Time seminars

What resources are available on optimizing productivity and engagement, and mastering time, time pressures, and anxiety about time?

Articles -->

Click the above link for a list of articles on time. If you have questions or comments about any of the readings, please email Steve Randall at: steve@manage-time.com

Books and tapes -->

Click the above link for a list of books and tapes on time.

Coaching is available for individuals and groups—take advantage of a free, half-hour needs assessment interview via phone or Skype. For more information, click the link above and fill out the request form for a free needs assessment, or simply email Steve Randall at: steve@manage-time.com The link above leads to additional information about coaching, including an Autobiography with Respect to Time.

General online resources -->

Click the above link for related websites, blogs, social groups, a time management prescriptive guide, and information about a popular 'time movement',

Webinar and Video offerings -->

Click the above link for time-related webinars and videos.

Seminars, workshops, and presentations

Predesigned seminars, workshops, and presentations related to time are listed below. We customize presentations and training to fit the needs of participants and organizations.

Beat the Clock, Lower Stress, and Improve Health and Well-Being!

Where does time pressure come from, and what can we do about it? If we believe that pressure is 'built into' time, we might try to leave the fast lane whenever we can-during breaks, weekends, vacations, and at retirement. When at work we might use conventional time management (CTM). CTM techniques can be very valuable. But "concerns about quality of life are just as likely to come from someone with a high level of time management training as from someone without it." (Stephen Covey, First Things First) Is something missing from CTM? Perhaps our assumption about the source of time pressure is wrong. Is it really 'built into' time? Or could it depend on our perspective? If we were able to increase our personal speed without getting anxious, could we 'keep up' with increasing work demands? Although CTM doesn't directly address these question, the new field of inner time management (ITM) shows how to change our way of relating to a task and get totally involved, optimizing well-being and productivity.

In this seminar participants can learn:

You can simultaneously get results and improve health and well-being
Conventional time management usually promises more than it can deliver
There is one kind of time we can't change and a type that we can change dramatically
You can directly cut through various feelings that waste time-confusion, tiredness, indecision, scatteredness, time pressure and anxiety, and negative emotion
There are six different levels of mastery of time pressures
Peak performance has an element of timelessness
Tracking feelings of time flow is a means of continuous improvement

Beat the Clock while Improving Well-being

Do you race against time? Does time flow too fast, with pressure somehow built into it? Is there some aspect of time that we can change to lessen pressure? Does pressure somehow depend on our perspective, or on how much we're involved in what we're doing? Is there any way to eliminate time stress? Is there any peaceful 'zone' in time, like the eye of a hurricane? Most time management seminars don't ask these questions, which are necessary to deal with our time issues at their root. In this workshop we'll explore the sources of time pressure, identify different types of time, and discuss the full range of what can be done about time stress.

Participants can learn:

How to access a comprehensive, web-based guide to articles and mental and physical exercises that are effective to handle time management tasks and issues
How you can combine an emphasis on organizing for bottom-line results with an emphasis on simultaneously improving health and well-being
How conventional time management--including that offered by Franklin-Covey--usually promises more than it can deliver. Its effectiveness is limited by being based on the idea that time flow is an objective reality.
How you can extend the typical scope of time management by learning to directly cut through various feelings that waste time: confusion, tiredness, indecision, scatteredness, time pressure and anxiety, negative emotion, and our ordinary feeling of time flowing
That peak performance has an element of timelessness, and tracking and diminishing our feelings of time flow is a self-actualizing means of continuous improvement
What to focus on to simultaneously optimize productivity, employee well-being, and quality
That true peak performance is possible only if we continually consider how we do things in addition to what we do.
Characteristics of six different levels of mastery of time pressures, levels that outline our approach to peak performance
How to access a leading-edge, free online book and workshop on deadline pressure

