Time Management Fundamentals
Reclaim your focus and gain extra productive hours each week
Time Management Fundamentals is a concise, practical course taught by Dave Crenshaw on LinkedIn Learning that presents core productivity systems for organizing tasks and protecting focus. It emphasizes simple systems—gathering points, mind-clearing, and time budgeting—to help learners reclaim focused time and reduce mental clutter.
Designed for busy professionals, students, and freelancers, the course focuses on actionable habits you can apply immediately to email, calendars, and daily workflows. Expect concise lessons with practical exercises and quizzes aimed at building sustainable time-management behaviors.
At a Glance
Time Management Fundamentals is an introductory course that teaches practical productivity systems and techniques for managing work and personal tasks. Led by productivity expert Dave Crenshaw, it focuses on organizing your collection points, clearing mental to-dos, and budgeting time toward your most valuable activities.
| Level | Beginner |
| Rating | 4.7 out of 5 |
| Duration | 1+ hours |
| Languages | English |
| Certificate |
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| Access | Access for as long as your LinkedIn Learning subscription is active |
| Course includes |
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| Price | Subscription-based; included with LinkedIn Learning membership (free trial often available) |
What This Course Teaches
This course trains learners to implement practical time-management systems that reduce mental clutter and protect focused work blocks. Students will learn to establish organized gathering points, process tasks reliably using the “what/when/where” decision method, and budget time toward their most valuable activities.
How the Course Is Structured
The course is organized into 13 sections and a total of 52 short video lessons, structured around a brief introduction, three core productivity principles (space, mind, time), practical processing chapters, and a short conclusion and bonus story. Expect a concise, modular layout designed to be completed in roughly 1+ hours total, with each lesson focused on a single concept or technique.
Curriculum overview
01 Introduction ▾
Sets expectations for the course, explains the benefit of better time management, and shows how to use the exercise files.
02 1. Laying the Groundwork for Productivity ▾
Introduces foundational concepts, motivation for change, and the focus-chaos scale to frame later techniques.
03 2. The Great Obstacle to Productivity ▾
Explains the costs of multitasking and switchtasking and outlines the three core productivity principles that guide the course.
04 3. Productivity Principle 1: Space ▾
Covers how to inventory and consolidate gathering points such as inboxes, notepads, email accounts, and messaging tools to reduce external clutter.
05 4. Productivity Principle 2: Mind ▾
Describes mind-clearing techniques, scheduling for mental processing, and triggers to keep thoughts from occupying working memory.
06 5. Productivity Principle 3: Time ▾
Focuses on calendar selection and usage, protecting focus time, and techniques for saying no to protect priorities.
07 6. Preparing to Take Action ▾
Covers practical setup steps and the basic tools you need to start applying the course methods.
08 7. Gathering to the Inbox ▾
Demonstrates how to gather tasks and information into your chosen inboxes in different contexts, including at a desk and elsewhere.
09 8. Understanding Processing ▾
Teaches the what/when/where processing questions, filing approaches for paper and digital items, and how to run an initial processing session.
10 9. Processing Email ▾
Applies processing techniques to email, including using archive folders, filters, and distinguishing processing from casual checking.
11 10. Your Time Budgeter ▾
Explains how to identify your most valuable activities and allocate calendar time toward them using a simple time-budget approach.
12 Conclusion ▾
Summarizes next steps, customization tips, and how to maintain productivity improvements over time.
13 Bonus ▾
A short personal story from the instructor illustrating how organization and systems improved his productivity.
Audience & Requirements
The course targets learners who need practical, implementable time-management techniques rather than theory-heavy frameworks. It is best suited to professionals, students, and freelancers who want to reduce mental clutter, protect focused work time, and adopt simple processing routines with common tools.
- Busy professionals seeking to reclaim time and reduce overwhelm.
- Managers and team leads aiming to lower context switching and protect focus.
- Students, freelancers, or gig workers balancing multiple commitments and deadlines.
- Individuals building repeatable personal productivity routines.
- No special prerequisites or prior training.
- Access to a LinkedIn Learning subscription (or free trial) to view the course.
- A notepad (paper or digital) and a calendar/email account to practise the techniques.
Final Verdict
Time Management Fundamentals is a concise, practice-oriented introduction that delivers clear, actionable methods for reducing mental clutter and protecting focused work time. Recommended for busy professionals and learners new to formal productivity systems who want fast, usable techniques without a large time investment.
The course represents strong value for its scope given the platform’s positive reception and broad learner adoption, and the shareable certificate plus subscription access make it low-risk to try. It is less suitable for learners seeking an in-depth, research-driven treatment of organizational change or a multi-week coached program; treat this as a practical toolkit rather than a comprehensive certification pathway.
