Author: emilyschwartzspeaks@gmail.com

Giving Away Your Time

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We spend so much of our lives getting compensated for our time, that it’s important to remember to give it away once in a while. Even though our schedules already feel packed to their fullest, finding room to volunteer our time to a worthy cause is extremely rewarding and worthwhile.

On Friday, I had an opportunity to witness volunteer work at its finest. The PTO at the school where I work sponsored a Fall Festival to help raise money for classroom supplies. Parents and teachers donated candy, decorations, money, and most importantly, their time, to put the whole thing together.

However, the coolest part of the whole event was the Haunted House. Parents and teachers worked tirelessly to transform the school library into a ghostly maze for kids to explore…if they dared! Volunteers worked from 1:00pm to 9:00pm to design, build, staff and then tear down this popular attraction that raised hundreds of dollars for the school.

As I was watched all the students run screaming and giggling from the exit, only to run around the building and get in line again, I realized that I don’t make nearly enough time in my schedule to volunteer. There were so many people giving up their time to make this happen.

One dad works all day selling ad space in a newspaper, but that night he was a zombie. One volunteer was a high school student on the honors track and heavily involved in sports, but that night she was a mad scientist. Watching all of these people come together to help the school was incredible. They could have just donated 20 dollars and stayed home, but this was far more special.

If you haven’t found the time or opportunity to volunteer recently, I urge you to try it. You’ll be glad you did.

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Photo Credit: Stuart Miles

But It Doesn’t Look Finished

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Have you ever noticed that it’s really difficult to motivate yourself to complete a task that doesn’t produce an immediate, visible result? It can be a real challenge to your time management.

For example, if you have a paper to write for school, you might spend all day researching your topic in the library. You may emerge feeling much more knowledgeable about your topic and more prepared to write your paper, but if someone asked what you did all day, you wouldn’t have much tangible work to show for it.

My frustration this week came from cleaning. We are moving into a new place next month and have started the packing/cleaning/organizing process. I spent all morning reorganizing the garage. I went through all the shelves, threw things away, consolidated boxes, and sorted things into a “give away” and “throw away” pile.

When I was done, I stepped back to admire my work…and realized it looked pretty much the same as when I started. Wow. Had I just wasted my whole morning?

Looks Can Be Deceiving

The most satisfying tasks to complete are ones that produce an immediate and visible result, but unfortunately, those aren’t the only kinds of things we need to do. Sure, I could have spent my morning putting all of my books into boxes. That is a much easier task to do and my room would have looked much more empty. However, looks can be deceiving.

Working in the garage was a much more valuable use of my Saturday, even if it didn’t necessarily look like it.

When deciding how to spend your day, be careful not to put off difficult things just because they aren’t very satisfying to complete. Remember, “later” always gets here eventually and you won’t be any more thrilled about the work. Better to just do it now!

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Passing vs Spending Time

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Usually, I am a huge advocate of finding ways to spend time, not pass time. When you are spending time you are looking for meaningful and purposeful ways to use your precious hours. When you are passing time, you’re just looking for ways to fill your day. Spending time leads to productivity or enjoyment. Passing time leads to….minutes ticking by on the clock.

However, during my flight to Florida last week, I realized that there are some situations when you do want to simply “pass time” in an effort to make it go by as fast as possible. Our 5-hour flight in to Orlando was one of those instances.

In this case, I was so excited to touch down at our destination and get out of my airline-seat prison that I was simply looking to pass the time as quickly as possible. (Coach airline travel is never particularly comfortable, and when you’re 6-feet tall it’s especially tight.)

This experience reminded me that finding things to do that pass the time quickly isn’t always easy. Here are a few tips:

 1) Keep it enjoyable

At first I tried to be productive on the plane, but that wasn’t working. The work I needed to do was un-enjoyable and made the time pass ridiculously slowly. If you want to make time pass quickly, do something you enjoy such as reading a book or listening to music. The phrase “time flies when you’re having fun” is cliché for a reason.

