Where did summer go? Time, which stretches endlessly in moments of boredom or obligation, is inexplicably compressed when we have complete autonomy over how we spend it. I know, though I hardly dare say it out loud, that we will soon be wondering where the fall semester went. Then the spring semester. Then the academic year.
Time is always the same and it never seems to be enough.
For many of us, time management is not an innate skill. It’s an exercise we do daily, sometimes failing and starting over the next day. Below, I’ll raise some questions to ask yourself and share some ways of managing time that have worked for me – and helped me troubleshoot when I’ve gotten off track.
How do you fill your day? Of the many analogies that exist to make time more concrete and thus more manageable, one of my favorites is the jar filled with rocks, pebbles, and sand. In this analogy, rocks are the biggest things in life – things like your dissertation or thesis, your most important relationships, your publications, or major life events. Those are the things you need to put in your jar first because they take up the most space and are the least flexible.
Pebbles are smaller tasks or priorities, things you need to get done that require a deadline or significant effort but fit between the larger stones. Pebbles can be things like the lesson you’re planning for tomorrow’s class, the pile of marking you need to get done by a deadline, or your leisure plans for the weekend.
Sand, on the other hand, is in large quantities. If you pour it into your glass first, you won’t have room for rocks or pebbles. You’ll prioritize things like email, data entry, or doing laundry. These may be necessary things – they may even be fun things, like watching your favorite show for the umpteenth time – but they will never end. Email will survive the zombie apocalypse and the extinction of the sun.
Think of all the big and small priorities and tasks that make up your professional and personal life. Categorize them as rocks, pebbles, or sand. Then move on to the next step.
How do you plan your day? In When: The scientific secrets of perfect timingDaniel H. Pink shows how the time we choose to do a particular activity has complex implications for its success or failure. Imagine a graph where the Y axis represents performance and the X axis represents the time of day. Performance increases to a peak, then drops to a low point, then increases again until it increases again. The times of day this happens may vary from person to person, but the overall pattern is consistent.
You may already know if you’re an early riser, a night owl, or somewhere in between. If you’re not sure, you can track your energy levels for a week or two and use that data to create your own performance graph over time. You’ll likely find that your schedule follows a pattern similar to this: You wake up, peak two to four hours later, dip three to five hours after that, recover three to five hours after that, and fall asleep about two hours later. With an example start time of 7 a.m., this cycle can be represented numerically as 7, 9–11, 2–4, 7–9, 11.
Return to your list of rocks, pebbles, and sand. You can use your performance graph over time to create an approximation of your ideally productive day. Rocks and pebbles go into the peak or the rebound; sand gets dumped into the trough and wherever else it fits; the most important things get done and the least important things don’t get out of control.
Another of my favorite time management analogies, “eating the frog,” fits well into this model. For those who don’t know the famous Mark Twain quote, “If your job is to eat a frog, you’d better do it first thing in the morning. And if your job is to eat two frogs, you’d better eat the biggest one first.” Whether you put a rock in your glass during your peak performance period or eat the frog early in the day, you’re taking care of the biggest, most difficult, most important, and perhaps least motivating task first.
We all know that life doesn’t always follow our ideal schedule. Knowing when you’re naturally more ready to tackle big and difficult tasks and when you’re not can help you compensate when you’re forced into more demanding time management. Compensating might mean drinking an extra cup of coffee, taking a brisk walk, sleeping a little longer, or doing something else that gives you an energy boost when you need it most.
How do you limit your time? If you’re anything like me, you’ll sometimes find that a task takes up so much of your time that it fills up the time you have available – and then some. I believe the opposite is also true: By strategically limiting the time we have available, we can also limit the amount of time we spend engaging in a particular task.
You can do this in many ways. I follow Paul Silvia’s example and “leverage the terrible power of habit” to achieve writing goals by regularly blocking time in my calendar. I keep morning and evening routines to reduce decision fatigue at the beginning and end of each day. I use templates to create my lessons and apply constraints to my presentations. When all else fails, I set a timer and aim for the minimum viable product in a certain amount of time.
If you have ever taught people, you probably know what happens when you give them a completely open task with no clear criteria for success. Instead of the originality expected, they usually deliver a chaotic and unfocused work product. Applying constraints allows creativity to flourish within these limits. As with students, you can limit the time you spend advising and helping by defining a desired outcome before you begin.
One result of this strategically limiting practice is the article you are reading now. It began as a breakout session on time management that I ran for new teaching assistants in mid-August. The same general principles were reframed and edited for a new audience who, like me, may be in a perpetual battle with time and the need to get things done.
What tools do you use? Tools need to serve the user, and you should use a tool that motivates you to regularly take time to plan ahead. Individual tools depend on the person using them – they are not universally helpful and are less transferable than the strategies I outlined above.
However, if you get inspired by seeing mythological creatures darting across your computer screen as you complete an important task, I recommend Asana. If you want a print system that promises to organize the rest of your life while keeping it locked in, I recommend Jibun Techo. These tools allow me to plan my week in advance every Friday, which helps me get into weekend mode.
Speaking of remembering one’s life, searching for lost time is less about regretting what we didn’t do and more about understanding what we did. As my colleague’s upcoming workshop promises, “I know what I did this summer.” Rather than lamenting the book that wasn’t written, the archive that wasn’t visited, or the experiment that wasn’t conducted, we should use this fleeting transition period between summer and fall to take stock of the lives we actually lived over the past three months. Of course, we don’t live in Marcel Proust’s dreamlike memory world, where time can be bent to the will of a child who doesn’t want to go to bed. Nevertheless, I maintain that time is not wasted; it is merely allocated. Where have you spent your time?
