Help For Time Advisers

8 fata assumptions that time advisers make

A Time Adviser is a coach, consultant, trainer or professional organizer who is in the profession of helping other people improve their time management and productivity skills. Over at the MyTimeDesign.com website I have been focusing on helping them use the latest research to have a bigger impact with their clients.

To that end, I recently partnered with Janice Russell to produce a new Special Report entitled: The 8 Fatal Assumptions that Time Advisers Make. It’s available for immediate download at the website, and also on Scribd.

If you are a Time Adviser, when you download the Report from our website you’ll be placed on our mailing list which will immediately start sending updates on the work we’re doing. plus you’ll be introduced to our other resources developed to date, and provide some information on the progress we’re making towards creating a formal certification process for Time Advisers.

Presenting New Training Ideas at the ASTD Annual Conference

Last week at the ASTD Conference I presented a number of ideas developed from the work we do here at 2Time Labs in time management. If you are a training administrator or corporate trainer, you may be interested checking out the ideas I shared on the topic of time management training and how to use what we have learned to develop and deliver better behavior change training.

Also, the additional resources I promised to share at the conference can be found here.

Stupid Fans of Time Management

I wrote a rant this past weekend on the tendency of time management authors, trainers, video bloggers, podcasters like myself to talk down to our clients and readers… and to treat “y’all” as if you aren’t all that smart.

Now, reflecting on what I wrote, I can only hope that I haven’t been committing the same error here at 2Time Labs. I try not to post fluffy, cotton-candy-flavored tip and tricks that can be found anywhere on the Internet, and to get to the heart of things with new thinking. Now that I have ranted out aloud in this new post, I probably should try even harder!

Your thoughts? Here’s the post: Are Our Time Management Clients Stupid?

Coaching in a World of “Stuff”

It’s hard to help someone else improve their time management skills when all you see is “stuff.”  Here’s an article I wrote about how an understanding of time demands can make a big difference:  Coaching Amidst a World of Stuff.

P.S. I added a few videos that can help a coach, consultant, trainer or professional organizer do a much more successful job of producing results.

A Training Simulation for Improving Coaching Skills

Our MyTimeDesign website that focuses on applications of the 2Time Labs ideas recently launched a training simulation for managers, coaches and professional organizers.  It gives the learner the opportunity to help a fictional character, Wilma, navigate a consulting relationship with Adam, her client.  She’s attempting to migrate from a focus on physical organization to one on time clutter / time management.

Try out this 15 minute learning opportunity here:  http://icd.mytimedesign.com/wilma and leave us a comment on the page.

From a training and development perspective, you can see the direction in which 2Time Labs is headed, as we look to provide the very best online training in time management in the world.

Thanks to Trivantis and it’s Snap programs for helping to make these goals possible with new affordable technology.

 

New Posts at MyTimeDesign for Time Management Coaches

Over at MyTimeDesign.com I have started writing and posting ideas for time management coaches using the research done here at 2Time Labs.

It’s just a beginning, but there is a great deal more to come. The truth is, I can’t find another place on the Internet offering any real assistance for managers, trainers, coaches and professional organizers who have a commitment to help others make solid improvements.

See http://mytimedesign.com

8 fatal assumptions 3d2013 Update! You can now download The 8 Fatal Assumptions that Time Advisers Make at the mytimedesign.com website. It’s a free Special Report co-authored with Janice Russell that describes some of our latest ideas.

Helping Clients Solve Time Management Problems

Recently, I have been thinking about making the 2Time methods available to consultants, coaches and trainers, or anyone who wants to use them to diagnose a client’s time management skills.

In the NewHabits program (and MyTimeDesign 1.0.Plus) I have devised several charts that participants have been using to discover their current time management profile and belt level.  The charts include an analysis of each of the 11 fundamentals.

Only after developing them did I realize… they could also be used with someone in a one-on-one coaching session.

