When I began writing ‘About Time For Teaching- Time-saving tips to make teaching and administrative load easier’ I asked for contribution from educators. From South Africa, Australia and New Zealand came a common theme – tidy as you go.
‘Put things away in the right place. You won’t waste time looking for stuff and falling over it.’ Don Dickins, Australia.
If you’ve only got one place for each different category it takes an infinitesimal fraction of a second to find anything, moments to put away, and you save yourself brain strain trying to remember where everything is.
‘One of my greatest time management habits is to never handle a document or piece of paper twice. Whether you receive it from email, post, staff, message, intray and the like – it matters not. As soon as you lay your fingers on it – deal with it and distribute it to your out-tray, filing or File 13!’ Gareth Allman, South Africa.
The only qualification I would add to Gareth’s tip is, don’t handle it until you’re ready to work on it. If you interrupt important work for every minor interruption you’ll struggle to finish the important task. Your time will be stolen by minutiae. Instead, block out chunks of time to attend to the accumulated items, and then follow through in the way Gareth recommends.
Here are two tips from Linda Vining of Australia.
‘Tidy as you go – a big mess is daunting so don’t let it build up. When you do a job, allow time to put it away and tidy up. Don’t begin a new task until you’ve tidied up the previous mess.’
It takes only a few minutes to put away a completed task, because it’s fresh in your mind. If, instead, you leave the final clean-up to a later time the new tasks will step into ‘head of the queue’ position in your mind. Then the old work bogs you down. Worse, it takes three times as long for you’ll have to refresh on each element within that task.
‘People hold on to and store so much material that they can’t find the information they want when they need it. A good example is finding photographs for a brochure, a prospectus, or an annual report from an unlabelled collection of good and poor pictures.’
Don’t be a random hoarder. Set up a simple system and use it consistently. If you don’t sort materials when you first receive them, the chance of sorting later is very low.
‘I keep only the job I am currently doing on the desk.’ One of Alison Smith’s students, New Zealand.
Part of the reason this tip is so powerful is the distraction factor. Every piece of paper lying anywhere within our natural eye range as we work is a potential distraction, effectively waving invisible hands, shouting ‘pick me, pick me!’ Remove it from eye range and you feel free of clutter, even if other work is piled up behind you out of sight.
‘I tidy my desk before I go home so I’m not greeted by a mess the next day.’ One of Alison Smith’s students, New Zealand.
Notice your energy. Any situation that causes a sinking feeling is an energy thief. By following the advice in this tip, you’ll protect and preserve your energy and therefore your effectiveness.
