https://sandymillin.wordpress.com/SHINERomania
While I can’t give you Hermione Grainger’s Time Turner so you can travel back in time, I can give you tried and tested ways of getting those things done which demand your time and attention, or which you just never quite get round to, helping you to manage yourself and others and make the most of your time.
7. http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/SHINERomania
Not a huge thing
Mark 30 essays, 300
words each
Mark 5 in the morning, 5 in the evening, for
3 days.
Mark 6 each day for 5 days.
Give yourself 1 hour to mark as many as
you can. Then race yourself
Observe 19 teachers at
your school
Share the work with senior/ experienced
teachers.
Spread it over a few weeks.
Make observations shorter: is 45 minutes
enough?
11. http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/SHINERomania
O utsource your memory
R eflect on what works
G aps
A chievements
N ot a big thing
I am important too
S tart small
E xperiment
O
R
G
A
N
I
S
E
How will you…
…your time?
Image
from
https://www.flickr.com/photos/melloveschallah/3399525959
(Creative
Commons
2.0)
I’m a freelance teacher trainer, editor, and methodology writer. I run my own Cambridge DELTA courses which I’ve put together from scratch and market myself. I’ve written three ebooks and hope to write more. I volunteer on the IATEFL MaWSIG committee as an events coordinator. I’ve recently completed the NILE MAPDLE. I’m a CELTA trainer, a blogger, I read and share blogs, I do seminars and webinars and attend conferences too, I spend time with family and friends, I travel regularly, I volunteer as a Girlguiding leader, I go to the cinema, listen to podcasts, etc etc.
When I first did this presentation in 2016 I was the DoS at IH Bydgoszcz managing a team of 20 teachers, and I used to joke that I didn’t have a partner or a family, which gave me a lot of time, but that’s no longer completely true: I live with my partner and we’re currently organizing our wedding too! How do I fit it all in?
This is what I have done in the past and what I do now, and the two are quite different. Hopefully there will be some ideas in there you can use though!
Anyone know what this is?
This is a time turner. In the Harry Potter books, Hermione uses it to travel back up to five hours and use her time twice over.
What about you? In the chat, note any tools, techniques or questions you have about organizing your time. Do you need a time turner? 2 minutes.
Write down everything, as soon as you can
At school, I had three places: school wall planner (for all the teachers to see – inherited from Tim with moveable post-its), this week (will discuss more in a minute), and everything else in a paper diary for the academic year with approximate times.
Now I use Google Calendar and the tasks function for everything, with colour-coded calendars to show me what belongs to what
Using a weekly planner / a week-to-view calendar helped me to see the shape of what I was doing, and was more motivating than having an ever-expanding single list. I was old school because I like crossing things out! I copied anything from my diary for that week to the pad at the start of the week
This pad of sheets was from Paperchase but I made something similar on A3 because this pad ran out a couple of weeks ago after going for two years! That meant I didn’t have to rewrite the recurring events each week.
Now I use Google Calendar on a weekly view as standard, meaning I can already see some of the recurring events going right through to December this year. However, I miss the slightly therapeutic nature of writing it out, and the pleasure of crossing things out is missing!
I reflect using Toggl.com – noticing how I spend my time and how much I work in total
Reflecting also made me realise that I needed to ask for help more – we now have a cleaner who comes every two weeks, and that’s made a huge difference to stress levels at home
Leave space to add extra things, but be realistic about what you can fit in.
On paper, small boxes are better because it’s harder to overfill them! I loosely divided the day into morning/afternoon, highlighted timed appointments/classes/observations in blue, and highlighted things to do ASAP in yellow. Everything else was when I can manage it. If people ask “Can you…?” I can tell them roughly when.
On Google Calendar, I realized I had to block in gaps so that people couldn’t book those slots with me, hence ‘marking and planning’ and ‘reading blog posts’ (though the latter never seems to happen!)
One of my teachers used the paper system, and he said “[quote]” We’re both techy people, but there’s something about crossing things off a piece of paper! Now I achieve most things I want to in a week and…
Took me a while to figure out approximately what I could fit into each time slot, but it improved with practice.
Notice what you’ve achieved each week, and use this to help you modify your approach in future weeks. This is what my planner looked like at the end of the week
Also helps you to feel proud of yourself. I hated seeing crosses on my calendar at home, and when I started ticking every day I manage to do all six things I wanted to do each day there was a real sense of achievement I stopped using this tracking system when I moved back to the UK as life changed so much, and I now don’t manage most of these things any more…maybe I should use it again!
If a task feels big and scary, you’re more likely to procrastinate. Break it down into the smallest tasks you can and/or modify the task to make it more manageable, and schedule those smaller tasks in at the times when you can achieve them. If you’re a manager, you can also consider what and when you can delegate without overwhelming your staff. Two examples. In the chat, pick one: how would you break it down?
Don’t forget to take time for yourself. Aim for regular working hours as much as possible and set boundaries. For example, in Poland Thursday evenings were my flamenco classes, so I tried to avoid scheduling things for that time and staff knew that. As a freelancer I aim to work 9-5 Monday to Friday, though sometimes that ends up being until 6pm. I always have a lunch break too – no lunch at the computer
Find time for the things which are important for you, and make these sacred. e.g. for me my personal daily aims in the past included two directly connected to my health – 10,000 steps and physio, two about my online presence – ELTpics, reading blogs, one personal development – Polish, one personal project – cross stitch. Now I enjoy birdwatching with my partner, and we often go out at lunch or weekends to do that
I also use break software to remind myself to stand up and stretch from the computer, I factor in time for being with family and friends, and I aim to have a holiday to look forward to whenever I can (challenging during the pandemic!)
Have this poster visible for inspiration (it’s on my desktop!). Choose one you’d like to do today and put it in the chat
Don’t try and add everything you want to do at the same time, especially in your personal life. One thing at a time, make it a habit, then add the next thing if you can manage it. Too many things at once overwhelms you.
With my personal aims in the past, I started with 10,000 steps because I realised I wasn’t doing enough exercise. Then realised I was more likely to do my physio if I wrote it down every day. Then started to add Russian practice, and saw a massive increase in my progress. Started to feel overwhelmed by blogposts, so broke it down into read 3-5 posts each day – that made it feel less overwhelming, though now I’m back to not having read blogposts since March (and not worrying about it!) I was a curator for ELTpics but wasn’t uploading them, so added that – just 3-5 a day, but even uploading 1 meant I could mark it on calendar. Added cross stitch when I had projects to complete, but again, just 1 strand a day was enough to get me my tick, more is a bonus
The same principle for my courses…I have lots of ideas for how I want to grow my TYT courses, but I started with just one group of Module 1 and it’s grown from there – I’ll have 11 groups running from March onwards if all goes to plan!
Any ideas what this picture means? These are my techniques. They might not work for you. Keep trying different things until you find something which does. In other words, you may have to kiss a few frogs to find your prince. These techniques took me at least 5-7 years of development and continue to evolve – I started with scraps of paper with to do lists on them, and these tips are the evolution of that.
In the chat:
Can you remember what the letters stand for? Will you still need the time turner?
In the chat:
What will you take away from the session?
Any extra tips?