Maximizing Your Personal Productivity: How to Become an Efficient and Effective Executive

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

Designed for busy, experienced managers, this productivity training course will increase your efficiency by helping you:

• Prioritize your goals and align your time allocation better with your highest priorities
• Complete your high-priority projects efficiently by focusing early on the final product
• Develop techniques for moving quickly through low priority tasks like emails
• Hold shorter and more productive meetings with clear agendas and outcomes
• Manage your own team by learning how to delegate and set metrics for success
• Manage your boss by communicating regularly and adopting complementary styles
• Read with more speed and comprehension by focusing on what is most important
• Write more effectively by using outlines, the active voice, and strong connectors

Upon successful completion of your course, you will earn a certificate of completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management. This course may also count toward MIT Sloan Executive Certificate requirements.

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.