Self-management and employability

Two things have stayed with me from the Project Management seminar I attended last month - to remember to allow time for others to respond when setting my deadlines and to value self-management as a top employability skill.
The value of self-management is something I shared with my students.
The speaker said the thing that drives employers mad about new graduates is the lack of time management skills. He said a lot of students form bad habits at uni. So students who are good at self-management have employability skills that are highly transferable.
He wasn't defining good time management just as always getting assignments completed on time - he recognised that sometimes things happen that are beyond our control and we miss deadlines. But he stressed that self-management was about how you communicate about what has happened and about making sure people who need to know what has happened know that.
That's an important message for students to take on board as they prepare to submit their final assignments for the semester. If things beyond their control have happened that are grounds for an extension or special consideration, they need to apply early, not wait until the assignment is due, or overdue, to ask. Tutors can often get them back on track to meet the deadline if asked for assistance in time. That's an important time-management skill to master.
The speaker also highlighted the benefits of drawing up a project plan, starting with a due date for project completion (insert assignment due date here) and working backwards to list the "milestones" you have to complete to get to the finish on time.
For each milestone, we had to list the tasks we needed to do to complete the milestone on time - an interesting project that didn't take long but was a good wake-up call. Most of us realised our milestones required not just work from us but from other people as well (e.g. interviewees? printers?) and we had to get moving right now to meet our targets with minimum stress on ourselves and others involved in the process.
That's advice that applies not just to study but to work situations, competition entries ... in fact to life. Time-management is something many stay-at-home parents become good at when out of the workforce - something to value and highlight on their resume because it indicates they have skills that employers think are important.
If we value what we learn at different stages of our lives we will have the confidence to inform others of the skills acquired.
Sometimes we have skills but don't know it.