Time Management Workshop 2008

Time Management Workshop
Presented by the Center for Teaching Effectiveness
November 5th 2008
Presenters
 Julie Lloyd, Doctoral Candidate, Biological Sciences
Lauren Miltenberger, Doctoral Candidate, Public Policy
Nick Galasso, Doctoral Candidate, Political Science & International Relations
Lydia Romano, Doctoral Candidate, Psychology

Listed below are highlights from the workshop's presenters.

Julie Lloyd – “Using a Life Rubric”

Julie demonstrated how to use a “Life Rubric,” which is designed to help individuals envision how they will reach the goals they set for themselves. Life Coach Susan Robinson developed the rubric and introduced it to Julie at last year’s Lilly East Conference.
 
To use the rubric (see below), insert all aspects of your life that you consider a priority. For instance, Julie talked about her career goals to become a professor, as well as her goals for her personal life, such as a happy marriage, good health, and strong finances.

After inserting your priorities, list where you desire to be in five years concerning each. Julie said that in terms of her professional aspirations, her goal is to be a respected and widely published tenure-track Assistant Professor. She also plans that in five years she will have a nicely remodeled home and will be happily married to her current boyfriend. Julie said that during this part of the exercise it is important to be idealistic and that we should orient our goals to the best possible outcome we can envision. It is also important for the rubric that our goals are self-driven, instead of reflecting what others may want for us. What exactly do each of us personally desire for our lives? 

Working from the right to the left (with the right column reflecting our most desirable outcomes), list the next possible scenario for each of our goals. That is, in five years what scenario for our lives would be satisfying, though not totally ideal.  Julie mentioned that her second best category might indicate that while she may have achieved her ideal professional goals, she may still be trying to remodel her home.

The final column to the left should indicate what our life looks like in five years if we fail to reach our goal for that area. For instance, for Julie this implied not having a tenure-track position, or being happily married, or still renting an apartment instead of remodeling a new home. 
       

Example of a "Life Rubric"- Where do you see yourself in five years?

Lauren Miltenberger - "Making Calendars"

Lauren discussed the importance of starting the semester by placing all of our commitments and responsibilities on a master calendar. She stressed the importance of placing just about everything that consumes our time on the calendar. For her, this includes her husband’s schedule, doctors appointments for her children, due dates for paper assignments, days she needs to pick up her children or when they have play dates. Listing everything that requires your time allows you to gain a big picture view of your life and semester. It also helps to indicate which weeks will be more stressful than others so that you can prepare ahead of time. For instance, by listing everything on her calendar, Lauren can plan ahead to have someone else pick up her children from school during the week's shehas exams.

After making a master schedule for the entire semester, Lauren can then extrapolate a weekly schedule.  

Some tips: Lauren suggests that we need to take care in estimating how long our various tasks will take before we put them on the calendar. In fact, she recommends putting estimated time lengths on the calendar itself. From there, she discusses the importance of remaining disciplined to our time limits so that we stay on course. This means, however, that sometimes tasks may not be perfect. This is the trade off, unfortunately, for being a busy and productive individual.

“Time Management Quiz”
Have you ever wondered, “Where does all of my time go?!” Lauren introduced a “Time Management Quiz” to helps us figure how we spend our time each week. The quiz asks us to list how much time we spend engaged in all of our activities. For instance, how much time do we spend commuting to work, answering email, preparing meals, grocery shopping, and working on school projects? From here, we can determine what is taking up our time and begin to manage it more effectively.

Where Does Time Go?  Take this quiz to find out

 A good place to start in improving time management is understanding your current situation.  Answer the below questions as honestly as possible to give yourself a clearer picture about how many hours a day you have to accomplish everything on your lists.

1. On the average, how many hours do you sleep in each 24 hour period?
2. On the average, how many hours a day do you spend on meals, including preparation and clean-up time?
3. How much time do you spend commuting to and from campus and how many times do you do this during a week?  Include the amount of time it takes to park and walk from your car or the bus stop to class.
4. On the average, how many hours a day do you spend doing errands?
5. On the average, how many hours do you spend each week doing co-curricular activities (student organizations, working out, volunteering, etc.)?
6. On the average, how many hours a week do you work at a job?
7. How many hours do you spend in class each week?
8. On the average, how many hours per week do you spend with friends, going out, watching TV, going to parties, etc?
9. How many hours a day do you spend on email, Facebook, the Internet?

The questions that ask about daily habits, multiply by 7, then add to that the weekly amounts.  Calculate your total hours from the above and then subtract it from 168 – which is the total number of hours in a week.  This is how many hours you have left to study, write papers, grade exams, etc.

Julie Lloyd – “Time Management Tool”

Julie introduced another rubric developed by Susan Robinson called the, “Time Management Tool.” This rubric allows us to design a workable timeline for the various projects ongoing in our personal and professional lives. The purpose of the rubric is to allow us to track our progress to ensure that we complete them on schedule. A nice feature of this approach is that it breaks our large projects into smaller, manageable tasks so that we avoid becoming overwhelmed.  

The rubric works by listing specific projects in the far left column and indicating a deadline for that project in the far right column. Working backwards from the project’s deadline, we place in each box the tasks that must be completed and when along the way towards finishing the whole project. For instance, Julie listed her dissertation as the first project on her rubric. Her deadline to submit the dissertation is January 2009. Working backwards she lists the smaller deadlines associated with completing the project, such as when she will submit chapters for review. While Julie’s rubric is listed by what she will complete month to month, the time-period can be adjusted to your specific project. For instance, if you plan to loose 10 pounds this month the time columns can indicate weeks instead of months.

Example of Time Management Tool

Nick Galasso “List Fundamentals”

Nick discussed certain fundamental points about making and keeping lists. His points were inspired and partially borrowed from life coach Brian Tracy.

First, it’s extremely to important to write down the things that you must accomplish throughout your day. This is largely psychological, as we often feel overwhelmed by all of the things we know we need to do. However, when we write things down we often realize that those things are not as daunting as they seem. Therefore, writing things down helps to lower our stress levels.

Second, one of the major problems people have with lists is that they fail to prioritize or rank the items on their list. The problem with this is that we often will do the things on our list first that are the easiest and often the least important. If, at the end of the day, we look at our list and all we’ve accomplished are the trivial items instead of the important things our stress level may increase. A good rule of thumb to help us rank order our lists is to imagine that we unexpectedly have to leave town tomorrow and we will not return for over a month. What are the items on the list that we must absolutely accomplish before we leave? Those items,  obviously, rank at the top of our lists.

Third, Respect the list! Practice discipline in regards to the lists we create. Do not stray from the list that you have made. Throughout our day things emerge and present themselves as issues or tasks that require our immediately attention. This threatens to disrupt our carefully planned days and potentially pushes our priorities into tomorrow.  When this happens, we must be able to confront the new task, write it down on our list, and rank its importance with respect to the other items.

Fourth, And what happens if we don’t finish our list at the end of the day? Transfer those things to tomorrow’s list.

Fifth, Schedule time to make your lists. Nick says that he often makes two lists, one on Sunday and one at the end of each day. The list he makes on Sunday contains all of the things he needs to accomplish for the week. At the end of each day he makes his list for the next day.