 2) Make it interactive

If you can make your enjoyable task interactive, such as doing a puzzle or playing a game, that’s even better. I like to see how quickly I can finish the crossword puzzle in the back of the in-flight magazine. Doing a puzzle like this keeps your brain engaged and makes the minutes fly by.

 3) Don’t look at your watch

If you’re trying to pass time quickly, resist the temptation to look at your watch. Doing so just reminds you how much time you have left to go. I like to just take mine off and put it in my pocket.

What is your favorite way to pass the time quickly? Please share!

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Photo Credit: Salvatore Vuono

The Vacation Dilemma

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Time off from work or school is great. No one is going to argue with that. However, deciding how to spend this rare chunk of free time can prove difficult.

I’ve found that people usually have one of two reactions at the beginning of a break:

1. “It will be so nice to finally catch up on my work!” or

2. “I can’t wait to just relax and have fun!”

Therein lies the dilemma: Do you use these days off to get work done? Or do you take advantage of an opportunity to relax and go take a trip or do something fun?

This week is my fall break from teaching. I am so excited to finally have some time to breathe, but I’ve had difficulty deciding how best to spend these few precious days.

On the one hand, I could get caught up on a lot of work. It wouldn’t really feel like a vacation, but I’d be far less stressed when I went back to work. On the other hand, I could sleep in every day, go shopping, go on a trip, and other fun things that I never have time for otherwise.

 My Day of Nothing

I thought I had found a good balance. I was going to work hard for the first three days of break, and then go on a vacation to Florida to see some family. However, yesterday threw that plan out the window- in a good way.

I woke up feeling a little sick yesterday. I tried to just work through it, but I kept feeling worse. I ended up spending the whole day lazing around the house. You know what? It was wonderful. Anyone who knows me knows that I never ever spend a whole day doing nothing, but it was exactly what I needed to start my break.

I’m certainly not advocating that we all sit around and be lazy all the time, but I think there is something to be said for allowing yourself to do nothing once in a while. My vacation will be fun, even though I won’t be sleeping in or really “relaxing.” Then, it will be nice to get work done and finally feel as though I’m crawling out from my pile of “to dos.” However, my yesterday of “nothing” was blissful.

What is your favorite way to spend your break?

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Photo Credit: Michal Marcol

The ABC’s of Time Management

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I frequently hear time management advice that tells us to prioritize our days based on the “ABC” system. A’s are things we have to do, B’s are things we’d like to do and C’s are things it’d be nice to do if we had time left over. I’m sure this system works for some people. Here is why The Time Diet works better for me.

Most of my things end up being A’s! I try not to waste my time doing unessential things, so everything ends up being a “have to do.”

I could easily spend my entire day doing “have to dos” and never have time for anything else. This leaves me stressed out because all of a sudden “everything” has become a priority. It also seems like anything fun or enjoyable in your day will become a “C.” It isn’t fair to ourselves to always place our own enjoyment as a last priority. That’s how we get burned out.

I prefer to think of my day in The Time Diet food groups of Meats, Vegetables and Desserts.

Meats: Thinking-intensive things that are difficult to accomplish

Vegetables:  Less thinking-intensive things that are easier to accomplish

Desserts: Enjoyable things

When planning your day, it’s important to plan a balanced diet of tasks so you balance out your difficult work with easier and more enjoyable things.

In The Time Diet, everything you have to do is “important” otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it! By balancing your work according to difficulty, you’re less likely to become overwhelmed and more likely to finish more work than if you’d simply tried to tackle all of your deadlines at once.

Is prioritizing important? Of course it is! However, trying to prioritize without taking difficulty into account is not being fair to ourselves.

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Photo Credit: Digital Art

Finishing Unwanted Tasks

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This week, I had a presentation to prepare for my PhD program that definitely tested my time management. Completing this presentation was both the most important and least appealing thing on my “Choose-To List.” As you know, that is a common and dangerous situation. What do you do when the task you least want to do is the task you most need to do?

