Only you can decide what you spend your time on. Naturally, you’ll want to spend your time on things that add value to your life. But life is busy. As a mom and teacher, I’m always looking for tips for managing my time to get as much done as I can.
These tips for managing your time have helped me become more productive with my days and make all the tasks much more manageable – at home and at work.
If you’re looking specifically for time management tips for teachers, check out my post about how I manage my time as a high school English teacher.
Tips for Managing Your Time
Organize your work around your energy levels.
Your productivity levels are directly related to your energy levels, so schedule your hardest tasks for when your energy levels are at their highest.
Any low-value tasks that require little energy, such as responding to emails, can be scheduled for the times when your energy levels are lower. These high-level tasks usually depend on the person (and also get procrastinated on!) so reflect on what you don’t want to get done, and plan to check it off when you have high energy levels.
Make a plan for the day.
Before you go to bed, write a to-do list for the next day. This is one of my go to tips for managing your time as it has so many positive effects. When you plan ahead, you’re mentally preparing yourself for any challenges you may face. This will also help to limit procrastination at the start of the day and ensure that you work faster and more efficiently. AND you will get to let go of the mental load of everything you need or want to do so you’ll end up sleeping better the night before.
Start your day with the most important or hardest task.
When you start the day off by completing your most important task, you’ll give yourself a boost of momentum and a real sense of accomplishment. When looking at tips for managing your time, this is often called “eating the frog.” I really like this post from Better Up that gives tips on how to eat the frog and identify the tasks that are your “frogs” too!
Prioritize tasks. When every task is a priority, nothing is.
Urgent tasks should be the highest priority, then look at any high-value tasks, while relegating low-priority tasks to the back of the queue.
When thinking about teaching, my number one priority is to make sure that I am prepared for the next day’s lesson. That is always top and urgent priority – so making sure that my slides, copies, and supplies are ready for when I come in in the morning!
When thinking about my home, I make sure that we have all the items that we need to function throughout the week. Meal prepping and planning once a week helps with managing your time when it comes to meals!
Automate repetitive tasks.
Nowadays there is technology available that can help automate many of your tasks. There are tools to help automate tons of things – especially those that will help reduce the mental load. I’m thinking, knowing the logins to accounts. Thank you iPhone for remembering my password for me <3
I also automate certain supplies to be sent to our house monthly, such as using Grove Collaborative or Amazon to save myself the time of picking them up.
Cut out distractions.
When you are distracted, it can take a while to get your focus back. This can greatly limit your productivity.
Invest in a pair of headphones, as this makes others less likely to approach you when you have them on. Another thing that you can do is seclude yourself in a spot where people won’t bother you. For example, during my prep period, I will lock my door!
Realize that things don’t need to be perfect.
It’s easy to get caught up in trying to make everything perfect. However, perfectionism will slow you down and could result in deadlines being missed.
Having the attitude of “that’ll do” will save valuable time. Your work will be adequate, and you’ll finish in less time. When it comes to tips for managing your time, this one is hard for me to accept. But I find that once I get the bulk of the task done – the hard part, it’s easy to go back and make tweaks and fixes to it.
Time management can feel so hard to implement to save your sanity when you’re feeling underwater all the time. However, try just adding in one of these strategies and feel the impact. Then add more as you can!
