Quotes & Sayings About Task Management

Second, this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company. Had the enormous task of making Notes Day a reality been shunted off on someone who didn't have the clout to throw muscle behind it - and not entrusted to Tom, who in turn recruited the most organized people in the company to help him - it would have been an entirely different experience. Employees wouldn't have bought into the idea because they'd sense that management hadn't, either. And that would have rendered Notes Day moot. — Ed Catmull

I hardly know so melancholy a reflection as that parents are necessarily the sole directors of the management of children, whether they have or have not judgment, penetration or taste to perform the task. — Sir Fulke Greville

Interestingly, Agile's scrum-team approach has its own way of aggregating some execution risk. For example, in a traditional "single task owner" approach, the risk of execution is not aggregated at all, leaving that task owner to add a lot of task-level buffer to self-insure and deliver on his commitment. In contrast, a 5-person scrum team aggregates the risk that any single individual will make slow progress, as the other four team members can often make up the deficit.

But why aggregate only up to the scrum-team level? Taking a lesson from the insurance industry, the more that risk can be aggregated, the easier it is to manage. Applied to projects, this will nearly always mean that it's better to aggregate risk at the project level. As a result, an Agile project can improve speed by avoiding sprint-level commitments. — Michael Hannan

Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined. If you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off and assign your VA to do that for you, it doesn't improve the order of the universe. — Timothy Ferriss

Two Dimensions of Executive Skills: Thinking and Doing Executive skills involving thinking (cognition) Working memory Planning/prioritization Organization Time management Metacognition Executive skills involving doing (behavior) Response inhibition Emotional control Sustained attention Task initiation Goal-directed persistence Flexibility — Richard Guare

By simply braking down the task into more manageable pieces much can be accomplished in a year. — Annika Sorensen

Task switching exacts a cost few realize they are even paying. — Gary Keller

Management and entrepreneurship are only two different dimensions of the same task. An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long. — Peter Drucker

Every minute we waste in frustration over a task that seems overwhelming is a minute subtracted from the time we've allotted to enjoy life. — Marc Mancini

Molly. I have an opportunity for you."
"An opportunity?" I repeated, without enthusiasm. Oh, good. Next comes the part where he tells me to be a "team player" and then dumps some tedious task on me.
"It's a chance for you to show that you can be a team player," Bill Vogel said. — Frankie Bow

Traditional project management focuses on task-level details and loses sight of the benefits projects aim to deliver. — Terry Schmidt

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird. — Anne Lamott

The news today that Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that reviews the security implications of the Dubai Port World's potential management of our ports is ludicrous and the entire Democratic Party is calling him to task for it. — John Conyers

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. — Peter F. Drucker

A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive. — Peter Drucker

Producing is a thankless task akin to hotel management. Unfortunately, there are not too many good hotel managers. — David Hemmings

Time Management Tips: One can make a radar-like sweep of the horizon to identify time and task challenges while these are still manageable and while we still have a choice. The organizational adage, "the more parts, the more trouble," also applies to words. Multiplying words may actually multiply the probability of being misunderstood; economies in expression (without being taciturn or aloof) not only save time, but usually are more honest and more clear. — Neal A. Maxwell

If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with all its negative long term effects, the fight or flight response still gives us energy, and if we know how to use that energy, then stress is potentially good, at least in the short term. — Gudjon Bergmann

The resource allocation task of top management has received too much attention when compared to the task of resource leverage. — C. K. Prahalad

We live in a world in which everything seems to needed now and working quickly is normally viewed as a positive attribute in the workplace...Do not let yourself become too frazzled and stressed by doing everything at high speed.

As I have coached hundreds of individuals in the workplace, I have discovered that we waste precious time by delaying and procrastinating. We might know that the work is very urgent and important but we still might find ourselves being slow to start the task. — Nigel Cumberland

Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances
all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal — George Dantzig

Our "default setting" is to be autonomous and self-directed. Unfortunately, circumstances - including outdated notions of "management" - often conspire to change that default setting and turn us from Type I to Type X. To encourage Type I behavior, and the high performance it enables, the first requirement is autonomy. People need autonomy over task (what they do), time (when they do it), team (who they do it with), and technique (how they do it). Organizations that have found inventive, sometimes radical, ways to boost autonomy are outperforming their competitors. — Daniel H. Pink

P R E S I D E N T Y O S H I D A'S T E N S P A R T A N R UlE S Hideo Yoshida's quest for management excellence was no doubt driven by his visions for Japanese marketing and media, but also by an overall worry about Japan's economic prospects after World War II. As a result, he developed a set of business and work principles, or rules, which he called the "Ten Spartan Rules": difficult work.5. Once you begin a task, complete it. Never give up.6. Lead and set an example for your fellow workers.7. Set goals for yourself to ensure a constant sense of purpose.8. Move with confidence. It gives your work force and substance.9. At all times, challenge yourself to think creatively and find new solutions.10. When confrontation is necessary, don't shy away from it. Confrontation is often necessary to achieve progress. These traditional work rules still guide Dentsu's employees, and are carried around in their notebooks — Anonymous

The Trojans lost the war because they fell for a really dumb trick. hey, there's a gigantic wooden horse outside and all the Greeks have left. Let's bring it inside! Not a formula for long-term survival. Now if they had formed a task force to study the Trojan Horse and report back to a committee, everyone wouldn't have been massacred.. Who says middle management is useless? — Adam C. Engst

To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. — Peter F. Drucker

The weird thing is that the more efficient, on task, on goal you are with your time, the more energy you have. Working with no traction, or for that matter simply wasting a day, does not relax you, it drains you.//
Strange as it may seem, when you work a daily plan in pursuit of your written goals that flow from your mission statement born of your vision for living your dreams, you are energized after a tough long day. — Dave Ramsey

Find out your most limiting tasks and deal with them as early as possible. Use a diary, and jot little points of reminder about specific tasks for reference later. — Israelmore Ayivor