Stop Substituting

When faced with a task we don’t want to do, our first inclination is to just do something else instead. I caught myself doing that yesterday. I didn’t want to work on my presentation, so instead I did some grading, cleaned my house, worked on some different homework, and went grocery shopping. All of those things also needed to be completed, however, none were as important as my presentation. I substituted tasks I should be doing with tasks I’d rather be doing. That’s why at the end of the day, I didn’t feel as productive as I could have.

Make it Enjoyable

Sometimes we need to go out of our way to make a dreaded task more enjoyable. You all know about my love of Starbucks. I went out and bought myself a Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino to sip while I’m working on my presentation. Nothing seems quite as terrible when you have a delicious cup of happiness next to you!

Visualize

The single best way I know to motivate myself to do something it to visualize it being completed. In this case, I visualized myself crawling into bed at night and thinking, “Wow, I don’t have to worry about the presentation anymore! It’s all finished.” It’s not going to become any more appealing to work on, so I might as well just finish it now and be done with it. Half the stress of finishing work comes from worrying about finishing it. I was going to worry about my presentation until it was done. The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can stop worrying about it and my stress level decreases.

This week, take charge of your unwanted tasks.  Visualize them being finished, do everything you can to make them more enjoyable and stop substituting them with other, less important things. Your productivity will thank you.

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Photo Credit: Naypong

 

How to Tackle Huge Projects

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In The Time Diet, I frequently say how important it is to break up your “meat” tasks and set small goals for yourself to stay motivated with your time management. Yesterday, I stumbled across an example of exactly why this is true. In keeping with The Time Diet analogy, I appropriately found this example on a restaurant menu.

On Friday night, my husband and I went out to dinner. I saw “sliders” on the menu and thought that little mini hamburgers sounded delicious.

“No,” I thought to myself. “It’s way too easy to eat too many of those!” One hamburger has about the same meat as two sliders, but nobody eats just two sliders! They are so little, you end up eating more meat than you realize.

Then it dawned on me. The same is true for time management!

When we have a huge “meat” project looming, it can be overwhelming. (We’ll call this the “hamburger”). However, if you break up that same work into smaller projects and spread it out over time, you won’t feel like you’re working as hard. You’ve essentially turned your big “hamburger” into “sliders.” You’re completing the same amount of work, but instead of tackling it all at once, you’re nibbling at it.

How to Break up Work

When you are dividing your work into smaller parts, remember to do the following.

 1) Plan in advance
It is important to divide your big project into smaller chunks as soon as possible. The longer it stays in your head as one huge task, the more you’ll begin to dread it.

2) Construct a timeline
Write in your calendar when you plan to complete each chunk of work so you’ll have it done by the deadline.

 3) Stick to your timeline
Creating a timeline for your work doesn’t do any good if you don’t hold yourself accountable to the checkpoints you set for yourself.

Good luck with your Time Diets this week!

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Photo Credit: Grant Cochrane

Time Management Lessons from College Football

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In the fall, the desire to watch college football all day long on Saturday really challenges my time management. Sitting in front of the TV, sporting my jersey and eating hot wings sounds so much more appealing than grading projects for class. However, yesterday I realized that we can actually learn a lot about time management by watching college football.

4 Time Management Lessons on the Football Field

1. Don’t Risk a “Delay of Game”
It may be tempting to wait until the last second to run a play, but if you wait too long, you’ll be charged a 5-yard “delay of game” penalty. With our work, we may have our reasons to procrastinate, but is it worth the risks if our deadline’s “play clock” runs out?

2. Play All Four Quarters
How many games have you watched where the team looks great in either the first or fourth quarter, but ends up losing because they played poorly the rest of the game? The same is true for our work. We need to spread out our energy. Push too hard in the beginning and you’ll burn out. Save it all for the end and it’ll be too little too late. Pace yourself, find your rhythm and ride that momentum in for the win.

3. You Can’t Always Wait for Perfection
If the quarterback doesn’t immediately see an open receiver, he has to quickly make the decision to either run the ball or throw it away, lest he get sacked behind the line of scrimmage waiting for the perfect pass to open up. When we are working, there comes a point when trying for perfection becomes a waste of time. If you consistently miss deadlines for your boss because you were striving for an unattainable level of perfection, you may find yourself being “sacked” as well!

