Helpful Resources
Managing Work on Multiple Projects
This Chronicle of Higher Education article offers advice on ways to successfully manage work on multiple projects. The author outlines two possible approaches (The Daily Juggle and Dedicated Days) and discussed each. She concludes, however, by recommending that instead spending long periods of time on each project, it is more productive to devote 15 to 45 minutes of work on each task around an existing schedule, every day. Then, the momentum created by successes can lead to working for longer stretches.
Time Management Tips
The University of South Carolina Center for Teaching Excellence at the provides some time management tips specific to the faculty workload. These include ideas on (a) scheduling time, (b) managing distraction, (c) identifying and minimizing “time robbers,” (d) prioritizing tasks, (e) managing your electronic life, (f) choosing your teaching schedule, and (g) controlling your teaching preparation.
Time Savers
This handout from the University of South Carolina Center for Teaching Excellence provides very specific tips for saving time in the areas of teaching (e.g., don’t overprepare, stagger due dates, and grade in small chunks), scholarship (e.g., stay in touch with colleagues, synthesize scholarship and teaching, and plan writing sessions), and service (proactively choose activities, establish clear boundaries, and keep meetings on track).
Lessons in Time Management
This Chronicle of Higher Education article provides advice about managing demands in the major areas of the faculty role. These include (a) being cautious about accepting committee work, (b) making time to write, (b) being “canny” about class preparation, and (d) planning priorities.
How Faculty Spend Time
The authors of the Chronicle of Higher Education article describe how some faculty members actually apportion their time among the demands of their faculty role and give advice on how to manage these demands more productively. This advice includes (a) tracking how you actually spend your time; (b) asking others about tips for work-life balance, (c) limiting amount of time spent on “administrative” tasks, (d) reducing time spent on emails, (e) getting consultation about the amount of service to do, (e) limiting service to areas important to you, (f) finding rewards for spending time writing, and (g) planning downtime during the work day.
Time Management for Faculty
Boston University Center for Teaching & Learning presents a list of very specific tips on how to be time-efficient when faced with a multitude of academic duties. They provide not only general time management strategies but also ideas for applying them to teaching, service duties, and research.
In this Chronicle of Higher Education column, Kevin Gannon described the three strategies he’s found most helpful in his continuing quest to better manage his grading workflow. Briefly, these include (a) pre-semester calendaring, (b) using rubrics, and (c) giving comments verbally (e.g., dictating comments into Google Doc and using speech-to-text to transcribe them in real time or recording his comments and sharing them with students via an audio file).
Three Practical Approaches to Writing While Teaching
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Dr. Rebecca Schuman offered three approaches for combining teaching and scholarship: (a) draw sharp lines between your teaching days and research days (e.g., on the days you do not have contact hours with students, do not think about teaching at all; (b) prioritize your own work for a designated stretch of every day (e.g., an hour every morning); and (c) employ desperate last resort measures (e.g., set aside 25 to 45 minutes between 7 and 9 pm two to three days a week for writing). She also advocated being realistic about teaching demands (e.g., end of semester obligations).