Changing Time Stress to Effortless Flow

Are we stuck with the modern rat race? Is time unalterable, with pressure somehow built into it? Or is there some aspect of time that we can change to lessen pressure? Does pressure somehow depend on our perspective? Is there any way to eliminate time stress, any 'zone' in time like the eye of a hurricane? In this introductory workshop we will explore the sources of time pressure, define different types of time, and discuss the full range of what can be done about time stress. We'll look at conventional time management (CTM). Although people generally find CTM helpful, some find it turns up the speed of time's treadmill. Can we use CTM in a way that won't accelerate time? We'll discuss inner time management (ITM), which focuses on how we do things rather than what we're doing. By combining ITM with CTM, we develop balance, rather than the drivenness that often accompanies CTM's preoccupation with results. And we can open doorways to new levels of performance and fulfillment that are simply unavailable with CTM alone. You can learn:

There are six keys to changing all time stress
You can simultaneously get results and improve health and well-being
Conventional time management usually promises more than it can deliver
You can directly cut through various feelings that waste time--confusion, tiredness, indecision, scatteredness, time pressure and anxiety, and negative emotion
There are six different levels of mastery of time pressures
Numerous ITM exercises are available
You can access a comprehensive, web-based time management guide
Peak performance has an element of timelessness

Changing your Personal Time to Beat the Clock

This is a highly experiential, one-day workshop teaching integrated methods to do anything faster while improving well-being. Like a personal space, we have a personal time, the time it typically takes us to process a bit of information. Personal time is like a frequency of awareness, a cycle time that we can learn to speed up and slow down, opening up new levels of performance and well-being.

How can we change personal time? A proven methodology does exist: (1) We balance our breathing in order to gradually but directly transform anxiety and time pressures. (2) We need to consistently recognize the tendency to see time as a linear sequence of discrete, yet connected 'atomic' moments. This can be implemented by exercises that look for ever more subtle and 'frequent' moments between moments. (3) We need to see how the self is driven to seek goals and fulfillment in a future positioned away from 'here'. This can be fostered by an exercise that experiments with reversing the 'normal' temporal structure, looking from points in the future back toward the past (we don't need to stop thinking about the future). (4) We need to see how clock time is independent of personal time, which can be done by watching the second hand of a clock while observing fluctuations in the feelings of time passing. (5) We need to quickly see through the positioning of self and mental events, which can be practiced during simple card sorting exercises. In this workshop you will get extensive practice with these methods.

Possible benefits:

Learn the sources of time pressure and time poverty
Learn to recognize linear time--our biggest waste of time and the most stressful way we experience time
Get extensive practice in finding the 'zone' of peak performance and well-being during a timed mock work activity
Get extensive practice in quickly letting go of mental content in order to accelerate whatever's being done
Learn how to remain calm and increase your energy while working at varying speeds

Mastering Time 101

Free introductory seminar that introduces conventional time management and inner time management, and covers:

What is time?
What is the 'normal' way of experiencing time in the West?
What is the optimal way of relating to time?
What inhibits peak time experience?
What can we do to facilitate the optimal experience of time, both during work and at other times? What principles and methods are useful?

Mastering Time 102: Seeing Time as an Ally

This workshop focuses on optimizing psychological time, the way we actually experience and feel time, rather than on what to do with our clock time. Topics and exercises:

