Personal Time Management – How to Apply the OATS Principle | Video

Project Managers need to be able to manage their own time. So, personal time management (as opposed to schedule management) is an essential skill if you want to be effective.

I have written four best-selling books about time management and personal productivity. It’s a topic I’m well-known for in the UK.

Basis of My Approach to Time Management

And my own personal time management approach is based on two things:

• the core approach to Project Management
• our knowledge of human psychology

This leads me to my OATS Principle for personal time management. This has four steps and it scales to daily, weekly, monthly and even quarterly time management.

And it is also highly flexible. It’s easy to adapt the OATS Principle to the common circumstance of needing to deal with interruptions and the unexpected. And that’s something that a lot of standard time management systems don’t do.

So, in this video, I will take you through my OATS Principle for personal time management. And my promise is that it will make you a more productive professional, and a more effective project manager.

This video is safe for viewing in the workplace.

This is learning, so, sit back and enjoy

The OATS Principle

The OATS Principle follows a four-step time management process, based on the steps in project management:

• Outcomes (cf Goals and Objectives)
• Activities (cf Activities or Tasks)
• Times (cf Time estimating)
• Schedule (cf Scheduling)

I describe the OATS Process in full, in my books:

• Brilliant Time Management (How to Manage Your Time)
• The Yes/No Book: How to do less… and achieve more

And, both of these are best-sellers, published by Pearson

There is also a detailed description of this in our article: Personal Time Management for Project Managers

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