Let's say your working hours are from 9 to 5.
Do you get everything you need to do within those hours done or do you end up putting in extra hours? Time management courses are good.
They teach you about organising your tasks, prioritising and depending on the course, goal setting.
That is great, but how much time are you spending on the computer? Does it take you seconds to format a document, or hours? What about when you need to reformat the document? I use a little tool called styles which means formatting my documents is easy and quick.
If I need to make a change to the format, say all the headings, I tell the computer to modify that heading style and with a click of the mouse they are all updated.
Good software training is a type of time management.
Someone who knows the software in detail can go through many options.
Not all features are time savers, and for the first few days, while you have to think about how to use the feature, it will take longer, but once you start to use the feature without thinking about it, that is when it will save you time.
Outlook is a great example.
It is used to organise your diary then synchronise it with your blackberry.
How much of the calendar are you suing? Do you colour code your appointments, say all in house meetings are in green and all meetings outside the office are blue.
If you have an email with the agenda to the meeting do you attach that to the calendar appointment entry? The list goes on.
Save time and explore the features of the software you have.
Time spent now could save hours later.