What I learned from the time management workshop

I already wrote 3 blog posts that are related to the time management workshop that was conducted at work yesterday, which I participated in.

See:
1. http://shlomoyona.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post_7668.html
2. http://shlomoyona.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post_16.html
3. http://shlomoyona.blogspot.com/2007/11/franklin-coveys-focus-assessment.html


* I think that the workshop was nice and useful and brought good value for my time.
* I learned a few things about my colleagues from the group dynamics that was in the room. How they reacted to questions, to examples and what they said about themselves.
* I learned that there are some things that I do, in order to organize my time efficiently, which are backed up by experts. So I feel better about them and have more confidence to keep doing them.
* I was exposed to concentrated material about the philosophy of time management and effectiveness (which was, in my opinion, not the best part of the workshop as the instructor did not handle well questions and comments about the way he structured his conclusions: he gave a hypothesis, then a claim then an example and then a conclusion and acted as if he proved and that the conclusion is inevitable -- some of the members in the audience, me included, did not react well to this).
* the part about tools for organizing better the time and some games/tasks we did in order to feel it and demonstrate them was fun and I think made some clear points.
* I feel that the workshop ignored some of the issues raised by some members of the audience with regards to what in their opinion wastes their time: for example, slow equipment, noises and such -- but I suppose that this was intentional -- as these issues can be easily fixed and require no act from the employee other than just reporting the problem to his/her boss.
* I feel that the workshop contributed to all participants -- in the closing hour every attendee listed one or two things that mostly influenced him/her and why -- and the diversity was indeed interesting.
* Using the measuring tools that the workshop gave I saw that I'm pretty close to the ideal with my time management -- so there is still some work to do in order to get ideal -- and I'm going to work on it.

* I also realized during the workshop that there are quite a few things that my boss' boss (the VP R&D that I report to) does for me that help me use my time better:
* time for myself at home: working from home 1-2 times a week on specific tasks with no interferences
* weekly review of major and important things to do (and monitoring how last week's tasks were carried out)
-- Those are only two examples, there are more.

Bottom line -- I think that the workshop's hours were well spent. I personally learned a few things.

I'm looking forward to the two more workshop days expected in the first week of December. They are about other issues. I'll write about them as soon as I attend them.