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Recently, a training designer from an engineering company contacted me to ask: “Do you have any tips for designing a time management training session?” I gave her a few, and pointed her in the direction of the 2Time Labs website, but with it’s 500+ posts, it was bit like outing a match with a fire-hose. She didn’t have 5 years to put the intervention together, she had 5 days.

Since then, I have decided that I should be more helpful, condensing some of my answers into a single post that can help anyone in a similar position, particularly if they haven’t written a book or published 500 articles.

Learning Outcomes (the company’s)
Before you start your research it’s a good idea to figure out what success looks like to your “client.” Companies don’t ask for stuff, individuals do, and if your boss is the one holding your feet to the fire find out what goals he/she has in mind. Then, work to meet the expectations, and if necessary, to lower them. Use updated, recent data to show them that magical cures are unlikely.

One thing they may not say, but believe me… It’s there: “Please don’t embarrass me with a session that wastes people time with stuff they already know that generates a bunch of complaints that make me look bad.” This unspoken outcome your boss has buried in his/her subconscious is often the most important. Move it to the top of your list.

Here are some of the things they might actually tell you they want, if you ask the right questions.

1. “Something Short”
If your company expects a one hour session over lunch, plan to deliver a pithy combination of tips, tricks and shortcuts. If you can do a short survey before, figure out what people know, and put in some stuff that captures the imagination by focusing on what might be new. Focus on contemporary topics like life balance and smartphone abuse that have generated a surprising number of interesting statistics. Lead your audience to use this teaser as motivation to get more training. Don’t expect to change more than the occasional participant’s behavior.

2. “Take an Easy Shortcut – Copy a Solution from a Program/ Book”
In this case you are literally copying the content from a published book, or even an existing program. Gaining the appropriate permission from the owners is a must; you don’t want to violate copyright law.

What you can expect from this approach is a single set of behaviors defined in great detail – down to the name of the folders to keep. They are easy to put in a  lecture format, because all you’re doing is telling people what they should be doing in excruciating, unalterable detail.

If you get lucky, you’ll find that your employees already are using similar behaviors, making the learning curve a short one. In most cases, however, expect them to have an uphill battle to change their behaviors… But in every case, you can improve the odds of success with some after-program support.

Take this shortcut if you must, but fully expect a high number of outright failures.

3. Do the Right Thing: Redefine Success

With enough time to prepare, plus at least an  8 hour training day accompanied with  mid-term post-training support, you can put a big dent in your learner’s performance. Just don’t expect them all to be looking and acting the same at the end, like a host of happy Oompa Loompas.

Instead, hold as your intended outcome a future in which each person is continually upgrading their individual methods at a realistic speed. To achieve this, your training needs to start in a different place.

Assume that you’re going to start with a mix of skill levels and  you need to engage beginners as well as experts in worthwhile learning activity. Start by giving each person a self-assessment (while showing them how to repeat this task in the future.)

Then, help them determine whether or not they need an immediate upgrade based on their current workload. Trust them to know whether the stuff falling through the cracks is episodic, or symptomatic.

With a decent diagnostic tool, and the teaching that’s required to use it well, they should be able to see the performance gaps  themselves. When they instinctively rush to close them with unrealistic promises, show them how to make a change plan that’s built on baby-steps rather than divine intervention.

While you’re at it, reveal the secret  of how to “Change Anything” using a holistic habit-change plan. Teach them how to make sure they succeed with the right support.

At the end of your training day, don’t expect instant changes. Instead, have each person leave with a plan to grow their capacity over time to a level that they desire, with a high degree of motivation.

It’s likely that they will make some immediate changes, but don’t expect them to all make the same ones. Offer the kind of post-class support that bears fruit in months rather than days, and convince your boss that true and permanent behavior change is more desirable than a bag of fun-filled tips and tricks.

He/she may notice that you get lower scores on the post-class smiley-sheets, but you should feel confident that you did the right thing. So did your company when it made the decision to put you on this very challenging assignment.

If you happen to be the person programming the training (as opposed to the one actually delivering it in a classroom) you may want to read my article How to Program a Time-Based Productivity Intervention.

