Archives For Productivity

Time Management, Not Content – Biggest Challenge to Learning

Dwayne Harapnuik —  October 8, 2013 — Leave a comment
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2013/10/07/the-biggest-lesson-from-the-flipped-classroom-may-not-be-about-math/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

The biggest lesson from the flipped classroom may not be about math – Casting Out Nines – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

I started out using the One Minute Manager approach over 30 years ago, have experimented with a wide assortment time management systems and most recently have been using David Allen’s Get Things Done (GTD) time management method, and I can still honestly say I find time management to be one of my biggest challenges. So when Robert Talbert identified time management and not Math as being the biggest challenge for his student in his flipped classroom I realized that this is just one more life skill that we are ignoring when we strive to cover the content of the curriculum.

The timing of this blog post couldn’t have been better. Over the past few years my two teen aged boys have been taking on more complicated or sophisticated projects and this fall they are finding that they need to be better organized if they are to fit everything into their days. My older son Levi commented on the challenge of working at becoming a professional downhill bike racer and an extreme athlete while trying to fit in his final year of high school studies. My younger son has always felt the pressure of large projects so we started working with them on building To Do lists, categorizing and prioritizing their school and training responsibilities. This may be one of the most important skills that they will learn.

Talbert suggests that:

a good co-requisite for any flipped class is a mini-workshop on GTD principles, to train students how to think in terms of projects, contexts, and tasks and to free their minds up to work well.

Perhaps he isn’t going far enough. Training students how to manage projects, tasks, and free up their minds to work well is fundamental to self regulated learning which is at the core of life long learning and personal growth.

Sharing the fundamentals of the GTD approach with my boys has just moved to the top of my To Do list. Shouldn’t this be on the top of all parents and educators lists?

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Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

Dwayne Harapnuik —  February 27, 2013 — 1 Comment

Just a couple of gems from this encouraging talk:

Positive Psychology posits: If we study what is merely average we will remain merely average.

Its not necessarily the reality that shape us but the lens that your brain views the world shapes your reality; and if we can change the lens not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

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Get More Done by Taking More Breaks

Dwayne Harapnuik —  June 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/management/blogs/performance-matters/how-to-get-home-on-time-20120614-20btm.html

How to get home on time via kwout

An Ernst and Young Productivity Pulse survey reveled the lack of productivity was costing Australian businesses more than $41 billion each year in wages alone. The report also revealed that despite working more than 8 hours a day Australian workers are less productive. One would assume that a quick remidy would be to cut back on breaks, social media and vacations but this is clearly wrong. The report revealed:

…that unproductive workers took fewer breaks, spent more time travelling to work and less time on leisure and recreation. In contrast, highly productive workers spent two-thirds of their time on meaningful work, they took longer breaks, spent less time travelling to work and allocated more time to leisure and recreation.

Andrew May, a performance coach who has spend the past 15 years working with elite athletes offers the following 7 simple strategies to help minimise distractions, work smarter and squeeze the most out of your day:

  1. Daily Warm Up – use a todo list to prioritize your day.
  2. Tame Technology – control email and mobile device use–don’t let it control you.
  3. Compress Meetings – book shorter meetings and give yourself a buffer to deal with the past meeting and prepare for the next.
  4. Pick up the Phone – email tag and complex issues are easily handled by a quick phone call.
  5. Forced Isolation – take a break from to do high-end cognitive tasks like reports, thinking, strategy, writing, etc.
  6. Work in Waves – oscillate between periods of high concentration and rest.
  7. Change Expectations – Let colleagues, co-workers and family know about your new productivity rules–and learn how to say no.
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