Time management

Time management is something that began to worry me about a year ago – I wrote about it here. At the time, I felt I was doing well with it so far, but I was about to take on extra work due to a colleague leaving; that, and the general busy nature of my workplace, made me begin to think about whether I needed to improve. Working in a small campus library, my tasks and responsibilities cover a wide range of areas, from subject liaison to line management (and a bit of acquisitions and serials in the middle!), and so it’s really important for me to organise my workload well to ensure that I stay on top of everything, when I am moving between so many different things – particularly when we are doing a lot of project work for our eventual closure and move to the main campus. I am worried about losing or forgetting things, and can identify a few occasions over the past year where I’ve not been happy with my time management. My line manager doesn’t think I have a problem, but at my insistence, improving my time management is appraisal objective for me, as well as one of the objectives on my Chartership PPDP, so when an internal time management course was offered for staff at my institution, I took the opportunity to attend. 

I usually like to write really positive reflections on courses that I attend, but this one unfortunately didn’t tell me that much that I didn’t know already! I was hoping not just for tips on time management, but for some ideas about tools we could use; I have tried Nirvana but didn’t get on with it, so was hoping for some more ideas – but when I asked the course presenter about these tools, she looked blank. She had never heard of Nirvana and knew of no others, and suggested that Outlook calendar is a good tool to use, but that there was no need to use technology if we didn’t find it useful. I agree that we shouldn’t use online tools for the sake of it, if they don’t work for us, but I expected someone teaching a course on time management to at least be aware of them! 

There is one way in which the course has been quite useful, and that is in helping me to think about how to prioritise my work and create a more effective to-do list. I was already using my Outlook calendar to block out time, add reminders to myself, and plan my work in order to meet deadlines, as well as written to-do lists, but I was aware that I wasn’t always reflecting priority in these. The trainer introduced us to a matrix from The seven habits of highly effective people, in we considered what of our work was important and urgent (i.e. the stuff that needs to be done right now), urgent but not important (i.e. something which someone asks you to do urgently, which may be important to them but not to you), important but not urgent (i.e. the long-term stuff: strategic planning, training and CPD, admin etc.), and neither important nor urgent (so why are you doing this work?) (Covey, 1989). The trainer pointed out that if we don’t spend time on the important but not urgent stuff, it will eventually become important and urgent, potentially causing us stress and pressure and not being done as well as it could be. This is something that I realised I needed to work on; I tended to plan the important and urgent work well, but not pay so much attention to the important but not urgent tasks. I often put some of them into my Outlook calendar, but if they were pushed aside by something urgent/important (or something urgent/not important), I tended not to reschedule them. Since attending the course, I have spent  more time considering the important/non-urgent work that I do, making sure I schedule it in, and re-scheduling for another time soon i.e. the next day it if it absolutely has to be put aside for something urgent. The trainer pointed out that we need to consider the impact on our workload when asked to take on a non-important urgent task, but this is something at which I was quite good already – I am comfortable telling someone if I can’t do the thing they’re asking me to do straightaway, and giving them a time or date by which I will able to do it. As well as considering my long-term workload in a more effective way, this matrix has also helped me to write my to-do lists in priority order, based on thinking about my tasks in terms of these four boxes.  

I am going to share this useful aspect of the course with colleagues when I help to run a staff development session on time management soon.

A couple of weeks ago I had this year’s performance development review (appraisal), and discussed my reflections on the occasions where my time management had not been so good, and my desire to keep it as an objective, with my line manager, who did not share my concerns. When we looked at feedback from colleagues, it was interesting to see that most of them had said that I was very organised, with one of them even picking out a project as an example of this, which I had picked out as an example of my poor time management! I am now starting to wonder whether my time management is actually much better than I believe it to be. Even so, I think I would like to continue to work on improving my time management skills, in particular my ability to prioritise well and to devote some time to the long-term aspects of my work, as hopefully this will help me to feel calmer and more in control of things; even if all appears fine to my colleagues, and is in fact fine, I sometimes feel flustered or like I’m about to forget something important!

I’d love to hear your time management tips; have you found any tools which really work for you? And does anyone else worry about their time management?

Time and life management for a new professional, or why I haven't blogged in ages!

I have been neglecting my blog recently. I haven’t posted anything in ages and I’m not even checking my stats or comments. My excuse is that I have been extremely busy in the past few weeks. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have witnessed my whinging about moving house, which happened two weeks ago. Additionally, I have been working on finishing my Chartership PPDP and starting to collect evidence, and I have been lucky enough to have my paper proposal accepted for the CILIP New Professionals Conference on 20^th June, meaning that I need to have my paper written by the end of this month. On top of all this, things have been busy at work, which is fairly demanding at the moment. Our campus is closing and transferring to the main campus next summer, so work has begun in earnest on the moving of the library, and I’m currently working on how we are going to transfer the journals, as well as the usual day-to-day work, which must continue while we are still here. As well as all of this, a colleague at my grade has just departed for a new role at the main campus, and will not be replaced, so her work needs to be covered; this means that the journals management aspect of my role is going to expand into a more general acquisitions management role, and, of course, there will be shared tasks such as enquiry desk work for which her contribution will need to be covered by those of us remaining. So you can perhaps forgive me for letting my blog slip down my to-do list!

