Manage Your Time or Time Will Manage You: Strategies That Work from an Educator Who's Been There

Strategies That Work from an Educator Who's Been There

PJ Caposey

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781416626688
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Gestión del tiempo

You have a daily to-do list consisting of several dozen items. You're always busy, but you never really feel productive. You know what you need to get done, but you can't figure out where to start. You routinely agree to help others with their tasks but can't make headway with your own work. Sound familiar?

If you've ever felt (or been told) that you have a time management problem, award-winning educator PJ Caposey has a revelation to share: you probably don't. Sure, you may struggle to meet deadlines or stay on top of your myriad responsibilities as an educator, but these aren't signs that you can't manage time—they're symptoms of underlying issues you may never have noticed or thought to address.

In Manage Your Time or Time Will Manage You, Caposey identifies eight root causes of "time management difficulties" and provides treatment in the form of advice, support, and coping techniques for teachers and leaders who are

• Work Avoidant
• People Pleasers
• Prisoners of the Moment
• Checklist Dependent
• Disorganized
• Technology Avoidant
• Self-Servers
• Perpetually Imbalanced

Time management is a complex and personal issue best addressed through deep self-reflection or caring and thoughtful coaching. This book offers a blueprint for both. It will help you better understand yourself and the behaviors of those you work with or lead, promoting more productive teaching and leadership—and greater peace of mind.

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Chapter 1

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Work Avoidant

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Being work avoidant does not make you lazy. This is extremely important for everyone to understand. Being work avoidant simply means moving forward while ignoring key pieces of work that either do not interest you or are intimidating for some reason.

This book won't fix someone who is simply unwilling to do the incredibly complex work that educators must engage in daily to improve student outcomes. Rather, it is designed to help people better understand their own behaviors and create strategies that will allow them to better manage their time and, ultimately, lead to more productivity as leaders. It also provides practical solutions for people who are doing this great work—but doing it with a dramatic amount of stress. This is for the passionate educators and leaders who find themselves working an inordinate number of hours or are tired of having to approach their supervisor for extension after extension on key deadlines.

When I was growing up, my father would retreat to his home office approximately once a month with a pile of mail and a checkbook. Everyone in the house would take notice. There would be a series of phone calls, my mother would be called in a handful of times, and about three hours later my father would emerge. This end result usually went one of two ways. Either my father would rejoin us in a great mood, or he would emerge grumpy and we would be notified that the next few weeks were going to be "tight" (my father's code for "we're broke").

As I grew older and would rush to the mailbox as soon as the mailperson came in hopes of finding a magazine for me, I started to recognize what pieces of mail were bills that went into the pile that was set aside for my father's retreat. I remember thinking to myself when I was around 15 years old that it made no sense to keep those bills in a pile for weeks until an arbitrary day to pay them all came around. I vividly recall thinking how stressful that must have been in the weeks leading up to that day. Whenever we spent any money as a family, it must have been painful to think if that expense was going to make the next month's retreat painful or blissful for my father.

Fast-forward 10 years. I am 25 years old and doing my own bills on the floor of a house I could barely afford. I had fallen into the same cycle. Collect the bills all month and then ruin one Sunday morning as I figured out how broke I was. I can assure you that as a second-year teacher, it was often true that I was broke—very broke. I was trapped in my father's cycle not because it was what had been modeled for me but because I was afraid to open the envelopes when they were delivered. I was terrified of what the bills would show me. Instead of accepting the data of the bills immediately and then determining the next course of action, I waited until the last possible moment to open everything at once. In essence, I chose to feel a large amount of pain all at once instead of feeling a little bit of pain consistently. This is a very human tendency. We do it all the time!

For instance, if you have a wedding (or other event) you want to look great for in six months, you could try and lose four pounds per month—which is sizeable but eminently doable. Instead, most people do nothing for five months and then kill themselves the last four weeks trying to get the results they want. A lot of pain in a short amount of time is chosen over a little pain over a longer amount of time.

Housecleaning is another area where we all like to procrastinate. We all want to live in a nice, orderly living environment. We could spend 15 minutes a day before work, after work, or before bed straightening and potentially spot-cleaning one room. Alternatively, we could do nothing on those days and spend three hours every Sunday morning cleaning the house when we could be out for a walk, enjoying time with our family or reading a book. We choose to spend more time in a more intense way all at once instead of doing a little bit of work every day.

What does all of this mean and what does it have to with education? If each of the scenarios presented above—and the education-specific scenarios described throughout this chapter—make you react by saying, "Oh, my gosh, that's me!" then you may in fact be work avoidant and need to take steps to increase your productivity and decrease your personal stress. This is an important realization. Having "time management" issues is often perceived, and in some cases internalized, as lazy behavior. It is important to realize that such issues are incredibly draining and stressful to the person exhibiting the problematic behavior(s).

