibility.

BE a professional who possess good character traits. Examples: Honesty, competence, candor, commitment, integrity, courage, straightforwardness, imagination.

KNOW the four factors of leadership — follower, leader, communication, situation.

KNOW yourself. Examples: strengths and weakness of your character, knowledge, and skills.

KNOW human nature. Examples: Human needs, emotions, and how people respond to stress.

KNOW your job. Examples: be proficient and be able to train others in their tasks.

KNOW your organization. Examples: where to go for help, its climate and culture, who the unofficial leaders are.

DO provide direction. Examples: goal setting, problem solving, decision making, planning.

DO implement. Examples: communicating, coordinating, supervising, evaluating.

DO motivate. Examples: develop morale and esprit de corps in the organization, train, coach, counsel.

Environment

Every organization has a particular work environment, which dictates to a considerable degree how its leaders respond to problems and opportunities. This is brought about by its heritage of past leaders and its present leaders.

Goals, Values and Concepts

Leaders exert influence on the environment via three types of actions:

1. The goals and performance standards they establish.
2. The values they establish for the organization.
3. The business and people concepts they establish.

Successful organizations have leaders who set high standards and goals across the entire spectrum, such as strategies, market leadership, plans, meetings and presentations, productivity, quality, and reliability.

Values reflect the concern the organization has for its employees, customers, investors, vendors, and surrounding community. These values define the manner in how business will be conducted.

Concepts define what products or services the organization will offer and the methods and processes for conducting business.

These goals, values, and concepts make up the organization's personality or how the organization is observed by both outsiders and insiders. This personality defines the roles, relationships, rewards, and rites that take place.

The Process of Great Leadership

The road to great leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 1987) that is common to successful leaders:

• Challenge the process - First, find a process that you believe needs to be improved the most.
• Inspire a shared vision - Next, share your vision in words that can be understood by your followers.
• Enable others to act - Give them the tools and methods to solve the problem.
• Model the way - When the process gets tough, get your hands dirty. A boss tells others what to do, a leader shows that it can be done.
• Encourage the heart - Share the glory with your followers' hearts, while keeping the pains within your own. 

Source: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

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