Continuing its ongoing approach to benefit from the experiences of the staff members of various specialties and transferring the experiences and knowledge, the College of Public Health and Health Informatics held on Monday, 25/07/1437 H. corresponding to 02/05/2016 AD, a scientific lecture entitled " Techniques of Time Management". The lecture was presented by Dr. Nader Faik Fattouh, the specialist of health services quality management and the lecturer in the Quality Management and Health Services Department at the College of Public Health and Health Informatics at the University of Umm Al-Qura. The lecture was attended by many of the faculty staff members from different departments of the College.

Dr. Fattouh began the lecture by reviewing some general rules about time management techniques. He asserted that they are proper for those who complain about the lack of time dedicated for performance in proportion of the multi-tasks assigned to them, and they should not be simultaneously applied as it they themselves may be in a waste of time. Dr. Fattouh counted about 40 methods for time management, of which 20 methods will benefit all categories, while the 20 other ways benefits managers and team leaders.

Dr. Fattouh has then deepened to the details of those rules, including the selective reading, identify the important topics, prepare the lists of daily tasks, identify and put everything in place for easy access, prioritize the tasks, do important work along with several small and unimportant works at the same time, split large projects into parts, identify 20% of the important works that can lead to achieving 80% of the goals to focus on them, identify and take advantage of the "best time" throughout the day which is usually in early morning to carry out the necessary and urgent tasks, avoid procrastination and delay by using task analysis model according to importance and urgency, determine the maximum time to perform the tasks, complete at least one task a day, care about improving time management and review all this regularly.

Dr. Fattouh has also revealed several techniques of time management for managers. They included the rational management of the meetings by avoiding long and recurrent meetings, holding the meetings EOD, determining its duration, writing and distributing meetings minutes, identifying the tasks assigned to members and delegating the tasks to others to do them. Dr. Fattouh mentioned also that such techniques include reducing the time wasted in social visits and others; assigning the secretaries and subordinates to answer calls and emails; and so on.

At the conclusion of the lecture, a fruitful discussion was made between the lecturer and the attendants about several aspects of the topic. It included the interest paid by Islam to the matter time, encouragement to care about time and take advantage of it, not to throw time away and waste it, the use of modern techniques and tools to take advantage of time, time management outside working hours, adapting the work environment to take advantage time and increase productivity, identify wasted time according to each environment and be ready to be avoid it, the impact of the eastern culture and customs on throwing the time out and how to change to avoid wasting time, etc.