You know the feeling you get when you’ve been working all week, and then you come up for air and realize you aren’t any closer to achieving your goals? The feeling you get when you’ve spent all weekend grading, then Sunday evening rolls around and you STILL don’t have lesson plans ready for Monday? A feeling of exhaustion without fulfillment or satisfaction?
If the answer is yes, then your daily tasks and long-term goals may be misaligned. Sometimes our busyness prevents us from accomplishing our teaching (and life) goals. What’s a busy, burned-out teacher to do? Reflect on her time using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix–or as we’ll call it here, the Teacher’s Time Management Matrix.
The Time Management Matrix helps you rank your activities according to urgency and importance. Using the matrix helps you determine which tasks are most and least aligned with your long term goals. The aim here isn’t to squish more and more tasks into your day, instead the goal is to prioritize tasks that are best aligned with your longterm goals. Here’s a closer look at each quadrant in the matrix:
Quad 1–Important & Urgent Quadrant 1 tasks are urgent (need immediate attention) AND further longterm goals. Deadlines, problems and crisis fall into this category. An example would be a due date for lesson plans. The due date is urgent, and lesson plans further a long term goal of delivering thoughtful instruction. Here are some other examples:
- student or teacher injury
- lesson plan deadline
- grades due
- email that needs immediate response
- significant breach of class rules
Quad 1 tasks further long-term goals, but their time-sensitive nature means you may not be at your best when completing them. You can’t eliminate these tasks, but you can reduce them. For example, if you keep up with regular grading, then grading will be a Q2 task rather than a Q1 task.
Quad 2–Important & Not Urgent This is the quadrant where you are most calm, productive, and mindful of your long term goals. These tasks pertain to self-improvement, building relationships, and planning for the future. You want to spend most of your time in this quadrant. Q2 tasks are aligned with your long-term goals, but they are not urgent, so you are able to complete them with thought and precision. Examples:
- long term planning
- reflection/journaling
- classroom management plans
- professional development
- building relationships with students
- personal wellness (family time, exercise, hobbies)
What’s so great about Quad 2? Think about the grading example. Maybe one of your goals is to use assessment to inform your instruction. If grading is a Q2 task (something you can focus on without a deadline breathing down your neck), you have the leisure to think about how it should inform your instruction. But if you’re always frantically grading to meet a deadline (Q1), your energy is focused on outrunning the deadline, not on your long-term planning.
Quad 3–Urgent, but Not Important Quad 3 tasks need to be completed immediately, but they don’t further your long-term goals. Q3 tasks are often things that you are expected to do for someone else, but they prevent you from reaching your own goals. Examples:
- some text messages
- social media upkeep
- some emails
- busy work (paperwork you’re required to complete, but doesn’t enhance your instruction)
It may be difficult to reduce Q3 tasks–you do want to help your fellow teachers out, and some Q3 tasks may be required by your administrator. What you can do is identify Q3 tasks you have control over, and limit them as best you can. For example, if your conference period is eaten up by answering emails or texts, maybe you decide to work for the first twenty minutes, and spend the last fifteen answering messages.
Quad 4–Not Urgent & Not Important Quad 4 tasks are unnecessary time-wasters. How do you know if an activity is a time-waster, or a breather? Look at its result–how do you feel afterwards? If looking at anchor charts on Pinterest for 30 minutes leaves you feeling refreshed and inspired, it’s fine in moderation. If not, then you can eliminate it. Examples:
- busy work
- enforcing routines that just aren’t working
- power struggles
- videos that your students don’t learn from
- extraneous grading (8 worksheets on doubles addition, rather than 2)
Making Space for Quad 2 Activities So if Quad 2 is the place to be, how can I make more time for it? As you prioritize Q2, the other quadrants will shrink. A focus on meaningful assessment and long-term planning will cut down on time spent frantically pulling together the next lesson plan and grading the night through. You can also take a close look at your time and choose a few things to eliminate all together–what takes up a lot of energy, without much return?
The best way to maximize time spent in Quad 2 is to be sure you know what your long-term goals are. Without this, you’ll have no way of knowing which activities are important or not.
Have you used this tool before? What do you think?
(You can download the matrix here, for free).