N.B. For more detailed information on the approach I have laid out above, get a copy of my book: Perfect Time-Based Productivity which outlines the steps you can follow, plus the forms you can use in your training. Also, if you would like to purchase a copy of my personal training materials (slides, videos, simulations) plus gain access to live class recordings, contact me at http://ReplytoFrancis.info

You are a smart time management coach or consultant who has read a number of books and uses bits and pieces from your favorites in your consulting practice. Your practice grows as you work very hard on your overall approach, and your skills.

You begin to get some national attention in the press and happily announce to your fans online that you are appearing on the Today Show in a month’s time. Shortly before your appearance you receive a letter in the mail from a law firm.

One of the companies that you admire has just sent you a cease and desist letter. Apparently, they believe that you have been using their stuff, violating their copyrights and making money using their content.

You can’t argue with the letter – you have indeed used their specific, copyrighted language in your business. You just didn’t know that you couldn’t and you never imagined that they’d have a problem with it.

Or, perhaps, you gave up on using that company’s ideas in your business from the very beginning. You decided not to enter the time management business at all, or stopped it from growing to the point where anyone would notice.

Or, even rarer, you took your own time and money and developed your own methods, and now you find yourself wanting to protect them however you can.  If they ever get used by some unwitting soul, you stand ready to send your own cease and desist letters.

One of my intentions here at MyTimeDesign is to be as transparent as possible around the rights that I grant consultants, coaches, trainers and professional organizers, who interact with my materials. My intention is to give as much access as possible, and craft a situation that allows more content to be created. In other words, I want to keep alive the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Ideas Come and Go Freely

From the very beginning, I have tried to keep the flow of ideas as smooth as possible. I don’t know there they come from, I don’t own them, and I find that when I give them away here at MyTimeDesign or 2Time Labs, more come. In any case, it’s not possible to copyright ideas, so my commitment to keeping the flow of ideas going, is just a logical outcome of the way copyright laws are set up.

Renaming Sources

The one place I do have a problem is using language from this site or 2Time Labs and saying that you wrote it. This is an issue of honesty for me, and it’s also a violation of copyright law.

The same applies to specific infographics that I use, and also the language on forms. Anyone can use the underlying ideas behind to create their own forms that do the same thing, but not the actual form itself.

What if you don’t have the time to put together your own forms and infographics? You attended one of my programs for time clutter consultants and are wondering if you can use what you want.

Well, you can. When you take a program of mine you are given the opportunity to acquire the rights to use the materials in a few different ways. It’s easy to understand and I explain it more in the actual program.

As a reader of this website, however, understand that you can use freely any of the ideas that you want in your work.

For a summary of some of these ideas, see my video:  Time Management Consultants: What Content Should I Use?

Lifehack just published an article I wrote entitled “The Evolution of the Calendar: How to Use a Calendar Today.” It’s a new take on the future of calendar management that might have a profound impact on the way your clients manage their schedules.

Read it and see why what your client considers their calendar to be is undergoing a massive change and why you, as their coach, need to be aware of it so that you can anticipate the changes that are coming, driven by new technology and real-time cloud storage.

Here’s the article: The Evolution of the Calendar.

In my preparation for the ICD Conference in Chicago this week, I had to make a conscious decision (due to time constraints) to exclude my opinion that we consultants often assume that our clients aren’t all that smart.

How do I know we do that?

Take a group of your average clients and ask them to put together a list of the top 10 tips they would give a young professional on the topic of time management or time clutter. In your instructions, ask them not to try too hard to tell the recipient stuff they think they might already know.

Their final product might be a long list of stuff you already know, but here’s the problem: their list would look no different from the tips that are floating around in books, YouTube videos, blogs, tweets, Facebook pages, e-books, podcasts and anywhere else that content can be found in these times. These floating tips are being circulated as if they are important, new, different, important and interesting when in fact, they are nothing but recycled ideas that have been around for years. Here’s an example:

• Take the first 30 minutes of every day to plan your day.
• Take five minutes before every call and task to decide what result you want to attain.
• Block out other distractions.
• Use a calendar.

If our clients have already heard these things, and they are widely accepted and can hardly be refuted, why are they being repeated ad nauseum? Why are we treating our clients as if they just aren’t all that smart, and that they have never considered the simple ideas that we throw at them over and over again?

I believe the reasons are twofold.

