How to manage your time effectively on the run up to Christmas
This month’s blog has come as a special request from one of my supervision clients:
“How may I effectively manage my time during the Christmas period so I’m not overwhelmed and can enjoy time with my family?”
It’s an age old question in teaching. Christmas - especially in EYFS and Primary - is both utterly joyful and demands a lot of additional time and energy from you (nativity plays, anyone?). For Secondary and FE, on the other hand, it’s usually time and energy spent wrangling students’ attention away from the incoming tide of festivities and back onto their studies, leaving you feeling ever more like Ebenezer Scrooge.
And that’s the issue; the demands of teaching will keep rising over the festive period whilst also rising in your home life too. The expectation to have a “jolly Christmas” isn’t something that everyone can happily relate to but it’s pressured onto us nonetheless. The subsequent flying around shops (or more likely, online) to gather presents and enough food to last you into the new year, as well as decorate your house in all its splendour, can be both joyful and a significant use of our time and energy.
Reflecting further, I fear that this blog may not give the answers one hopes for!
Yes, I shall share some beneficial time management tips. Keep scrolling to discover them below.
However, unfortunately for my client, this request for time management techniques over Christmas has fallen at the same time as my reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It’s a fascinating reflection on how we perceive and experience time. I find it does expose the ridiculousness of our attempts to control and manage our time, when ultimately, humans are finite and can only do so much and receive so much time.
Which is what leads me to this central question:
What do you choose to allocate your attention to?
Ultimately, time management can be about choice. That’s where we’ll start our exploration.
1) What are you not willing to say no to?
Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to say no to some things.
I appreciate that this is challenging, especially in school when you are working in a high pressure environment; one which may also not advocate for your wellbeing or a work-life balance either.
However, I encourage you to ponder on this question: what are you not willing to say no to?
This may be your own child’s school Christmas concert, or your local church’s carol service, or enjoying guilt-free mulled wine in front of the TV on a Wednesday night.
This may also be certain jobs on your to-do list at school too. If you are particularly passionate about your SENCo role, you may wish to not say no to this, instead prioritising these parts of your work.
Ultimately, it is your choice where you choose to allocate your attention. Once you acknowledge and accept that you cannot do everything (despite your best attempts), it’s freeing to reflect on what you do choose to do and focus on.
2) Put you in the diary
Once you know what you choose not to say no to, protect it! Carve time out of your diary and pop it in.
If it’s in your diary, it is much more likely to occur.
This also helps to hold you to account as well. Share your plans with others too, so that you have that element of accountability.
Then start looking forward to it!
3) Create a realistic list of priorities
Once you have your significant events in your diary, it’s time to check in with your list of priority tasks on the run up to and during the Christmas holidays.
Use the following prompts to help guide you in making a clear plan for your priorities. These prompts will help you to reflect and refine your priorities list as you go. It may be that not everything on your priorities list will be feasible ahead of January. If this happens, go back to the first tip and check in on the significance of each task for you.
How long may this task take?
Once you know how long a task will take, schedule it into your diary.
When you do this, take a hard look at your diary.
How realistic is it for you to complete this priority ahead of Christmas?
How may you be feeling when you reach that point in your diary?
Will you have the appropriate energy, work space and time to do this task to a standard you will be pleased with? I ask this question because our own natural cycles encourage us to conserve energy at this time of year, rather than expend it in full flow like we would in the height of Spring or Summer.
Cycle through these reflections to help you refine your priorities list. It may be that some things will have to be dropped at this time. That is okay; you are doing enough.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that count the most.
Now that we have explored the crux of time management over the Christmas period, namely choosing where you would like your attention to go, let’s look at other time management techniques that will help you to manage your workload over the festive period (and into the new year too!).
4) Pomodoro it
The Pomodoro Technique is great for chunking down your work and also prioritising breaks to keep you rested and in flow. It is a technique that I use all the time in my own work.
The timer encourages you to set a standard amount of time for work, usually 25 minutes, followed by a break, usually five minutes but I give myself ten!
Adapt it to suit your free periods at work. For example, if your school timetable has hourly lessons, you can do two Pomodoros.
I recommend this app, Focus To Do.
5) Use Body Doubling to get stuff done
You know when you have that task on your list that you really need or want to get done but you just never get around to it? Or you squirm and wriggle and find something else to do to avoid it?
That’s when you can use body doubling.
Body doubling is when you work with someone else. This can be physically in the same room together or virtually. You each agree to do a task and then sit together to complete it. Alternatively, the other person can be there for moral support.
It creates a physical anchoring for you to get shit done! It also creates a way to provide support to colleagues and share in your work. This is especially nice for those times when you are feeling lonely in your role. Lastly, it provides accountability: you told this person what you are going to do so you better do it!
Here’s a quick caveat for body doubling: choose your body double wisely. You want to get stuff done, not have a natter to your work-wife or husband. That’s for your reward time afterwards 😉
6) Set a reminder to log off
At the end of your work day, you want to end your day at work.
This sounds obvious, I know, but it can be so easy to slip into more work in the evenings or during the Christmas period simply because the job is never done and it can just sit there in the corner of your mind.
Additionally, if you have your email notifications on your phone, you are inviting school to interrupt you outside of school and take precedence again.
So, set yourself reminders to log off.
Remind yourself why it is important to you to log off from work.
Remind yourself that by saying no to more work this evening, you are in fact saying yes to something else, like that evening watching Christmas films with your family or enjoying writing Christmas cards whilst singing along to Wham as loudly as possible.
Remember, you get to choose where your attention goes.
I hope you found these tips and reflections on time management over Christmas useful. Let me know in the comments below how you get on!