End-of-Year Time Management: Our Best Tips for K-12 Education Leaders

“We all have the same 24 hours in a day.” We’ve all heard that expression, right? 

While that’s certainly true to a point, we know the truth: there are layers and layers of reasons why we aren’t always able to cross everything off of our “to-do” lists, especially as K-12 school and district leaders.

In addition to there being limited time in the day, this time of year comes with its own set of extra tasks. Getting it all done is indeed a balancing act.

Time management in education is a double-edged sword. As an educational leader, you want to be available to your school community, because visibility, guidance, and coaching are big parts of your role. On the other hand, if your “big rocks”—those mission-critical objectives that you need to accomplish—don’t get completed, it’s going to be hard for your school or district to move forward.

In addition to there being limited time in the day, this time of year comes with its own set of extra tasks: committee wrap-ups, end-of-year reporting and documentation, graduation activities, and making sure everything’s ready for summer school. Getting it all done is indeed a balancing act.

If you’re looking for a bit of support in managing your time right now, we’ve got you. Here are a few effective time management tips that are particularly relevant this time of year. 

Be realistic about what you can accomplish in a day

Let’s be honest: most of the time, the reason we get frustrated and stressed about our to-do list is because we’re often holding ourselves to a superhuman standard when it comes to what we can get done in an average day. Think about it, when’s the last time you started the day with a long list of tasks, only to get frustrated when only one or two of those tasks got crossed off?

While we’re not advocating that you toss out that big list, we are suggesting that you take a few of those tasks and create a smaller daily to-do list. One time management skill that might help is to adhere to the 1-3-5 rule. It’s exactly what it sounds like: you narrow your daily list down to one big important task, three medium tasks, and five small things to make your day more manageable. 

One idea that might help is to adhere to the 1-3-5 rule. It’s exactly what it sounds like: you narrow your daily list down to one big thing, three medium things, and five small things to make your day more manageable. 

Of course, even a scaled-down to-do list won’t always be able to be completed, especially if you have a meeting-heavy day or an emergency at school. For that reason, keep one or two of those small tasks blank when it makes sense. The key is setting reasonable expectations for yourself.

“Leave landmarks” to come back to after interruptions

Right now as a school principal, we’re willing to bet those “got a minute?” asks from teachers and staff are at an all-time high. It makes sense—they’re trying to close out their school years as best they can, too! 

These small questions or concerns may not take a lot of time to solve, but the hard part is getting back to what you were working on in the first place. A research study from the University of California-Irvine found that it takes around 23 minutes for most people to get back to a task after an interruption. If you have three interruptions, that’s an hour of wasted time. 

A research study from the University of California-Irvine found that it takes around 23 minutes for most people to get back to a task after an interruption. If you have three interruptions, that’s an hour of wasted time. 

Another time management skill to help eliminate that wasted time comes from Joy Birmingham, Assistant Director of Duke University’s Learning & Organizational Development program. When something pops up that pulls you away from a task, Birmingham suggests you leave yourself a clue, or “landmark,” to help get back on task when you return.

That might look like quickly typing the last thought you had before you were interrupted, or the next step you take. “I think about the brain like a filing cabinet,” she says. “If you open the drawer and find the right files, then you start looking through them and somebody interrupts me, I can’t easily get back to that level of thinking unless I tell myself, ‘I’m in this drawer, in this file, working on this task.’”

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Think about time needed to complete tasks vs. how much time you have

Have you ever gone into a simple task thinking it would take a half hour and it ended up taking close to two hours? You’re seeing Parkinson’s Law at work. Parkinson’s Law is the adage that “work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.” 

Let’s say you need to create a communication for your parents on events that are happening over the last two weeks of the school year. The writing of the communication might only take a short amount of time to get done, and you’ve given yourself two weeks to do it. Here’s the rub: because you know you have more than enough time at your disposal, the project starts to grow in scope. You might spend more time than needed talking with your staff about what needs to be part of that communication, or you might want your teachers to weigh in on the best format. Pretty soon, the time you intended to spend on the task has quadrupled, and it’s still not done.

If this sounds familiar, give yourself some grace. This isn’t just a “you” thing. Studies suggest when we’re given a task, we tend to think about how much time is available to complete the task instead of how much time we actually need. To combat this, consider using a few tried-and-true time management strategies, like the Pomodoro technique or timeboxing.

Studies suggest when we’re given a task, we tend to think about how much time is available to complete the task instead of how much time we actually need. 

Timeboxing is where you set a goal to finish a particular task within a certain time frame. Planning how long a task should take before you begin it allows you to be more intentional about managing time and where you’re spending it. Similarly, the Pomodoro Technique is a strategy where you combine short, focused work sessions with frequent short breaks—typically a 25-minute stretch of work followed by a five-minute break to minimize stress. (Bonus: there are several Pomodoro Timers online, including this one!) 

Find your (work) flow

Joy and productivity are closely related. Consider those times when you’ve felt entirely in your element as you’ve worked on a project or task. How did you feel? Exhilarated? Euphoric? Did you sincerely enjoy the work—so much so that you even lost track of time? 

According to the late psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this is the act of “finding your flow”—a state of “optimal experience” that we can incorporate into our daily lives, including our leadership. He called it “the secret to happiness.”

So, why bring up flow at this point in the year? Because good time management is also about getting better at recognizing your own moments of flow. It takes practice, and starting to pay attention now can reap benefits for the future—not to mention remind you of the moments of joy and happiness that exist within your work. Even if things are a little stressful right now. 

Good time management is also about getting better at recognizing your own moments of flow. It takes practice, and starting to pay attention now can reap benefits for the future—not to mention remind you of the moments of joy and happiness that exist within your work.

The best way to truly understand your own flow is to be intentional in noticing when your flow states occur. Using Csikszentmihalyi’s eight characteristics of flow states as a guide, pay attention to the next time you feel focused and energized in your work. Jot down a few notes: what type of work were you doing? Which of the eight characteristics did you notice? What were the conditions of the space or place where the work occurred? Keeping track of the activities that prompt your state of flow and looking for patterns that might exist can help to bring forward more of those productive moments. 

Better time management comes with reflecting and adjusting

Like most parts of school leadership, developing time management skills takes time and patience to get right—and that can only come with a fair amount of reflecting on your daily routines and identifying patterns of derailment or distraction. It’s about continuous improvement, not changing everything at once.

Also, give yourself a little goodwill, especially at this time of year. Identify what truly needs to get done, and also spend a little time reveling in the joy and the excitement that’s part of the school year’s end. 

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