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Time Management: A Key Faculty Survival Skill
by
Tom E. Norris, MD
Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Washington School of Medicine,
Professor of Family Medicine,
Adjunct Professor of Medical Education, Medicine, & Health Services
The ability to manage time well is an absolutely essential skill for medical school faculty members. Very few of us feel that we have enough time to do all of the things that we want to do. How many of us feel that our lives are balanced, and that we have all of the time we want for both work related responsibilities and outside activities?
Our basic goal in organization of our time should be to achieve “value based time management.” In other words, we should find ways to spend our time doing the things that are most important to us, and we should balance the expenditure of our time based on the priorities that we set based on our personal governing values.
Einstein taught us that time has no independent existence, apart from the order of events by which we measure it. Indeed, Webster’s Dictionary tells us that “Time is a continuum in which events succeed one another from past through present to future.“ If these statements are true, then there is nothing that we can do to get more time—each day will have 24 hours and will be a sequence of events. Yet we have a strong need to make our use of each 24 hour segment as effective as possible. Benjamin Franklin said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.” Thus, if time is a series of events, then controlling (or managing) your life (i.e. living your values) means controlling your time, and controlling your time means controlling the events in your life.
In his translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Browning wrote, “The moving hand has writ, and having writ moves on . . .” In other words, we do not get to control our past, because it is done. We do get control of the present, and we get to influence the future. Control of the events in our lives requires a combination of ridding ourselves of the things that are wasting our time in the present, and adopting solid planning techniques that allow us to attempt to choose and order the events that we would like to have in our futures.
The first step in this journey is deciding that we will control our time by controlling the events that make up our lives. In his book, The Psychology of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden developed a “tri-quation” in which he noted that event control resulted in greater self-esteem, which resulted in a greater sense of personal energy with increased personal productivity, which in turn allowed better event control, and so on, in a never ending cycle.
As we consider the sequence of events that fill our present, we must ask ourselves, “What wastes our time now?” Stated another way, “What are our time-robbers?” Alec Mackenzie, in his book The Time Trap, presented a list of the twenty most common “time-robbers”, based on survey data:
- Management by crisis
- Leaving tasks unfinished
- Inadequate staff
- Socializing
- Confused responsibility or authority
- Poor communication
- Inadequate controls and progress reports
- Incomplete information
- Travel
- Paperwork
- Telephone interruptions
- Inadequate planning
- Attempting too much
- Drop-in visitors
- Ineffective delegation
- Personal disorganization
- Lack of self-discipline
- Inability to say “No”
- Procrastination
- Meetings
One excellent strategy is to begin by identifying our own personal “time-robbers.” We can then create our own strategies to defeat them, or, if help is needed, The Time Trap offers a number of problem-specific practical solutions.
Our next major task in managing time by controlling events is to develop, adopt, and implement a planning strategy. Since our goal is to select events based on our values, the primary responsibility will be to determine what our values are. Your governing values are the foundation of your personal fulfillment. Abraham Maslow expressed this paradigmatic insight when he wrote, “Self-actualization
is a bringing together of what I do and what I really value.” After you determine your governing values, it follows logically that you can create long-range goals that are based on these values. From the long-range goals, one can develop intermediate goals, toward which daily tasks can be oriented. Thus, the planning process follows this simple (yet hard to achieve) sequence:
- Discern your personal governing VALUES
- Set long-term Goals & Objectives linked to them
- Establish PRIORITIES among these goals & objectives—Base prioritization and intermediate goals on values
- Learn your personal energy cycle and create your IDEAL DAY
- Create a plan for each day—WRITE IT DOWN
The last step, create a plan for each day, requires the use of a planning tool, such as a desk calendar, a pocket “day calendar,” a personal digital assistant (PDA), or one of the more sophisticated planning tools that links your desktop computer to your PDA. The key is to engage compulsively in the planning process, linked to your governing values, on an on-going basis.
Although the steps from determining your values to planning your day sound simple, they can be very hard to achieve. A number of time management books, as well as faculty development workshops on this topic, may be helpful.
In summary, the steps in one approach to successful time management are as follows:
Recognize that you control your life by controlling your time and that you control your time by controlling the events and their sequence that make up time—make a commitment to control it.
- Rid yourself of “time robbers.”
- Your governing values are the foundation of personal fulfillment, and you must know what they are.
- When your daily activities reflect your governing values, you experience personal fulfillment, less frustration, and more energy. Set goals & objectives that reflect these values and prioritize them.
- Daily planning is mperative, because it leverages time through focus.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” Value oriented time management, coupled with good planning, is the best way to avoid leaving that stream empty handed.
Vol.1: Issue 7: December 2005
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