The Power of Looking at Your Time

Student teachers looking at how they spend their time!

I love all things time management! I try and track my time at the start of each semester and also at the start of the summer - to see how I am using my time and where it is going. On Friday, I was asked to give a workshop presentation to student teachers about managing their time as new teachers.

I started the workshop by asking the student teachers to think about how they spent their time on Wednesday and Thursday (the two days prior to when I met with them) and plot out what they did for the 48 hours. After they had accounted for their time, I asked them to really look at their days and see where the time went. I asked them a few questions: Did you get enough sleep those two days? Did you have any free time? How did you use the free time that you had? How did you feel about your time during the school day? How did you feel about your time outside of the school day?

So many of the student teachers told me that they did not get enough sleep. I personally feel that sleep is super important because if you are not well rested, it’s really hard to get through everything that you have to finish and it’s even harder to be able to do the things that you want to do. One student told me that she really enjoys exercising, but does not remember the last time she was able to carve out time to exercise. When she looked at how she was spending - even those two days - she realized that she was spending the time from 10:00PM-Midnight in unproductive and not very relaxing ways. I suggested that she go to sleep before 1:00AM and wake up earlier to exercise - that may help her feel better about how she is spending her time.

Friday’s workshop was an excellent reminder that looking at how we are spending out time really does matter. I truly believe that the data we get from tracking out time helps us identify one small change that can be made to make life feel better.

I shared with the group that I prefer to stay up late, but that’s not how my life works right now. So, I have to work really hard at going to bed earlier than I would if I didn’t have a schedule that required me to be somewhere earlier in the morning. However, that one change of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier has had such a huge payoff. I wake up early enough to exercise for 45 minutes to an hour each morning before anyone in my house is awake - and it makes such a difference in how my day goes.

The little changes that we make can have the biggest payoff — we just need to identify them!