When I was doing a nationwide training program for senior level Navy managers, I learned a time management secret for staying on time in seminars that has helped me ever since.

It is called block-charting your units for time.

Lets say you have two hours for your program and 4 units to cover. That looks simple: 30 minutes per unit, right? Not so.

Youll need a ten-minute break between those hours, so youre down to 110 minutes of training time.

Youll need five minutes to introduce each unit, and five minutes to summarize.

You need to provide for questions and answers. Leave 5 more minutes per topic.

And if you want to evaluate the sessions, collect the evaluations, and adjourn, and that will take another 10 minutes.

That means youll have 10 minutes per topic to cover all of your basic information.

That, my friends, puts you in a horse race with the clock.

So, the way to stay on top of it is to block it by time:

9:00 Introduce Topic 1
9:05: Lecture Topic 1
9:15: Summarize Topic 1
9:20 Q & A
9:25 Introduce Topic 2
9:30 Lecture Topic 2
9:40 Summarize Topic 2
9:45 Q & A
9:50 Break

10:00 Introduce Topic 3
10:05 Lecture Topic 3
10:15 Summarize Topic 3
10:20 Q & A
10:25 Introduce Topic 4
10:30 Lecture Topic 4
10:40 Summarize Topic 4
10:45 Q & A
10:50 Evaluate Program
11:00 Adjourn

What happens if you get behind schedule?

Quickly, on the fly, you have to recalculate, cutting back here and there to apportion your remaining time so you hit the critical time markers, but reducing the break and evaluation times, as needed.

So, if youre running 10 minutes late in the first hour, the break gets cut to 5 minutes and evaluation time to 5.

Likewise, if you have robust Q & A, beyond the five-minute allotment, youll need to curtail introductory or summary times.

The key is to plan thoroughly, but tightly.

But note, there are two, non-negotiable times in training: your starting and finishing times.

Always, stick to them; its one of the earmarks of a professional!