1. We don’t have anything better. Here, I blame the lack of research. There are just very few places that new ideas are being generated in the field of time management, even as the technology that’s available to help us explodes. In the absence of new ideas, the old ones keep being re-assembled in lists of frivolous tips that claim to make a difference.  (e.g. “Planning is Key” – taken from a prestigious magazine for C-level executives. )
2. They aren’t implementing them. We know that in spite of the tremendous number of time management tips floating around that they make little or no difference. People who do a lot of planning already agree that “Planning is Key.” Those who don’t agree aren’t going to change their minds because the new “tip” is included in a list. The vast majority probably agree that they should be doing more planning, but have no idea why that knowledge hasn’t been translated into action, habit or practice. Apparently, the assumption is that somewhere out there, there are a legion of stupid people who have never heard the idea that “Planning is Key.” I have no idea who these people are or where they work… and I’ll bet you don’t know either.

The result of this mindless repetition of shallow tips is that potential clients assume that once they hear the words “time management” that the author/coach/professional organizer/trainer/consultant has nothing new to say on the topic. In their minds, they have already been there, done that and got the T-shirt. There is no need to chase down yet another list, article or book because the time spent reading is hardly worth the effort. Obviously, there is no need to pay your high fees to hear a bunch of stuff I already know. “Heck,” they think, “my kid could have written that Top 10 List of Time Management Tips that you are promoting!” (Some of us try to beat smart clients by making longer lists, but trust me… Top 10,001 Tips on Time Management is just a bigger mountain of fluff.)

As a result, clients show up on our radar already bored, believing that they know as much as the experts. And, they have the evidence in the abundance of tips bouncing around that proves their point.

At the bottom of it all is an incorrect mental model. Excellence in time management, or drastic reductions in time clutter don’t come from tips. Neither does world-class performance in piano, sprinting or painting. All the evidence says that it comes from hard practice.

Unfortunately, it’s far easier to write an article filled with trite tips than it is to delve into the well researched topic of hard practice. It’s also much easier to coach, train or organize someone using tips, shortcuts and tricks i.e. fluff.

The road less traveled is slow, harder to implement, un-sexy and uphill, but it’s the only thing that works. We need to challenge our clients with the truth, and trust that they are intelligent enough to be able to handle it.

I just bumped into a video preview for The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle. Its explores a familiar concept that we have explored at 2Time Labs – becoming good at time management takes focused practice in order to develop the habits that are required for even the smallest upgrades.

It’s exactly what we want our time cluttered clients to do. Once they have finished listening to us, we want them to go away and practice their skills until new habits emerge. A good coach/consultant is able to produce this result over and over, while a weak one does little more than give them access to ideas, either via the written or spoken word.

It’s the very opposite of expecting magical, instant results.

Myelin is that fatty substance that encloses neurons, and it thickens in the brain and spinal cord up when actions become habitual. Myelin thickens when actions are repeated thousands of times over and over again, ensuing that your coaching hasn’t been wasted.

Take a look at these 2 short videos for more.

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As a coach, consultant, trainer or professional organizer in time management, it’s useful to return to adult learning principles now and then, if only as a refresher.

Some time ago, I wrote a post over at the 2Time Labs website in which I laid out a Pedagogy for Time Management. (A pedagogy is a teaching method.)

I’m in the process of developing an assessment that can be used to assess your consulting, teaching, coaching or organizing skills as they are applied to your work with clients. In doing so, I have been revisiting the principles of adult learning because I believe that they apply quite well to the work we do.

Here’s a great website that I found describing these principles and the precise behaviors used to support the top principles:  http://www.qotfc.edu.au/resource/index.html?page=65375

Take a look and ask yourself how you can use these principles to increase your effectiveness and impact. If you’re in a hurry, here they are, as described by Malcolm Knowles.

• Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
• Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
• Adults are goal oriented
• Adults are relevancy oriented
• Adults are practical
• Adult learners like to be respected

As you dig into each of these principles you’ll see how easy it is to step over them while working with clients. Some would argue, for example, that there is no need to understand what the client or trainee is doing today, and that they always need to start over from scratch.

According to Knowles, that would be a big mistake.

P.S. Click here to watch the related video: Time Management Consultants – Why Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts No Longer Work.

It’s no accident that I’m leading a Post-Conference Workshop at the ICD conference in Chicago called “Baby Steps – Radically Reducing Your Clients’ Time Clutter.” The name comes from an overt attempt on our part here at 2Time Labs to bring modern thinking that’s backed by research to the way time management is taught or coached.

