Personal time management for busy managers

Personal time management is about controlling the use of your most valuable (and undervalued) resource. Consider these two questions: what would happen if you spent company money in the same way as you spend company time? When was the last time you reviewed the way you use your time?

Without personal time management there are last minute rushes to meet deadlines, meetings which achieve nothing, days which seem somehow to go by unproductively, crises which come unexpectedly from nowhere. This sort of environment leads to stress and poor performance: it must be stopped.

Poor time management is often a sign of over-confidence:

techniques which used to work with small projects are simply reused with large ones. Working inefficiently was perhaps unimportant in the small role, but it becomes unacceptable in the large one. You cannot drive a motorbike like a bicycle, nor can you manage a supermarket chain like a market stall.

By Gerard M. Blair

The writer was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and is now a design engineer with Agere Systems in Allentown, Pennsylvania. E-mail: gerard@ieee.org

1. Number the paragraph summaries in the correct order. Two of the summaries are not used.

a) Bad time management can be the result of too much confidence in your own abilities.

b) Time can be wasted in supermarkets.

c) Bad time management leads to a number of problems.

d) Check your own time management.

e) Use a motorbike to drive to work and save time.

2. Use the correct form of words from the article to complete the definitions.

a) If something is not given enough importance, it is under--------

b) If days go by when no work is done, they pass un --------

c) When you feel too certain of your ability to do something, you are over- -------

d) If you do something in a way that wastes time, you do it in---------

e) If a situation cannot be accepted, it is un-----------

Over to you

How would you answer the two questions in the first paragraph?

Unit 15 Planning

Town planning.

Level of difficulty **

Before you read

Should town planners continue to build new towns or should they spend more time renewing older areas like city centres? Why?

Reading

Read this article from the Financial Times and answer the questions.

Hope for dying housing estates

What can be done with the rows of houses that lie empty in towns and cities across the north of England? They were built for the working classes who walked to work in nearby factories, but they have become prisons for owners who have seen their homes' value fall as social problems have increased.

The traditional approach has been to demolish such areas and start again. But an alternative approach among housing experts is to sell the properties for next to

nothing, in the hope that a new wave of owners will improve the area, helped by public spending.

In one such scheme, 10 pairs of flats in North Benwell, Newcastle, were put on the market for 50 pence each. After demolishing hundreds of local houses, Newcastle city council hoped the sale would help to transform the environment for the remaining 1,300 homes. Two years later, it looks as though the scheme may be working.

There were more than 100 potential buyers for the flats, even though they had to promise to spend £12,000 on converting each pair of flats into five-bedroom

35 family homes. The city council committed itself to spending a further £25,000 on improving each pair of flats.

Chris Tighe

From the Financial Times

1. Use the correct form of words from the article to complete the statements.

a) A way of solving a problem or dealing with something is a particular ---------- .

b) Money spent by the government is -----------.

c) Another word for plan is ---------- .

d) If houses are knocked down and destroyed, they are---------. e) If a plan changes the situation completely, it------------. f) If you promise to do something, you ---------- yourself to doing it.

2. What do these numbers in paragraphs 3 and 4 refer to ?

a) 10

b) 50 pence

c) 1,300

d) 100

e) £12,000

f) five

g) £25,000

Over to you

Do you know of any town planning schemes like the one described in the article? Have they been successful? Why or why not?

Unit 16 Managing people

The company song.

Level of difficulty **

Before you read

How do you get in the mood for work?

Reading

Read this article from the Financial Times and answer the questions.