A key part of the 2Time system is a notion I created of different skill levels.
Many people think that you either have time management skills or you don’t, and that it’s an all-or-nothing phenomenon.
Few, including the time management gurus, talk about having a range of skills and working continuously to improve them over time.
Of course, in the sporting world the idea is an old one.
One of the first things that a coach does is assess his new coachee’s skills in the sport, either through testing or observation. After the assessment is done, they sit down and look over the big picture to see what the coachee’s goals are and how they can be accomplished over time.
An athlete who wants to have some fun on weekends is not given the same plan as one who wants to be world-class.
I did some searching on the Internet and picked up some assessment tools that illustrate how they can be used to assess performance in the following sports:
It’s interesting to read these, because I stumbled into creating a similar assessment for time management without knowing that I was doing so.
If you click on the link for articles above, you’ll be taken to my first attempt to create an assessment tool for each of the 11 fundamentals that I’ve discovered. Each fundamental is described in a separate post, along with the habits that can be observed at each belt level (White, Yellow, Orange, Green).
While the tool I use two years later has changed a great deal from what’s presented here, the basic idea remains. But, to be honest, I never set out to create an assessment tool. My initial idea was to break up each of the skills in a way that could indicate to users what they should focus on at each stage of their development.
I don’t intend this to be a rigid test in any way. In fact, there are probably better ways to describe both the fundamentals and the idea of moving from one skill level to another.
So far, though, I haven’t found anyone who has used the basic idea. As far as I know, I’m alone in thinking this way and writing about it.
But I do hope that that ends soon!
P.S. For anyone interested, the diagram above comes from the Noah Basketball website. They’ve done some major research in the fundamentals of basketball, and this shows the kind of thinking that I wish someone would do on time management. Against the stuff on this page, sites on “basketball tips” look a little silly.