Most time management teaching follows the “tell them and leave them” approach. Learning the content is deemed to be the most important activity, and the materials are presented in a way that dumps a lot of new ideas on the learner or coachee.

The results are typically poor, according to research by by Therese Macan. For the most part, people end up doing whatever they were doing before the course began.

Before the work of Albert Bandura, managers and coaches would focus on building in elaborate systems of carrots and sticks in order to get the trainee to exhibit the right behavior. Bandura showed that much more is happening in the typical learning environment than simple external stimuli, and that one way to help the learner to change is to

1. break down the change into small steps
2. help them grow confidence in mastering increasingly more tasks
3. showing them models that are successful

In other words, use baby steps.

The problem with the popular approaches to teaching time management is that the materials are presented in massive chunks. This leads the trainee to think that they are a failure when, a month later, they realize that they have implemented little or nothing new.

The solution that we have taken based on our experience of seeing a lot of failures is that a coach/consultant / trainer / professional organizer should help build what Bandura calls “self-efficacy” (a sense of confidence in your ability) in two ways:

1. teaching clients how to re-design their time management systems starting from their current set-up in a way that uses baby steps; alternating new learning with immediate design activity to build the trainee’s sense of mastery
2. helping clients to make plans for implementation that are based on small steps to be taken over time, and offering supportive mechanisms so that they can see role models in action, and get help when confidence dips

As it stands, there doesn’t exist any certification whatsoever for coaches and consultants in time management, or time clutter.

There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs, and if you have a moment you might check out my 2Time Labs website to see why there is also a lack of research, and not a single university has a department devoted to the subject.

This has also led to a lack of training for helping professionals in this field who end up being stuck without a single, unified source of expertise. I have started making a list of the problems and questions that coaches, consultants, trainers and professional organizers often repeat in their frustration at the lack of resources that exist today.

Biggest Problems
1. I don’t know where to start
2. I don’t have anything to sell clients
3. I don’t know what to do
4. The stuff I have doesn’t work
5. My clients forget everything I teach them
6. I don’t have enough time to make a big difference

Most Common Questions
1. How do I make the lessons I teach my clients stick?
2. How do I convert my current clients in other areas to time management clients?
3. What processes do I need to follow?
4. What content do I use?
5. How do I find new clients?
6. How can get trained?
7. How can I get certified?
8. Why can’t I just give them a book?
9. Why don’t my tips, tricks and shortcuts work?

I have been leading productivity programs for almost twenty years, and I can’t say that I don’t face these problems, or have stopped working on these questions. I do know, however, that as Time Management 2.0 evolved and worked its way into my coaching and training, I have had less of these problems and been able to move onto the causes of these questions.

Have I left off anything obvious from these lists, from your perspective? Please do let me know by leaving a comment below.

When clients come to us for help, they usually don’t have an idea of the best path to take. As professional consultants / coaches, it’s our job to direct them to the right process, and best possible set of results.

If we had the idea environment, we could help our clients to learn these lessons via interactive games. They’d teach themselves, and we’d just be expert guides. What we have is a choice of two alternatives.

In Time Management 1.0 the focus is on fixed prescriptions, and the major lesson to be learned is:  “Here are the ideal set of fixed habit patterns everyone you to follow.”

In Time Management 2.0, the lessons are more subtle, and therefore more difficult to deliver.

Lesson 1 – You are currently using a unique system made up of habits, practices and technology.

Lesson 2 – You have come to me because your system is failing you in some way.  What are the symptoms?

Lesson 3 – Your current system is a self-invention from young adulthood.

Lesson 4 – Let’s gain a deep understanding / profile of your own system’s successes and failures.

Lesson 5 – Let’s set some new standards for your system to acccomplish.

Lesson 6 – Let’s find the steps you need to take to fill the gap between the system that you have and the one you want.

Lesson 7 – Let’s sequence these steps in time so that you have a feasible plan.

Lesson 8 – Let’s assemble a fool-proof support system.

Lesson 9 – Let’s track the success and failures of your support system over time.

Lesson 10 – Let’s evaluate and incorporate new technologies, tools, theories, research etc.

At the end, under these ideal conditions, we’d have a client who is fully capable of upgrading their time management system whenever they decide they need to do so, or want to take advantage of some new innovation. We’d better move on to the next level as coaches / consultants, or we could easily run out of ways to be useful to them.