What is time? How can we master time without some idea about what it is?
We'll describe the 'normal' way of experiencing and perceiving time in Western countries, including the USA and northern Europe.
We’ll do the time calling exercise to help identify linear time, the sense that time is flowing linearly and unstoppably among past, present, and future.
We'll explore how time is experienced during peak experiences, those 'best' times in our lives.
We’ll do an exercise that highlights variations in 'felt time'--the changing feelings we have with, within, and about time—in order to clarify the differences between measured, or clock time, and felt time.
We’ll see six levels of ways of relating to time--different levels of mastery of time, and time stress—to clarify what is possible for us.
What keeps us from having peak time experiences all the time? What gives rise to our ordinary experience of time?
Examples of how our feeling of time passing is created and strengthened, including procrastination.
We’ll do an exercise to turn procrastination around—we’ll look from the future back towards the present and past.
The process of creating/relieving the sense of time flow can be expressed in terms of three energy centers at the head, throat, and heart.
We’ll learn the most important technique to correct the energy imbalance associated with time stress.
Do negative feelings always have to be painful, or is there some other way to relate to them?
We’ll do an exercise to explore whether there is an alternative to a 'normally' heavy sensation.
The pressure we feel is directly proportional to how much we're resisting what we're trying to get done, to how much we’re involved in what's at hand.
Exercise: Identifying Situational Feelings. Various situational feelings--like fear, guilt, sadness, confusion, or embarassment--can intensify the 'normal' pressure of time flowing.
We’ll do an isometric exercise to bring conflicting feelings associated with tasks to center stage, and relieve our physical and emotional tension.
We’ll examine statements that help understand where time pressure comes from.
Pressure and anxiety occur because we have developed a habitual way of looking at the future. We can loosen up this habitual 'pressure perspective' by consciously adopting the perspective again and again.
Questions to periodically measure progress: "Am I doing the right thing?" and "Am I doing things right?" or "What is the best use of my time right now?" and "Am I timelessly involved in what I'm doing?"

Mastering Time 103: Organizing Your Life-Time (self-directed workshop)

A free, complete, online, on-demand conventional time management course. The essential skills are to identify long-term goals, break down projects, prioritize tasks, estimate how long it will take to do things, and organize and schedule tasks. You can learn these skills by following these links and doing the exercises:

Before working on goals and life directions, it's good to clarify where things are right now. To get a clear and complete picture of your life as it is today, we’ll do the Life Patterning Exercise.
To see which of your roles in life are being exercised, stressed, or ignored, and to help develop balance among your roles, do the Role Cycling Exercise.
To get more perspective on your values and long-range goals and priorities, try Reviewing Life
To get a big picture of your objectives in the major areas of life, and to identify and prioritize these objectives, try this exercise: Lifetime Goals in Seven Areas
Why should we set priorities and how can we do it? Take a look at Determining Priorities.
Once you've determined some projects that you want to accomplish, what do you do? See Handling Projects.
Done identifying tasks? Time for Scheduling
How do you measure your progress in managing your life-time?

Mastering Time 103: Organizing Your Life-Time (Live workshop)

In addition to the self-directed version, this workshop can also be delivered live, in person or via the Internet.

Are you missing opportunities for fulfillment because of confusion about your goals or inadequate planning of your personal or professional affairs? One hour spent clarifying goals and planning activities can be worth three or four hours trying to do things without a good sense of direction. This seminar gives you an opportunity to clarify the important goals in your life and learn the organizational skills necessary to accomplish them efficiently. You can feel more in control and get more done--while decreasing stress! Possible benefits:

You'll get a better sense of your direction in life.
By identifying all your current roles, and then writing down your goals and their priorities in all the major areas of life, you'll clarify your sense of direction.
You'll know how to organize in order to get things done efficiently: identifying the tasks necessary to accomplish your goals, prioritizing and scheduling these tasks along with appointments from your calendar, and visualizing your schedule to make sure it will work. This workshop can be set up to supply participants with organizers or not.
You'll have a better understanding for what time is.

Taking the Pressure Out of Deadlines

Where's the Pressure Come From? The pressure and anxiety associated with deadlines are not 'facts of life' that we have to put up with. Deadline pressure is simply an intense and constricted version of our usual perception of time flowing. If we can learn how to directly transform the pressure, we can realize significant gains in both productivity and well-being.

Where's the Pressure Come From? The pressure and anxiety associated with deadlines are not 'facts of life' that we have to put up with. Deadline pressure is simply an intense and constricted version of our usual perception of time flowing. If we can learn how to directly transform the pressure, we can realize significant gains in both productivity and well-being.

