Improving Productivity

Increase your personal productivity by learning strategies for Time Management and Stress Management.
  • Balance or Burnout? Your Choice!
    • Balance or Burnout? Your Choice!

      Course Number: 088-PC
      Recommended Duration: 1 Day

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      Learn how to deal with your emotions appropriately and how to discover the belief systems that got you into or support your burnout so you can change your way of thinking and living, to one of enjoyment and balance, on and off the job.

      Objectives

      As a result of taking this course, you will:
      • Examine your current status on a stress scale
      • Discover how the mind works and how your decisions control your emotions
      • Learn burn-out symptoms and signals
      • Explore options to change stressful habits
      • Develop a plan of action for creating balance in your life
      • Learn how to support others in stress release and change
      Prerequisites: None

      Topics

      • How do you keep yourself stressed
      • Speed of change and its impact on our lives
      • Stress quiz - 12 part stress test
      • Thoughts and emotions - the control factors
      • Thinker-Thought-Reality - how belief systems are created - decision, proof, expectation
      • The Creek Analogy - how emotion decisions are made
      • Effect of suppressed emotions
      • Minding the pressure cooker
      • What do we do with pent-up emotions
      • Burnout symptoms and signals
      • Listening to “El Protecto”
      • Meet your conscience/intuition
      • Response column technique
      • How El Protecto stole our joy
      • The challenge of change
      • Determine prime motivating factors
      • 50 proven stress reducers
      • Job stress - 6 causes, 3 symptoms, 5 actions
      • The stress reduction checklist - review each point on the checklist with discussion
      • Stressed spelled backward is desserts
      • Creating your plan for balance - assign action and dates to stressors
      • Review stress symptoms checklist
      • How to recognize stress in others
      • Dealing with negative people
      • How to support others in change

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  • De-Stress Your Distress!! Stress Management Tools
    • De-Stress Your Distress!! Stress Management Tools

      Course Number: PC
      Recommended Duration: 1 Day

      Course Overview

      Stress is actually important to our well-being. However, it becomes dis-stress when the speed of change and technology demand instant response and create information overload or when the changes of downsizing and restructuring result in overwhelm. We find ourselves suffering from a lack of rest and relaxation and we end up pushing the body past its healthy limits. Stress becomes a negative force in our lives. Add to this emotional imbalance, as people ignore their feelings in favor of getting the job done or getting ahead - and you have someone on the way to involuntary early retirement. If this sounds even little bit familiar, then enroll now and gain valuable insights, creative techniques and comic relief to help you balance your workday and lighten the stress load.

      Tools

      • Stress Scale Assessment.
      • How our decisions control our emotions and our emotions affect our work.
      • Burn-out symptoms to help you identify the early warning signals.
      • Options for changing stressful habits.
      • Development of a plan of action for creating balance.
      • Skills for recognizing stress in others and assisting them in implementing change.

      Assessments and Resources

      • Personal Stress and Well Being Profile
      • Coaching Guides
      • Pocket Guides
      • Skill Builder booklets

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  • Stay Energized in a Draining World: Keeping Pace Under Stress
    • Stay Energized in a Draining World: Keeping Pace Under Stress

      Course Number: 067-KM
      Recommended Duration: 1 Day

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      This course explores the symptoms and root causes of stress in our lives, and introduces personal strategies for reducing stress and restoring energy. This instruction will show you how to replenish your energy reserves even in the middle of a hectic and pressured schedule. You will develop your own “Tool Box” for combating burnout and reducing your personal Stress-O-Meter.

      Objectives/Topics

      As a result of taking this course, you will learn to:
      • Discover the signs and symptoms of personal and professional burn-out
      • Uncover the root causes of stress in our lives
      • Apply strategies for re-energizing your personal Energy-Bank-Account
      • Create your own Energy-Management-Plan
      • Increase levels of productivity, performance, and morale
      • Understand how to handle stress associated with change
      • Turn stressful irritations into positive opportunities
      Prerequisites: None

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  • Getting Things Done: The Tricks Behind Actually Finishing What You Start
    • Getting Things Done: The Tricks Behind Actually Finishing What You Start

      Course Number: 080-KM
      Recommended Duration: 1 Day

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      Everyone struggles with following through on their intentions. In this session we’ll reveal how your brain actually works against you in trying to follow through on things. We’ll share strategies you can implement which will help you accomplish what you start or intent to start.

      Objectives/Topics

      As a result of taking this course, you will:
      • Understand how your brain acts against you when trying to accomplish tasks and realize goals
      • Develop a disciplined structure for managing all of the items both small and big that you set out to accomplish
      • Learn strategies for setting and following through on goals and intentions
      • Learn how to manage time by managing actions
      • Learn how to prioritize your actions to get things done
      • Practice mastering the tricks behind getting things done
      Prerequisites: None

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  • Mastering Productive Performance: Philosophies, Structures, and Strategies for Realizing Your Full Productive Potential
    • Mastering Productive Performance: Philosophies, Structures, and Strategies for Realizing Your Full Productive Potential

      Course Number: 019-JF
      Recommended Duration: 2 Days

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      This course introduces an individually customizable approach for managing all of the “stuff” that overwhelms and clutters your desktop, your mind, and your life, freeing you to be more clearly focused on, responsive to, and productive with the priorities and time-sensitive requirements you face daily. Learn and explore strategies, structures, and tricks for collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and ultimately taking action on all of the inputs of your life. Imagine leaving the office feeling that all of your bases are covered, that some critical detail hasn’t been overlooked, and that you have a clear sense of priorities and actions to pick up with when you return to work the next day. You’ll leave this session with an individual action plan for putting in place a system for achieving just that.

