@hannagranier11
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Time Management Skills Training for Remote Workers and Freelancers
Tailoring Time Management Training to Suit Teams
Listen, I've been talking about this for the best part of two decades now and most companies I walk into still have their people scrambling like maniacs. Not long ago, I'm sitting in this shiny office tower in Melbourne's business district watching a team leader frantically jump between fifteen open browser tabs while trying to explain why their monthly goals are shot to pieces. Honestly.
The guy has got three phones buzzing, Teams messages going mental, and he's genuinely amazed when I suggest maybe just maybe this way isn't working. This is 2025, not 1995, yet we're still treating time management like it's some mysterious dark art instead of basic workplace skill.
The thing that drives me mental. Every second Business owner I meet thinks their people are "just naturally chaotic" or "lack the right mindset." Complete nonsense. Your team isn't faulty your systems are. And more often than not, it's because you've never attempted teaching them how to actually manage their time well.
What This Chaos Actually Costs You
Let me tell you about Emma from this creative studio in Melbourne. Sharp as a tack, absolutely brilliant. Could make magic happen with clients and had more creative ideas than the rest of the team combined. But good grief, seeing her work was like observing a car crash in slow motion.
She'd start her day checking emails for an hour. Then she'd dive into this huge project brief, get partially done, suddenly recall she must contact a client, get distracted by another email, start tackling a different campaign, notice she'd forgotten about a meeting, dash to that, come back to her desk completely frazzled. This pattern for the entire day.
The kicker? She was doing massive overtime and feeling like she was achieving nothing. Her stress levels were through the roof, her work standard was inconsistent, and she was planning to finding another job for something "simpler." At the same time, her coworker Dave was cruising through the same responsibilities in standard hours and always seemed to have time for a proper coffee break.
Why was Dave succeeding between them? Dave understood something most people never work out time isn't something that controls your day, it's something you control. Sounds obvious when you think about it, right?
What Succeeds vs What's Total Nonsense
Don't you switch off and think I'm about to pitch you another productivity app or some elaborate framework, settle down. Real time management isn't about having the flawless technology or colour coding your planner like a rainbow exploded.
The secret lies in three basic principles that most training programs completely miss:
Number one Priority isn't plural. Sure, I know that's weird grammar, but stay with me. At any specific time, you've got one priority. Not several, not three, only one. The second you start juggling "multiple tasks," you've already missed the point. Found this out the difficult way running a consultancy back in Perth during the infrastructure push. Assumed I was being brilliant handling numerous "urgent" projects simultaneously. Came close to ruining the Business completely trying to be all things to all people.
Second Interruptions aren't inevitable, they're a choice. This is where most Aussie workplaces get it absolutely wrong. We've created this culture where being "responsive" and "immediate" means reacting every time someone's notification sounds. Mate, that's not effectiveness, that's Pavlovian conditioning.
Had a client this legal practice on the Sunshine Coast where the senior lawyers were bragging that they answered emails within half an hour. Proud! At the same time, their productivity were down, legal tasks was taking way longer as it should, and their legal team looked like zombies. Once we created sensible email rules shock horror both efficiency and service quality went up.
Third Your vitality isn't unchanging, so stop pretending it is. This is my personal obsession, probably because I spent most of my thirties trying to ignore afternoon energy crashes with excessive espresso. Plot twist: complete failure.
Some jobs need you sharp and attentive. Different work you can do when you're tired. Yet most people allocate work throughout their day like they're some sort of work android that runs at full power. Absolutely mental.
Programs That Deliver Results
This is where I'm going to upset some people. Most time management training is total waste. Had to be, I said it. It's either too theoretical all frameworks and diagrams that look pretty on presentations but crumble in the real world or it's fixated on software and platforms that become just another thing to manage.
Effective approaches is training that acknowledges people are complicated, businesses are unpredictable, and ideal solutions don't exist. The most effective training I've ever conducted was for a mob of construction workers in Townsville. These blokes didn't want to hear about the Eisenhower Matrix or David Allen's system.
What they needed practical strategies they could apply on a construction site where chaos happens every moment.
So we zeroed in on three straightforward principles: batch similar tasks together, preserve your high performance periods for critical tasks, and learn to decline requests confidently about it. Nothing revolutionary, nothing complex. Within six months, their job finishing statistics were up a solid third, extra hours spending had plummeted, and injury compensation cases had nearly been eliminated.
Consider the difference from this fancy consulting firm in Brisbane that spent serious money on elaborate efficiency platforms and detailed productivity methodologies. After eighteen months, fifty percent of staff still wasn't following the processes effectively, and the other half was spending more time managing their productivity tools than actually getting work done.
Why Most Businesses Get This Wrong
The problem isn't that business owners don't recognise the need for better organisation. Most of them get it. The problem is they treat it as a universal fix. Send everyone to the same training course, hand out uniform solutions, expect the same results.
Complete rubbish.
I remember this production facility in Newcastle that called me up because their supervisors were constantly behind schedule. The General Manager was convinced it was a skills gap get the department heads some efficiency education and the issues would resolve themselves.
What we discovered was the real problem was that management kept shifting focus unexpectedly, the scheduling software was about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and the supervisors spent half their day in meetings that could have been handled with a five minute phone call.
Even the best organisational courses wasn't going to fix systemic dysfunction. We ended up overhauling their information systems and establishing effective planning procedures before we even touched individual time management skills.
This is what absolutely frustrates me about so many local companies. They want to fix the symptoms without addressing the underlying disease. Your people can't organise their work properly if your Company doesn't value efficiency as a precious commodity.
The Brisbane Breakthrough
On the topic of business time awareness, let me tell you about this software Company in Melbourne that completely changed my perspective on what's possible. Compact crew of about fifteen, but they operated with a level of time consciousness that put large enterprises to shame.
All discussions included a specific outline and a firm conclusion deadline. People actually arrived ready instead of treating discussions as thinking time. Email wasn't treated as instant messaging. And here's the kicker they had a Company wide agreement that unless it was truly critical, business messages ended at six.
Groundbreaking? Not really. But the results were outstanding. Workforce output was better than comparable organisations I'd worked with. Employee retention was almost perfect. And client satisfaction scores were through the roof because the work quality was consistently excellent.
The owner's mindset was basic: "We hire smart people and expect them to organise their tasks. Our role is to build a workplace where that's actually possible."
Contrast that with this extraction industry firm in Kalgoorlie where leaders bragged about their overtime like trophies of dedication, discussions exceeded timeframes as a matter of course, and "urgent" was the default status for everything. Despite having significantly more resources than the Melbourne startup, their individual output rates was roughly half.
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