I actually tested this approach with 2 clients — a lawyer and an accountant — and found that it saved a great deal of time, and provided them with instant insight to the habits that they needed to start working on.  Now that I have been submitting proposals to speak at conferences of Professional Organizers, I can immediately see where  they also could use these tools to do the same thing… save themselves and their clients a great deal of time by zeroing in on the habits they need to change in a systematic way.

The process would be simple, and more or less mirror the path I take in my training programs.

Step 1: Define a few key terms
Step 2: Teach one fundamental at a time, and help the client to score him/herself, and make a note of the habits to be changed.  Repeat this step for all 7 fundamentals
Step 3: List all the habits to be changed
Step 4: Schedule the habit-changes on a calendar
Step 5: Craft a fool-proof habit-support system

I might be overly ambitious, but I think that a skilled coach can take a smart client through the 7-fundamental version of this learning in a matter of 4-5 sessions of one hour each, as long as the client is willing to do some work on  their own.

A full one day class covering the same material takes at least 7 hours, and that includes the time to do the “homework,” so I think that my estimate might be an accurate one.

I know that most professional organizers focus their efforts on physical de-cluttering, and that a few also venture into the area of time management.  Maybe with the right tools, I could empower many more to expand the work they do, and provide some unique insight to their clients, with the help of an easy-to-use turn-key system.

On a side note, I have noticed that  when a consultant lacks a systematic process in time management, they are forced to use a fairly random bunch of anecdotes, personal practices and rules of thumb, without having a structured method to ensure that all the important bases are covered.  This kind of approach is hard to sustain with a smart client who asks lots of questions, and can’t understand why they should follow anyone else’s habit pattern, even if it’s written up in a best-seller.

With a thorough analysis of the 7 fundamentals that makes room for all levels of skill, they should be able to coach everyone from the novice employee to the most seasoned executive.

If you are interested in following the next steps I take towards getting this train-the-trainer program going, Let me know via email using the Contact form in the main menu at top.

Until then, let me know what you think about the idea in general.  Would it work?  Does it need additional content to make it easy to use?  Drop me a comment with your thoughts.

Coaching Using the 2Time Principles

istock_000001500277xsmall.jpgIt recently struck me that someone who coaches for a living should be able to use the 2Time thinking to become a better coach in time management.

The principles of good coaching are simple, as I learned them from Thomas Leonard, founder of CoachU:

  • set believable high-level targets with the client
  • gain an understanding of the current state
  • set detailed goals and refine targets
  • implement actions
  • measure the impact
  • refine and repeat until the goal is accomplished

Unwittingly, I used this same structure in setting up 2Time which makes it quite different from the other approaches that exist.

I haven’t found another approach to time management that starts with an individual’s current habit patterns, acknowledges that some of it is indeed working, and helps them to focus on the parts that need improvement.

For a coach that wants to help a client, this makes things a LOT easier, as the other approaches that I have discovered only try to  get individuals to implement a canned set of new habits.  They are on their own in figuring out exactly how to make the transition.

A coach who uses the 2Time/MyTimeDesign templates is a better diagnostician,  and can help their clients to save time and energy as they work on becoming more productive.

New Employees and Their Time Management Systems

istock_000000214466xsmall.jpgIn my wildest imaginings I can picture a new employee who, in their orientation, is taught that they must develop their own time management system if they hope to get ahead in the company.

They could learn in just a few minutes that:
1.  the time management system they have been using up until now  has successfully gotten them to this place

2.  at some point in their career they will find that the practices that they are using are insufficient

3.  at that point, they will have to reinvent their system, and they should not be shy about using whatever resources they can find for assistance

4.  this evolution will not happen by accident, and they need to be proactive, and always be assessing how well their system matches their needs

This would help the employee to join in the forefront of the revolution that’s afoot — the personal design and implementation of custom time management systems.  While the practice will be old hat at some point,  the idea is a new one for employees as there is no point in their careers at which they would have been taught the fundamentals of time management.

It could be one of those career-changing discoveries that might not produce a behavior change in the moment, but could make a big difference in years to come.