Tip: Time Management for Instructors

Use the spreadsheet to plot out your average week, and then take a look at what your schedule is telling you. If you find you don’t have time to do what you value, that's a problem...

The time management activity I do with my students each semester is designed to help them chart out what an average week looks like - taking into account not just school commitments but also work, sleep, exercise, family/caretaking duties…everything. Even adult students who are very used to balancing competing responsibilities of work and family can struggle when asked to add in the complication of class time and homework. I have found this activity to be so successful for my students that I was talking with some colleagues recently about applying it to our own work. Given the many articles floating around about how challenging our schedules are, and particularly the emphasis in academic circles on how to maintain research or writing productivity in the midst of the pandemic, I thought an instructor version of the time management activity might be useful.

Obviously, your schedule is going to look different than my example instructor, who has 19 hours of essays to grade and only two hours of meetings this week. Use the spreadsheet to plot out your average week, and then take a look at what your schedule is telling you. If you find you don’t have time to do what you value, whether that’s committing to a regular yoga practice, writing a book, or preparing a promotion file, here are some thoughts…

Block time off in your schedule. Actually block it on your work calendar. Set up a recurring meeting of at least two hours dedicated to writing (or whatever your thing is that you need to do more of). The instructor in the example above has blocked off three separate 2-hour chunks of time to dedicate to writing. Putting this time in your calendar not only prevents other meetings or work from creeping in and taking over your time; it also adds a touch of external accountability. You may not want to sit down and write that grant application, but your calendar is telling you to do it, so…

Plot out time percentages. Another tip that I hear frequently from instructors who are trying to balance teaching duties with research or administrative duties is to set a specific number of hours per week for each category of work. For example, someone for whom teaching is 40% of their workload and research or administrative duties are 60% should only dedicate 40% of their workweek to anything teaching-related. This is challenging because it’s the class preparation and grading that tends to have the more immediate deadlines - but that’s somewhat the point. Grading and course prep will fill however many hours you are willing to give it. But in the end, if you are only being compensated for 40% of teaching time then you need to figure out a way to do fewer teaching-related duties so that your non-teaching work doesn’t suffer. That might mean fewer grading-intensive assignments or the careful use of materials from one semester to the next. It also might require balancing what courses you would love to teach versus what you have already prepped. There’s no one right answer to this balance - the point is that you’re thinking about and readjusting your balance as needed.

Think hard about priorities. I think the big picture is to think about what your actual work and life priorities are, and then take a look at what your schedule tells the world your priorities are. If they match up - if you have enough time to get your main priority items completed and only the items farther down the priority list get short-changed - that’s great. If you are constantly struggling to find time to revise a journal article or develop a new course, or you haven’t taken a walk outside in weeks…that might be a place where you are not living your priorities.

Figure out what to say no to. The logical downside to sticking to one’s priorities is learning to say no. There are some things we want to do, that we might enjoy doing, but that brings us very little long-term benefit. If your goal is to get promoted, or get hired into a new job, be realistic about what needs to be added to your CV in the next year to get you to that goal.