Effective Time Management for Library Staff (online learning course) - 2004

Effective Time Management for Library Staff
(An Infopeople online learning course)

April 20 - May 25, 2004

Do you ever leave work stressed because your "to-do" list isn't even half finished?

Managing time is a key element in your on-the-job success. No matter what your position, the strength of your time management skills and habits affects both your daily performance and your personal wellbeing.

In this course you will design a plan that will help you react and adapt to the constantly changing rhythms and tempos of your life. You will practice your new skills and receive coaching to meet your specific needs so that you will be better able to:

• Identify what is the most important
• Anticipate problems and overcome obstacles
• Find hidden shortcuts in every project
• Resolve conflicts when other people's goals compete with yours
• Stop procrastinating

Workshop Description: This five-week online learning course will help you improve your skills in managing your time on a daily basis as well as your long term projects. You will learn strategies and techniques to control how you spend your time, stop time-wasting behaviors, and get the most important things done efficiently and effectively.

Through readings, online discussion and chat, structured exercises, and writing assignments you will learn how to create and modify a flexible time management system based on your unique expectations, thinking style, and temperament. The course will utilize library-specific situations and examples in the readings and exercises.

This class will provide you with:

• strategies for creating a customized time management system
• methods to identify and schedule those things that are most important
• techniques to modify behaviors that cause stress

Outcomes: By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Analyze their time management problems and sort them into three categories: technical, environmental and psychological
2. Design a customized time management system that deals with the three categories of problems
3. Create a customized time management review and evaluation process
4. Demonstrate strategies for diagnosing and solving problems that arise subsequent to the course

Preliminary Course Outline:

• Week 1: Overview of effective time management
  • Welcome
  • Planning for success
  • Categorizing your time management problems
• Week 2: Validating your time management self assessment
  • Using time logs
  • Analyzing your time logs
• Week 3: Time Management Essentials
  • Determining your personal style, preferences, needs and goals
  • Choosing and prioritizing your activities
  • Exploring time management tools
• Week 4: Developing your customized plan
  • Designing your customized process
  • Streamlining your process
  • Crafting your plan
• Week 5: Your journey towards satisfaction
  • Troubleshooting your plan
  • Maintaining your motivation
  • Additional resources

Who Should Attend: Anyone who wants to improve their time management skills

Prerequisites: None

Online Learning Details: This five-week course will be taught online using the web. When you register, you will receive a registration confirmation which will include the URL to get to the course, as well as a username and password. Effective Time Management for Library Staff will start on April 20, 2004 and end on May 25, 2004.

The workshop consists of five one-and-a-half to two-hour learning modules. You can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. However, you will be expected to log in to the course each week to do that week's assignment. We ask that you log in sometime during the first week of the course to begin the course work.

The materials will remain available to work on for two additional weeks following the official end date, but you will be expected to accomplish the majority of the course in synchronization with your peers during the first five weeks.

This course is taught over the web. You must:

• Have an Internet connection and Internet Explorer 5 or higher (some of the quiz functions do not work properly in Netscape).
• Be able to save a file to your computer and print it out using Microsoft Word or a compatible word processing program.
• Be comfortable navigating on the web and navigating back and forward on a website that uses frames.

If you are not comfortable with any of the above, please consider taking this course with a colleague who does meet these requirements.