Last night the fabulous Expert Leadership Training came to impart all their wisdom about time management. We caught up with member Ryan Pilkington to see how he found it....

Time. It's something we all need more off. Ever said "there just aren't enough hours in a day"? Then this was the training for you! This training was a very important one for me, and for all of us. Time goes hand in hand with general organisation and organisation is what I want to be better at so I couldn't wait to start the training! None of us knew quite what to expect...

The training was given by Expert Leadership Training Limited. It covered exactly what we needed from the basics such as planning your time to the 1/3 2/3 rule. We got to know all about Biorhythms, procrastination and time lines. With extensive notes being made I began to feel confident that I could apply everything I was writing down to my everyday personal and professional life whether it be planning a day out or working on a new collection project. We learned about breaking big tasks down in to smaller tasks meaning that you can see yourself progressing through the task more easily and efficiently. This sounds simple but it's something I personally never do (I certainly will do now!). Pens and ears ready for more hints and tips the training suddenly got energetic!

Two groups. Two tasks. 20 minutes. Easy right? Wrong. I was on the team with a tyre and cone challenge. 3 cones. 5 tyres. The task was to move the 5 tyres from one cone to the other cone. However, only one person could move 1 tyre at a time and the tyre could only move to 1 cone at time. Also, the tyres were numbered from 1 to 5 and a higher number couldn't sit on top of a lower number when completed. So to simplify the tyres had to sit on the end cone with 1 being at the bottom and 5 being on the top.

All went well and by the end we had a good system going that was similar to a conga line but time caught both teams out! Through that exercise we learned to manage the time we had been given to complete a task, to plan at what we needed to ensure we would succeed. Valuable tips which we applied to the second challenge!

This time we didn't have to run. We were given a situation to solve which had issues that we had to work around. This taught us how to look at what our aims are.

To wrap the training up we looked at what the top tips were. These would help us all in keeping to schedule and how to plan efficiently. This training was definitely a much needed one for me and I feel that I can plan and achieve my goals easily now with proper planning time and time lines! Again this was a JCI training session not to be missed! My Filofax will definitely be following me around now to make sure I can stay on track and on time!

The next training session by JCI Sheffield will be Extempore Off The Cuff Speaking on the 19th June 2014. I'll see you there!