Time Management - The Perspective of an Efficiency Freak

#SAVMP Week 10 ~ Time Management

With the ever intensifying demands of the jobs of educators, I believe the need for strong time management skills is more important than ever. I happen to be a weird sort of individual that is intrigued and challenged by increasing efficiency and finding better ways to do things to improve my productivity. I actually consider it a hobby of mine. Yes, I know that sounds bizarre, but I am extremely organized so this hobby fills my need for speed. 

So, George asked us to share advice and tips on time management for school leaders in our #SAVMP post for this week. I respond gladly.  {BIG GRIN}.

Here is how I do it, and I am constantly looking for aggressive ways to intensify my productivity:

1. Email

     Email seems to be one of the most challenging tasks for most people I know. I have glanced over some of my peer's shoulders to see upwards of 2,000 or more emails hanging out in the inbox of folks. OH MY STARS! That would give me nausea. 

     I approach email with a customer service mind. I try to respond to all emails within a 24 hour window. A response, for me, involves action of some sort. I either reply, delegate, file or convert to an action item every single email in my inbox. Action items are the emails that require the most time because I have to develop a document or rely on information from someone else to ultimately file that email. BUT, I star them or keep them hanging out in my inbox until they are completed so that I never lose sight of completing that task. This is how I manage to always meet deadlines and never allow things to fall through the cracks.

     AND, as a rule of thumb, I only touch an email twice. I might view it on my phone or just scan it during a busy day, but the next time I read that email I take an action step. That way I am not plagued by ever-mounting numbers of emails. I set boundaries for myself, such as I never allow my inbox to get past one page {I have my settings at 25 messages per page}. That way I am not ever overwhelmed by my inbox. 

     Filing emails is also a brilliant way of keeping them organized. This requires creating the folders in your inbox to manage them, but I can almost 99% of the time retrieve a conversation or a message that has aided me in numerous scenarios over the course of my career. 

2. Document management and naming conventions

     Again, this is easily done by the development of folders in your document storage location. I see clerical staff or other folks around me who store all of their documents en masse in the My Documents folder. They then struggle to retrieve documents because they must sort through hundreds, yes even thousands of documents. I have tons of folders where documents are sorted accordingly, and I can retrieve a document in seconds. Additionally, I ALWAYS use appropriate naming conventions so I never have to guess which version of a document is the newest. Naming conventions can be as simple as the current date like I might name this BLOG as a Word Document: Time Management_10_22_2013. 

3. Synchronized accounts    

     Synchronizing accounts is critical when leveraging social media for the benefit of education communication. I have my YouTube Channel synced with my Twitter which is synced with my FaceBook which is synced with my BLOG which is then synced with our district's My School App. One post can be simultaneously posted in multiple locations. This is a huge time-saver.

4. Scheduling with Google Calendar and Google Invites

     I believe Google Calendar has become my Holy Grail for staying organized. With the ability to send Google Invites, you can avoid tedious emails to individuals, and it keeps active rosters of who is attending events.

     Further, I schedule reminders that are sent to me via SmartPhone push notifications and email notifications. As long as I have my phone on me, I will get a reminder that says, "Morning Announcements in 10 Minutes." So, if I am engaged in a very important conversation in the breeze way at school, I can finish up our final comments and make my way to my next appointment. I adore this tool!

     AND, I schedule things that might get overlooked in my busy schedule. My GC will have blocks of time committed to Classroom Walk-thru's. If those items are not scheduled, I will get so busy that they fall by the wayside. I can not afford for that to happen.

     Google Calendar has so many other awesome features. You can click on a time that is mentioned in an email by someone and it will automatically post that as an appointment in your GC. Also, if you put the specifics of a location in the appointment, you can click on the link on your SmartPhone and it will take you to the navigation app. on your phone and take you directly to an appointment that is at an unfamiliar location. And who can forget the ability to SHARE calendars with your co-workers? That tool saves me and my leadership team time because we can all see each other's calendar and we never have to have that communication about when or where someone is. We know with the GC. I REPEAT. I love this tool!

5. Give and Take

     Lastly, I must say that I honor and respect that not all folks are efficiency junkies like me. Because of that, I recognize that many people can not take in the amount of information or even produce as much as I can in short amounts of time. I am very sensitive to this in my faculty. Just recently, at a faculty meeting, I gave the faculty exit cards and asked them for their feedback about what I could "take off their plates." Their plates are very full, and I want to assist them in being productive also. The feedback we got was amazing, and I was able to provide several avenues for workload reduction. That was a very cool thing.

Time management is critical for strong leadership--without it, a leader can drown in the morass of multi-tasking. I am always jonesin' for the next app or tip that is going to lead me to increased productivity. If you have some tips, send them my way.