Effectiveness: Attention, Priorities and Time Management

Developing a deeper understanding and practical skills in:

• attention as a limited resource and what consumes most of it in everyday work;
• deep, focused work and effective time management;
• setting priorities based on the overarching goal of one’s role;
• creating a single task management system where all tasks are kept;
• daily rituals that keep the system running.

• Employees and team leaders who are responsive, reliable, and have long to-do lists.
• People who feel that they never have enough time for their most important work.
• Anyone who manages a team or is independently responsible for their own area of work without direct reports.

• Understand how attention switching affects the quality and capacity of their work.
• Keep their email inbox empty and process it 1–3 times a day.
• Block out time in their calendar for deep focus several weeks in advance.
• Identify their current priorities and explain why these are the most important.
• Create a single task list instead of maintaining five separate ones.

Participants will need a computer with their work email and calendar open during the course. The training is highly practical, so most of the work is done directly within each participant’s own systems.

Training materials, worksheets, and practical examples prepared by the course instructor.

Not intended.

1. Attention and Distractions

• Attention as capital: invest it or spend it.
• What reduces our ability to concentrate in everyday work and what it costs.
• Turning off notifications on computers and phones.
• Processing the email inbox down to zero.
• A “parking lot” for ideas that come to mind during work.

2. Time Management and Deep Work

• The flow state and the 23 minutes it takes to get into it.
• Planning and protecting blocks of deep work.
• Grouping similar tasks together.
• Structuring the day according to the “glass jar” principle.

3. Priorities

• The overarching goal of a role and its key responsibility outcomes.
• How to translate these into current priorities.
• Choosing the appropriate cycle.
• Checking priorities against actual capacity.
• Defining the next steps for each priority.

4. One Task List

• Where tasks hide: email, calendars, notes, meeting minutes, and our minds.
• Bringing all tasks together into one system.
• Organizing the task list.
• Creating a weekly and daily plan.

5. Rituals

• Entropy as the reason systems fall apart.
• Weekly and daily rituals.
• Cycle review.
• The vacation ritual.