4. Make Time for Motivation
Do you think football coaches spend every single second they have with their team running plays? Of course not. Coaches recognize that their players need inspiration and make team building and motivation part of the locker room experience on game day. Make time for your own motivation. Take time to connect with your “team.” It will make your work time infinitely more enjoyable and productive.

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Picture Credit: Ron Almog

The MultiTasking Dilemma

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The more things we have on our plate, the more likely it is that we try to multitask as a time management strategy.  We work while we eat, we eat while we drive and we have conversations via phone, email and IM all at the same time.

Doing two things at once seems like a great way to get things done faster, but I’ve learned there is some interesting research that proves otherwise.  This is particularly true when you are trying to do a “Meat” task in your Time Diet that requires a lot of thinking.

A 2005 study published by The Procedures of the National Academies of Science found that doing too many things at once can be detrimental.

When people multitask while doing something like reading, listening or studying, they store the information they learn in a different part of their brain than people who choose to only focus on one thing. Non-multitaskers store it in a part of the brain that easily recalls information later. Multitaskers store their information in a part of the brain that is more difficult to recall in different situations.

Basically, if you multitask on something difficult, you’re still going to get your work done, but you’ll have a more difficult time remembering it later.

How to MultiTask Effectively

So, what do we do? Sometimes there simply aren’t enough hours in the day! We can’t finish everything if we don’t double things up.

Save the multitasking for your Vegetables. Remember, the Vegetable tasks in your Time Diet are the easier ones that don’t require as much intense thinking. If you simply must multitask, save it for the Vegetables that aren’t very difficult to do.
For example:

Folding laundry and talking on the phone- perfect combination!
Filing papers and skimming your email- great!
Reading a report and messaging with a friend….not the best idea.

Then next time you catch yourself trying to multitask with difficult and important things, remember: it’s better to find a few extra minutes to focus on one thing so you do the best job you can and don’t have to find time to re-do it later.

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Time Management Lessons from a 5th Grader

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As many of you know, one of the many things I do is teach 5th grade beginning band. If you’ve never had the opportunity to observe a class of band students during the first week they get their instruments, it is the most glorious example of organized chaos ever.

In the midst of the madness last week (sometime in between gluing pads back on a saxophone and telling a trumpet player that valve oil isn’t something you eat), I was reminded of some important time management lessons.

Time Management Lessons my 5th Grade Band Taught Me

Pursue Tasks with Excitement
When those kids take their instruments off the shelf for the first time, they can hardly contain their excitement. By the time their first half hour class is over, they shout, “That was already 30 minutes??” Time flies when you’re having fun. The more we can find and focus on the joy in our workday, the faster it will go.

Try it a Different Way
When I tell the clarinet section how to make a sound, three out four students will get it pretty quickly, but the fourth one won’t. If I just repeat the same directions over and over again, I will be wasting both my and the student’s time. Those directions didn’t work for him! I have to find a different approach. Don’t waste your time trying over and over again to do something that isn’t working. Find a different way of doing it.

Plan for the Unexpected
On the second day of band, one of the students opened his trombone case and a grasshopper jumped out. (Apparently he found it at morning recess and put it in there for safe-keeping.) I had to quickly assign one “grass hopper catcher” and get the rest of the students back in their chairs focused on something else so precious minutes of my class didn’t slip through my fingers. You can’t plan for everything, so plan to think on your feet when unexpected things come up so you don’t waste too much time.

We All Need a “Drink of Water” Once in a While
Sometimes, 5th graders will ask me to get a drink of water because they are actually thirsty. This is rarely the case. Usually when they say, “Can I get a drink?” they are really saying, “I’m frustrated right now and need to stand up and walk over to the other side of the room for a second.” We could all benefit from this approach. When you’re frustrated with your work, sometimes getting away from it for a minute or two is all you need to kick-start your brain again.

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