Signs You Are Work Avoidant

Almost everyone at work has some type of recurring deadline. For some, it may be turning in lesson plans every other Tuesday. For others, it may be turning in expense reports once a month. For still others, it may be loading lesson artifacts to the school website at the end of each school week. Whatever the recurring deadline looks like for you, odds are good that you have one. Although it is 100 percent possible to be work avoidant without a recurring deadline, such events provide a clear manner to discuss work avoidance.

As a superintendent of schools, I firmly believe in the value of proactive and clear communication. As a result, I mandate that each of my principals and department leaders sends out a weekly preview every Friday, detailing upcoming events to the building, extending thanks for extra effort, providing a few links to suggested reading, and including whatever else they believe people will find of value. I also do something similar with my bosses, the members of the board of education. Not only do I think this is a valuable exercise on behalf of those whom we serve, I also believe it helps focus us as leaders on what is truly important and keeps us always looking forward.

When I first made the weekly preview a performance expectation, many of my leaders had a look of dismay on their faces. Within a few months, many came to see its benefit and recognize that it came without a great deal of additional stress. I said many, however—not all. One leader continued to struggle to get the preview done before the end of business on Fridays. Sometimes it would come out on Saturday, sometimes on Sunday, and sometimes the weekly preview would come out Monday afternoon. Clearly, something was not working.

When I called him in to discuss the situation, I expected to hear that the weekly preview was not something he valued or cared about. I was wrong. Instead, it was something he cared deeply about but was causing him a great deal of stress. I asked how often he thought about the preview, and he replied that he thought about it every day. He sent himself email reminders, set aside time in his calendar, and even created a folder to collect potential topics until he was ready to create the document.

Because of this, I finally realized that work avoidance often has little to do with a perceived level of importance or laziness. It has much more to do with and is often the manifestation of one of four key levers triggering the behavior: skill deficits, grit, confidence, and the ability to self-monitor and self-correct negative behaviors. And the more of these triggering behaviors you have in a given situation, the more likely it is that the manifested behavior is one of work avoidance. Finally, keep in mind that what creates work avoidance within us is also what creates work avoidance among our students.

Skill Deficits

It is difficult to convince someone to complete a great deal of work in an area in which they do not feel skilled or accomplished. As a result, complex work is often avoided instead of practiced. This is a phenomenon that exists both within and outside education; however, there are additional pressures within education. As a building leader, there is a certain level of expected expertise. Likewise, as a teacher, there is a certain level of competency expected when it comes to curriculum, instruction, and content mastery. These expectations compound the stress normally felt with any level of skill deficit.

In my experience, areas in which a skill deficiency often leads to work avoidance include the following:

• Curriculum
• Instruction
• Best Practice
• Special Education
• Technology

These are areas where there are often not correct answers. It is easy to implement something that is black and white—that only has correct and incorrect answers or ways to approach the problem. By contrast, gray areas cause people to slow down, carefully consider their decisions, and often grind to a halt when they are not confident in their own judgment and abilities.

Grit

Grit is a concept that has been popularized within education during the last several years and is often discussed in conjunction with Carol Dweck's work regarding growth mindset. Dweck (2006) stated, "Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It's about seeing things in a new way. When people … change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support" (p. 254). Grit is simply the ability to fail forward and keep going. This is a skill being discussed and taught to children in many schools, but it should also be a focus for the adults in the building.

Grit dovetails with work avoidance since those who struggle to persist after a failure generally avoid completing that work again. This rings especially true for me and home repair work around the house. I recently attempted to mount a new television on the wall. I did everything the right way—just as I was taught. I went to drill a hole in a stud and instead went directly through the drywall, completely missing the stud. Instead of persisting, I quit until a friend came over later in the day to help. It turns out that I missed the stud by less than a quarter of an inch. If I had persisted, remeasured, and tried again, I would have successfully completed this task. Instead, I avoided the work. I found an easier way out. Paraphrasing Todd Whitaker (2012), I found a path of less resistance and pushed the work (and my stress) on to someone else. Instead of having grit, I shifted the monkey.

Confidence

Confidence does not always reflect ability. It often does, but occasionally it does not. For instance, anyone who plays sports has, at one time, had a teammate who had incredible confidence but little else to contribute. Likewise, it is possible to have tremendous ability but lack the confidence necessary to demonstrate your gifts. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are teachers and leaders with great expertise in pedagogy but are too afraid to share their talent with their teammates or other teachers.

Just as an abundance of confidence helps people take risks and tackle large projects, a confidence deficit can serve as an inhibitor. In some cases, this can lead to work avoidance. A lack of confidence and self-esteem also negatively affects educators before they even enter the workforce. Lois Frankel (2004) has noted that people with low self-esteem often try to remain under the radar because they don't want to be noticed, but this is the wrong thing to do. To excel in education means we need to do everything possible to help ourselves grow (i.e., mitigate our weaknesses and build upon our strengths) and add value to the organizations and people we serve. Trying to stay unnoticed does not help accomplish either of those goals.

