Explore more
Time management tips and strategies
Get ahead of your schedule and in control of your day
From the Pareto Principle to the Pomodoro Technique, there are plenty of strategies you can use to reduce time pressure and heighten productivity.
Key takeaways
- It is important to learn how to manage your time, especially in the academic environment where there are multiple and competing priorities.
- Prioritising tasks can ensure you remain focused on urgent and important actions.
- Use a strategy to block your time for specific tasks in order to avoid the demands of cognitive shifting.
- Be sure to schedule in some down time - and stick to it!
Read time: 7 minutes
Time pressure in academia
In news that surprises no one, researchers are under pressure; academics often feel like they don’t have the time they need to complete everything they’d like to. In fact, researchers routinely work above and beyond what is considered normal in other professions; an international survey across 13 countries found that on average, academics work 45-50 hours a week (Bentley and Kyvik, 2012). And in all likelihood, they still don’t cross everything off their to-do list since research tasks can be endless. As Dr Gareth Bryant, Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, puts it, boundaries between work and life are “one of those things you have to constantly manage,” he says. “You have to be vigilant about how your systems are working.”
Time management is an essential skill to manage workload, however it’s one that does not come with the doctorate. Nonetheless, the way we work impacts everyone around us, from our family to the more junior members of our team who we are setting an example for. Time stress has a notoriously debilitating effect on professional performance as well as personal wellbeing, but with the right tools and strategies, you can find ways to mitigate its impact.
Step one: prioritise
Between teaching, administration, and research, it’s no wonder that academics can’t fit it all in; each seems like its own full-time job. Even research-only academics can feel time poor, since grant-writing, publishing, supervising students, and managing collaborations quickly compete for attention.
As much as a contract can dictate the hours of a standard working week, it really is up to the individual to decide when to say no. This is how Professor Anne Marie Thow, who works in food systems and nutrition policy at the University of Sydney's Leeder Centre for Health Policy and Economics, has navigated her career in academia. With international collaborations that have her frequently on the phone overseas during the week, she ensures she doesn’t work weekends. “One thing I have done is define when I don’t work,” she says. “Work does expand to fill the time.”
In order to give herself the time to make those late-night calls, she compensates by taking two afternoons off to spend with her young family. To manage the division of workload, prioritisation is essential. Using the Pareto 80/20 rule, 80 per cent of productivity can be achieved by doing 20 per cent of the tasks. So you prioritise the tasks that demand the most attention – and offer the biggest results – first. While it can be impossible to skip out on mandatory teaching prep and demanding governance roles, Dr Bryant is selective about the seemingly endless stream of meeting invitations that hit his inbox. “I prioritise meetings where I play an active role,” he says.
For Professor Thow, delegation is key. “Being an academic is about being strategic both about the opportunity to really make a contribution and also using the flexibility to have a life,” says Professor Thow. “A challenge of being an academic is you’re your own brand; doing everything as one person is insidious. The things you can't do become opportunities for other people.” In her case, she lets other people take on the quantitative research so she can play to her strengths and “lean into what energises me and what I love.”
Other strategies include the Eisenhower Matrix, coined from the past US president’s words: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." This method categorises tasks by their relative urgency and importance. After understanding the priorities of a working day, week, month, and longer-term, a Gantt Chart can outline how to spend the time ahead – which can then be referenced to create daily tasks. Using a Kanban Board can help you create a visual representation of your work in progress.
Another way to prioritise is by using Eat that Frog, a method that describes working on the big tasks when the brain is most active, such as writing for three hours first thing in the morning. The premise is that by tackling a large goal for a set amount of time each day, progress will be made – allowing one to settle into whatever is next in the planner.
As Professor Thow says, you’ll often be called on to communicate a narrative about the contribution being made to research or the University community – simply doing everything is not possible. “It is important to spend time thinking about what your niche is, your specific contribution,” says Professor Thow. “As you decide what that is, how can you play to your strengths? Doing what you love is more productive.”
Step two: focus
There are many culprits that rob time from researchers, including procrastination and interruptions. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the constant switching between tasks – and the cognitive shifting that it requires – make up for many minutes of a day wasted.
Time-blocking is an effective way to stay focused on the tasks at hand. This method reduces the constant switching that often occurs and enables deep work (such as preparing for a conference presentation or writing a journal article) and is one that Dr Bryant says works best when approached with an agile mindset. “I’ll look at my calendar a few weeks ahead and block out time where I’m busy and no meetings can be added,” he says. “That way there is concentrated time to do tasks, rather than responding to things as they come up. The emails are constant and the amount of requests can be unmanageable, so you can end up spending all day on the phone and responding to email.” As a father of young children, he adds, it isn’t always successful – which is why it’s important to be flexible and adapt to changing demands.
The Pomodoro Technique is another well-known technique for time-blocking, where one breaks up work into 25-minute intervals, followed by a short 5–10-minute break before settling into the next task – or continuing work on the previous one. Pomofocus is a Pomodoro Timer App for those wanting automation. Of course, sitting in front of the computer poses another problem; seemingly endless distractions. That’s where Freedom, an app that blocks websites and even the internet, can come in handy. With Freedom, you can break the habit of reading every email as soon as you hear the "ding".
Step three: relax
There are some days when jumping from meeting to email to teaching is unavoidable, which is why mindfulness is so important. Continual practice of sustaining presence can help enhance concentration and productivity. Not only will it help with time management, mindfulness has also been proven to have a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing. To find a community in the quiet, you can join the mindfulness group at the University of Sydney.
When it’s time to switch off, for the state of mind, get offline. Occupational stress is notoriously high in academia and learning to say no is the only way to bring balance. Take a walk, spend time with friends and family, and decompress the mind to give it the rest it deserves – and to appreciate the role itself. “One of the great things about being an academic is flexibility and autonomy; you can create boundaries that work for you,” says Professor Thow.