At this workshop you can learn:

The sources of time pressure and time poverty
There are many possible ways to experience time besides our cultural linear time perspective
How to relate to emotions directly in order to benefit from their energy and not get pressured, anxious, or get upset
How feeling pressured, anxious, hurried, and overwhelmed are always part of linear time perspectives, and are not simply built into time
An exercise to practice working quickly under a deadline while improving well-being rather than burning out
A breathing exercise that can be used during any activity to immediately diminish time pressure
Two ways to reverse our typical ways of thinking about the future
How to identify emotions and negative feelings that intensify deadline pressure and the feeling that you don't have enough time
How to use your favorite ways of inducing peak experiences to produce a sense of timelessness and deflate time pressures
An isometric exercise that can quickly relieve the physical and emotional tension with deadlines
A technique to exaggerate the way we look forward to deadlines so that it changes to the timelessness of optimal productivity
An exercise to find extra moments between moments
How we create our sense of time flowing

Team Planning by Reviewing the Future

Explore a more creative and insightful alternative to consensus building and five-year plans. A group can effortlessly and intuitively plan its projects by doing a presumé, which reviews accomplishments from a future time. Then you can compare individuals' views of the group's progress to determine alignment and get insight for new directions.

A resumé reviews accomplishments from the present, and a presumé reviews accomplishments from a point in the future. Besides being a truly collaborative effort that readily develops buy-in by participants, this process provides a great way to cut through wishful thinking, pessimism, and resistance to change and planning. Possible benefits:

Determine desirable consensual goals for any period of time without imposition from management
Easily develop buy-in of participants
Learn the sources of time pressure and time poverty
Learn how typical ways of planning tend to perpetuate the past, restrict creativity, limit well-being, and intensify time pressure and anxiety
Identify the forces that are currently moving your group in various directions
Learn a method to reverse our typical way of thinking about the future and eliminate its typical pressure and tendency to perpetuate the past

Turning Procrastination Around

Procrastination is not simply putting something off to a future time. It actually makes time pressure worse and erodes our confidence. Understanding how the “pressure perspective” sets up the side-effects can give us the key to turning procrastination around at the outset. Possible benefits of the seminar:

Be better able to plan and accomplish things without feeling overwhelmed
Notice less effort in the flow of your work
No longer be run by negative feelings that distract you from completing things
Do physical exercises to keep from 'holding back'
Understand how procrastination intensifies our sense of time flowing and depreciates our enjoyment of whatever we're doing
Learn how to turn the characteristic orientation of procrastination around and loosen the energy locked up

What’s the Key to Masterful Work?

In a typical company the primary concern is on productivity and the bottom line. But is results-driven work the same as peak performance? If not, is there a measure or indicator that does optimize productivity, well-being, and quality of process and product--all at the same time, and no matter what the kind of work? In this presentation Dr. Steve Randall introduces such a measure that can motivate people to ever-higher levels of performance. This presentation can help you learn:

In a typical company the primary concern is on productivity and the bottom line. But is results-driven work the same as peak performance? If not, is there a measure or indicator that does optimize productivity, well-being, and quality of process and product--all at the same time, and no matter what the kind of work? In this presentation Dr. Steve Randall introduces such a measure that can motivate people to ever-higher levels of performance. This presentation can help you learn:

The ideal uses and effects of measures used to drive work progress
The limited effects of conventional productivity measures
The effectiveness of continually improving involvement as a means for driving optimal productivity, quality, and well-being of employees
Three ways to define involvement to provide self-actualizing feedback during any job

What’s the Zone of Peak Performance?

What are the qualities of peak performance in the workplace? Are there some shared values--not just common goals--that would naturally motivate people in any organization? Dr. Steve Randall will present a twelve-facet vision of peak performance drawn from experiential reports of geniuses and mystics. This vision can provide the foundation for continuous improvement and managing by values, no matter what the organizational mission. You can learn:

The importance of the 'zone' for productivity and well-being
The qualities of peak performance in the workplace--shared values that naturally motivate people in any organization
Why the zone of peak performance can't be defined in terms of organizational structures, management styles, employee habits, and best practices or processes
Descriptions of twelve dimensions of the zone so that you can more easily recognize the zone when you're in it
A vision to use as your foundation for managing by values, no matter what the organizational mission
How continuous improvement can be defined in terms of the zone