Ability to Self-Monitor and Self-Correct

There is nothing worse than putting time and energy into a project only to receive feedback that it was not satisfactory and you need to begin your efforts anew. This has happened to all of us at some point—either in our careers or personal lives. Thinking back to my dissertation, I cannot count the number of times I wrote what I thought were 12 great pages only to delete them after peer revision or professor feedback. That cycle of starting and stopping eventually grows tiresome and makes starting over more and more difficult. I felt myself wanting just to avoid the work altogether. As I developed and gained more skills, however, I began to notice what I was doing that would ultimately cause me to delete multiple pages of text and start over. As a result, I learned to self-correct.

Over time, the revisions and feedback my peers and professors provided became much less painful, and I did not feel a sense of dread when I sat down to the computer. In other words, my slowly growing desire to avoid doing the work ceased as my ability to self-monitor and self-correct grew. Being able to self-correct means there is a clear understanding of the desired outcome and the best approach to achieving that goal.

In each chapter of this book you will find two recurring sections: Coping Mechanisms and Solutions. The intent of the Coping Mechanisms section is to provide some quick fixes that will help you be more productive and efficient at work, less stressed, and better able to meet deadlines and expectations. This is the aspirin to take care of your symptom—time management—that is growing out of a bigger underlying challenge. The Solutions section helps you look for the cure to that bigger ailment. We will dig deeper into the root causes and provide research-based guidance for addressing more complex problems.

Coping Mechanisms

Eat the big frog first. Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you had to do each day was eat a live frog, then the remaining tasks would seem simple. Nothing could be as bad as that first thing. This concept has been discussed many times over the years and has been popularized by Brian Tracy (2007). Tracy extends Twain's thoughts to discuss the concept of eating the big frog first. Simply stated, if you are faced with an undesirable decision on one hand and a horrific, dreaded decision on the other, make the horrific decision first. After that, the undesirable decision will not seem so bad.

This speaks directly to work avoidance. Do you have an email pinned to the top of your inbox that you still have not acted on? I'm talking to you. Do you have a deadline to meet but are carrying on with other nonessential tasks instead of buckling down and doing the work? I'm talking to you. Eating the big frog first is about understanding that work avoidance does everyone a disservice, especially the one avoiding the work. They put themselves in a lose-lose situation, and the only way out is to eat the big frog.

Make sure your calendar matches your priorities. Nearly everyone I know keeps a calendar of some sort. Some are the pocket variety, some are portfolios, but most people depend on electronic support (e.g., Outlook, Google Calendar) to help them organize their life. However, many people do not take the time to think about, much less write down, what their priorities are. This may seem like a simple task, but it's incredibly important. List your priorities, such as family, friends, faith, profession, and health, in varying combinations and rank order. Then, looking at the big picture, determine whether your schedule matches those priorities. For myself, I know that nowhere on my list of priorities is nonprofessional use of social media, but I know that on a weekly basis (at least), I find myself buried in social media instead of interacting with my wife and kids. I suspect I am not the only one.

Looking through a smaller lens than our overall priorities, we can examine our main concerns professionally. Do we match our calendars (and thus our time) on the areas that have the biggest impact on our overall success? As educators, this boils down to whether we spend the majority of our time working to ensure we are doing everything we can to best serve our students. Taking the time to consider personal priorities is a great place to start better managing our time and ensure we are tackling the most critical and complex tasks that continue to confront us.

Schedule flextime. One of the greatest joys of working on time management skills is the realization that you can, in fact, manage your own time. Taking back control of one major element of your life can serve both to embolden us and encourage growth in other areas. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have discretionary time built into our crazy schedules. For example, every educator I know, from paraprofessionals to teachers to administrators, says they could do a better job of communicating home—particularly the good news. It is eminently possible to block off a half-hour every two weeks for this sole purpose. In fact, it is possible to do much more than that if we have the courage to take back our calendars and intentionally schedule flex- or discretionary time to focus on priorities and goals.

Personally, I schedule time each week to think. That's right. I sit at my desk and think. Sometimes I read; other times I sit silently. It may seem unproductive, but I have found it to be the most beneficial time I spend each week. I organize my thoughts, focus my actions, and ensure I am working to make progress each day instead of just making it through the day. That concept—attacking the day—is essential to time management. Either you do the work, or the work does you. How you manage your time dictates which direction that battle will go.

Seek out an accountability partner. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is the gift of accountability. Let's face it: as humans, we are pretty poor at holding ourselves accountable. There is no better example than physical fitness and health. Science and the media have demystified how to attain (and retain) the physique we want. The knowledge is readily available, and for the vast majority of people, the solution is possible. Still (at least in the United States), we are more overweight than ever before. What gives?

In short, there is a gap between knowledge and execution. That gap is the ability to hold ourselves accountable to our goals. In fact, in some cases, we are s...