Course Highlights

• Learn how to increase your efficiency while maintaining and improving your quality of life
• Complete an optional writing assignment and receive valuable feedback
• Receive personalized feedback from faculty and peers
• Explore the unique challenges many are now facing working from home and learn helpful strategies to stay focused and productive in the new hybrid world of work
• Understand how Generative AI can be leveraged to simplify tasks and increase efficiency
• Earn a certificate of course completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management

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Why attend Maximizing Your Personal Productivity?

Maximizing Your Personal Productivity will show you how to do more in less time. You’ll learn how to increase your efficiency while maintaining, or improving, your quality of life. This productivity course expands upon the principles covered in Bob Pozen’s best-selling book Extreme Productivity and is designed to help enhance your leadership and communication skills in any setting. You will also learn digital techniques that can help manage your career and your team.

Faculty lead the class through various hands-on exercises focused on efficient reading and writing. Prior to the course, you will also have an opportunity to complete an optional writing assignment and receive valuable personalized feedback. Multiple polls and self-evaluations are administered throughout the course with the goal of helping you better understand your individual goals and how to best accomplish them.

Pozen is joined by Ben Shields, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication, who shares best practices on effective presentations and general communication strategies by way of interactive exercises. This session concludes with personalized feedback from faculty and peers so that you may feel more confident delivering clear messages in the future, whether in person or in a virtual setting.

This productivity course will also explore the unique challenges many are now facing working from home, providing helpful strategies to stay focused and productive despite the blending together of personal and professional worlds. A special session on Generative AI will explore how this new technology can be leveraged to simplify tasks and increase efficiency.

"Since the Great Recession, many professionals have been facing more challenging schedules and more daunting to-do lists. This makes it all the more important for professionals to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively." —Bob Pozen, Faculty Director

Guest Speakers

Paul Baier

Paul Baier is CEO and co-founder of GAI Insights, an analyst firm dedicated to helping AI Leaders and their teams drive value with enterprise GenAI. He has led GenAI workshops for Harvard Business School, The Council on Foreign Relations, investor groups, and corporations, and his research was published by Harvard Business Review. His email newsletter has emerged as a "must read" by technologists, corporate executives, and investors and his weekly GenAI Learning Lab is the first of its kind.

Baier held a variety of founder and executive roles at VC-backed technology companies for 20 years. Notably, he was VP of Products at FirstFuel where he oversaw a team of data scientists and subject matter experts, product managers and software developers to develop an industry-specific AL that was transformative for the energy industry. He holds degrees from Harvard Business School and Kenyon College. In his spare time he enjoys reading and discussing the Great Books and spending time with his family.

Renee Fry

Renee Fry is the founder of Gentreo, a next-generation financial estate planning, web-enabled software solution. Fry, a Harvard Business School Rock 100 entrepreneur, graduated with honors from Pennsylvania State University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has served in the Massachusetts government cabinet as head of Business and Technology under Mitt Romney. This background has given her the business savvy and inspiration needed to create a company to help the tens of millions of Americans who need help to prepare, plan and protect all they love.

Course experience

This productivity course is designed to increase your personal productivity through a series of case studies, practical exercises, and background readings. Encouraging self-evaluation through polls and surveys, you’ll have ample opportunities to explore your work habits and learn through doing. At the conclusion of the course, you’ll be able to immediately implement the best practices and lessons learned.

Learn more about the in-person course experience.

Applying to the course

We accept enrollments until the offering reaches capacity, at which point we will maintain a waitlist. Many of the courses fill up several weeks in advance, so we advise that you enroll as early as possible to secure your seat.

You can begin the application process by using the blue 'Enroll Now' bar at the bottom of the screen.

Health and Safety

See our on campus healthy and safety policies.

Have questions?

Contact us if you would like to speak with a program director or visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to common questions about our courses.