Taking on the additional workload at work has made me think about time management, and how I am going to have to get really good at it in order to keep on top of things. At the same time, being generally busy has made me think about life management. I’ve realised that I am neglecting a lot of the non-library things that I used to enjoy. Hip-hop dancing makes me feel happy and relaxed, but I’ll admit that I haven’t tried very hard to find a class in Bristol since the one I did try got cancelled. I used to be quite a good trombone player, and loved playing in a jazz band and orchestras, but my trombone has become a piece of furniture that is shifted with each house move and placed in a corner. I was always an avid reader, but I’ve been on the same book for about a year now; not because I’m not enjoying it, but because I just struggle to find the time to read anything that isn’t a LIS journal or “Building your portfolio”. I used to write poetry, but that folder hasn’t been touched for years, even though with the life experience I’ve acquired since, I expect my ability to write good poems has improved.  That novel I’ve always planned to write remains non-existent. When I last worked full time, during my graduate traineeship, baking cakes on a Saturday afternoon was my chill-out activity of choice, but I don’t think I’ve done any baking since the yummy cherry and white chocolate muffins I made for my colleagues when I left that job nearly two years ago. I’ve started to make friends in Bristol, but have recently turned down a couple of social invitations due to wanting to get on with stuff at home. And luckily, my boyfriend is a librarian, otherwise I think he would have had enough of me and my constant talking about libraries/Chartership/paper-writing a long time ago (also, luckily for him, we are in a long-distance relationship, so he is only exposed to this in person about once a month!)!

I think I am going to make time management one of my objectives at work and in my Chartership PPDP. I’m already fairly good at it, I think. I use my Outlook calendar to block out time for tasks and make a to-do list. However, I think I’m going to have to get better at it, as my to-do list morphs into multiple to-do lists for the different areas in which I work, and the various to-do piles of things on my desk grow (my colleague leaving means there is now a spare desk opposite mine, but I don’t think spilling over/dumping things on a second desk is the most effective time management technique, as tempting as it is!). My line manager has suggested that it might be worth attending a time management course, which I am definitely going to do if possible; I think it’s good to get someone else’s perspective on what works and what doesn’t, and also  to discuss ideas with others. I’m also going to investigate online tools. I’ve signed up for Nirvana after reading Library Reflections’ blogpost about it, so I’ll see how I get on with that; I know that some other librarians have blogged about that and other similar tools as well, so I’ll search out those blogposts. I think I may just have to try lots of different methods and techniques for time management at work until I find something that works really well for me. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

General life management is a bit trickier. I don’t really want to be using that online time management tool to sort out my evenings and weekends too; “8pm-10pm – watch rubbishy TV” is a bit OTT! I think I just need to be sensible. I’ve been trying to do this since I moved house; in the past couple of flats in which I’ve lived, I’ve only unpacked the bare minimum, leaving the place looking a bit like a storage facility, but this time I really want to create a home in which I can take pleasure, so this week, I have been persuading myself to unpack in the evenings, rather than work on my paper. I’ve nearly finished now, and I think it will be worth the effort. With socialising, I think it was sensible to turn down the invitations recently, as I did have stuff that needed doing, but I don’t think I should turn down any in the near future, as it is important to have a break and spend time with people. I’m going to make more of an effort in this area, instigating the socialising rather than just accepting invitations from others, and I am definitely going to arrange a Bristol LISNPN meet-up soon. And with the other stuff; well, again, I think it’s a case of being sensible and realistic. I don’t currently have the time to become a competition-level hiphop dancer, become a great jazz trombonist, or create a prize-winning poetry collection, but I could make more of an effort, even if it’s just reading a book in bed at night, or making time one week to try another dance class. I need to remember that, as good as it is to be involved in and engaged with your profession, it’s also important that I remain a well-rounded person who my friends (particularly the non-library ones!) still want to spend time with.

I don’t want any of this to be interpreted as whinging. I love my life at the moment, and I wouldn’t change anything about my professional involvement; it’s exciting and I feel incredibly lucky. This time last year things looked a lot bleaker; I was struggling with my dissertation, there were no jobs available, and I couldn’t have imagined that I would be doing everything that I am now. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on time and life management. I would love to hear any suggestions/comments. And I will definitely arrange that Bristol LISNPN meet-up soon!