      Objectives/Topics

      As a result of taking this course, you will learn to:
      • Identify your own personal productivity pitfalls and develop strategies for overcoming them
      • Trade the treadmill of time management for the propulsion of an effective productivity approach
      • Recognize how unmanaged “open loop” commitments clog their mental RAM, slowing performance, and create a system for addressing these open loops
      • Explore structures, tricks and techniques for collecting, processing, organizing, and reviewing and driving to action on all of the “inputs” to your life
      • Overcome the tyranny of the “Urgent” and gain the grounding of the “Important”
      • Customize an individualized system for mastering personal productivity
      Prerequisites: None

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  • Putting Off Procrastination
    • Putting Off Procrastination

      Course Number: PC
      Recommended Duration: 1/2 Day

      Course Overview

      Are you suffering from "Analysis Paralysis" or the "Should have, Could have.Would have, If only..." syndrome? Procrastination is the terminal disease of success. The problem is most of the answers have been in the form of treating the symptoms instead of the cause. Through lecture and personal introspection, learn the two causes of procrastination and then practical action steps to changing your beliefs, handling your emotions and creating new habit patterns that will allow you to start "putting off procrastination."

      Perhaps add that this course and a 1⁄2 day Time Mastery course are a great complement to each other??

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  • Seven Principles to Highly Effective Living
    • Seven Principles to Highly Effective Living

      Course Number: 082-KM
      Recommended Duration: 1 Day or 2 Days

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      Someone once commented: “I climbed up the ladder of success, only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall.” There are many models of effectiveness that can help us to achieve tremendous levels of success in life, but they do not always integrate knowledge and skill with purpose and character. When Stephen Covey introduced the world to “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” he outlined a set of seven principles that consistently lead to effective living precisely because they are rooted in both good behavior and good character. In other words, these seven habits connect our collective knowledge of what we need to do to be successful with our collective conscience that expresses our deepest value and character concerns about how we want to live our lives.

      Objectives

      In this course participants will learn about the seven principles for effective living that are based on Covey’s seven habits. In the first half of the course we will explore those principles that help us to be more personally effective. In the second half we will explore those principles that help us to be more interpersonally effective.

      Prerequisites: None

      Topics

      • Be proactive
      • Envision your future
      • Organize and do it
      • Always make your team members look good
      • Become a great listener
      • 1 + 1 = 3

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  • Time Management
    • Time Management

      Course Number: 043-GO
      Recommended Duration: ½ Day

      Intended Audience: All Employees

      Course Overview

      These time and resource management modules help individuals to identify areas where they have the opportunity to improve and to apply effective tools and techniques to better manage their time and resources.

      Objectives

      As a result of taking this course, you will learn to:
      • Identify personal values and organizational goals to develop a strategy to accomplish goals within a value framework
      • Prioritize and organize tasks within the value framework to accomplish set goals
      • Use aids such as: calendars, electronic media, and other tools to organize tasks and priorities
      • Identify external priorities and obstacles and how to manage them
      Prerequisites: None

      Topics

      • Knowing yourself first
      • Identifying your values, goals, and personal style
      • Identifying your most productive times
      • Prioritizing personal needs
      • Managing tasks and times to accomplish goals
      • How to plan: “failing to plan is planning to fail”
      • Establishing goals and relating your tasks to them
      • Prioritizing and organizing for effective time management
      • Using calendars, software, and other aids
      • Keeping records, folders, and taking notes
      • Dealing with roadblocks to success
      • Procrastination, interruptions, and lack of focus
      • Managing resources to fit into the master plan
      • Determine whose priorities take precedence
      • Use of delegation skills
      • Personal action planning to better organize time and resources

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  • Time Mastery: Beyond Time Management
    • Time Mastery: Beyond Time Management

      Course Number: PC
      Recommended Course Duration: 1 Day

      Course Overview

      This workshop will give a new perspective to "managing" time and insights onwhy we have time problems. Defining time and different time styles will allow participants to implement new ideas with a firm base of understanding and to interact with others more effectively when understanding their time motivation. Through lecture and experiential activities, the three principles of time mastery, with specific techniques for each principle, will become the basis for developing unique approaches to change time habits and get the job done more efficiently and effectively.

      Key Topics

      • Definitions of time and time styles that work
      • Clarity on professional and personal time styles
      • Motivation for current time behaviors
      • Understanding of other's time styles and behavioral patterns
      • How to clean up and clear out physical and emotional drains on productivity and creativity
      • Templates for prioritizing and project management
      • Develop a plan for using time effectively and efficiently and changing time habits

      Assessments and Resources

      • Time Mastery Profile
      • Time Management Effectiveness
      • Coaching Guides
      • Pocket Guides
      • Skill Builder booklets

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