Harvard ManageMentor®

Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

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Harvard ManageMentor: Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

Discussion Topics

Setting daily priorities

Achieving daily priorities

Scheduling time more effectively

© Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

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Harvard ManageMentor: Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

Setting Daily Priorities

How do you set your priorities for a given day? How do you decide which tasks to do, and when to do them?

Are there approaches for setting priorities that would work best for our group? Why?

© Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

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Harvard ManageMentor: Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

Achieving Daily Priorities

What are some of the challenges to achieving the priorities you set in a given day?

Are there organizational processes that get in the way of getting the most important things done?

What are ways to overcome some of these barriers to achieving the priorities we set on our team?

© Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

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Harvard ManageMentor: Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

Scheduling Time More Effectively

What practical steps can we take to schedule our time more effectively? What tips can you share in using various scheduling tools, such as:

• “To-do” lists• Appointment calendars• Daily and weekly planners• Electronic scheduling software

What adjustments might we consider to our organizational processes that would result in better use of the team’s time?

© Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

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Harvard ManageMentor: Setting Your Daily Priorities and Schedule

Next Steps

Consider some of the specific steps you can take to help your team improve individual and collective time management skills.

Consider working through one or more of the Harvard ManageMentor tools, such as:

• “To-do” list• Worksheet for Breaking

Goals into Tasks

© Copyright 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.