Time Management – Part 3 – Friday, the end of the week – Yea!

Time Management – Part 3 – Friday, the end of the week – Yea!

You made it to the end of the week, followed your plan and adapted it to each day. Now what?

Friday is the day to reflect about the week you had and to think about the next few weeks before you. Close to the end of the day on Friday, hide in your office for 20-30 minutes and look back over the completed week.

  1. Think about what worked and more importantly, what didn’t work. Did preparing for a particular event take longer than you expected? Did you run into any roadblocks or setbacks that you should have planned or expected? What could you have done differently that would have improved your outcome? Take notes – it helps!
  2. Do you need to complete any fence mending next week? In the fast-paced daily work environment, it is common to run around, over or through people in order to meet deadlines. This can build resentment if left unchecked, so think about all your interactions this week, and if you placed some tire tracks on somebody, you need to make amends. Reach out to them and setup a lunch or coffee next week to invest in maintaining a positive relationship. Be sure to place these appointments on your calendar and do whatever it takes to keep these commitments, as it will cause serious harm to the relationship if you break them.
  3. Did anyone disappoint or let you down that you need to address next week? I try not to discuss issues of disappointment or frustration when they occur, as I have hard time shutting up once I get rolling and can do moderate damage in a very short amount of time. I prefer to wait a few days to and talk about maters in a calm environment.
  4. Quickly, review the completed tasks. This is your opportunity to look at the effectiveness of yourself and the team. Did the task assignments work for everyone? Do you need to make different assignments in the future? Did some tasks take substantially more time to complete than expected? This should be followed up on next week. This type of review will assist you in identifying team building and personal development opportunities and may possibly uncover any strife your team is experiencing.

Time to look forward: A new week is about to be born.

I want to make sure that I review the next few weeks calendar and open tasks and if any event occurred this week that will noticeably alter these items, it should be updated now. The idea here is to take into account everything that you learned or experienced this week and apply it to future plans.

If you learn that a staff member struggled this week on a project and has similar tasks next week, you may need to make resource adjustments. Look at project/task progress and take the appropriate actions (prioritization and resource allocation) if you are falling behind.

Put yourself in the best possible position for your Monday morning planning session.

The links below are to my posting in the series “Time Management”.

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