How Administrators Can Manage Priorities and Reclaim Their Time

In the whirligig that is a school leader’s day, time management strategies are critical to a leader’s effectiveness, not to mention peace of mind. A hodgepodge of daily events compete for a principal’s attention: Staff and teachers drop by to ask “just a quick question,” a lack of substitute teachers in classrooms requires instant problem-solving, traumatized students act out, the counter in the inbox insatiably rises.

Recently, we asked a group of administrators to name the main obstacle to achieving instructional goals, thinking their response might be absence of resources or maybe recalcitrant teachers. Instead, the most frequently cited obstacle was lack of time. We’ve come to believe time is a school leader’s most precious commodity, and the ability to manage time and balance priorities is nothing short of essential. How can leaders take control of their time, ensuring that the day is spent on high-impact tasks that make a pronounced difference to teaching and learning in schools?

Revisiting important versus urgent tasks

In a previous Edutopia article, we suggested the Eisenhower Matrix as a useful guide for establishing priorities. According to the Eisenhower model, all tasks may be classified as either important or unimportant, and urgent or nonurgent. Administrators must ask themselves whether an upcoming task is urgent and whether it is important.

Recent research from the Wallace Foundation identifies key areas that are likely to produce student achievement: focusing on instruction, creating a productive school climate, promoting professional learning, and strategically managing resources. In other words, intentional tasks targeted to improve instruction, school climate, staff development, and management of vital resources (including personnel) are actions that have the highest value.

Managers should devote 60–80 percent of their time to these kinds of long-range, mission-critical planning tasks, which fit into the category of important yet nonurgent. This means limiting time spent on the following:

• Unimportant and nonurgent jobs, like sharpening pencils.
• Unimportant and urgent duties that require a timely response, although they do not promote a school’s strategic goals. A lot of email falls into this category.
• Important and urgent activities, like crisis management. Careening from one crisis to the next is indicative of systemic dysfunction. When school leaders find crisis management is a frequent occurrence, it is time to adopt a systems approach, following the age-old maxim that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” For example, if your inbox is brimming every day with parent complaints, seek to identify patterns and address underlying causes.

Calendars and Email

School leaders are creatures of their calendars. Well-intentioned but unscheduled plans—for example to get around to learning walks—tend to drop off the day’s to-do list, relegated due to an endless succession of mundane jobs and unforeseen events.

Endless succession brings to mind the profusion of email. Seth remembers gazing at a computer screen many years ago sitting side-by-side with the district technology coordinator, who was demonstrating how email works. “This will save you time,” he confidently asserted, a failed prediction that ranks with the flying car. How can school leaders control the influx of email and not allow email to monopolize their time? Here are some solutions:

• Mark time on the calendar for crucial leadership actions, such as conducting learning walks and participating in team meetings. Treat that time as sacred and inviolate. Otherwise, high-impact instructional leadership activities have a tendency to get supplanted.
• Designate a block of time, perhaps an hour in the afternoon, for answering email.
• “Touch it once.” Dispense with the majority of email on the first reading; rereading, reconsidering, and rewriting a reply usually consumes more time than is needed.
• Use the “rules” function of your email app to sort incoming email into folders. For example, email containing the school’s domain name gets first attention.

Rebalancing Priorities

How can school leaders rebalance their priorities, shifting the preponderance of their time to important/nonurgent projects that substantially result in student learning?

• Know yourself. One administrator told us that he performs the most important work during the morning, which is his peak biorhythm period. We suspect that most individuals have a time of day they are most productive (and it’s not after lunch!). Save that time for important work.
• Block out more time than necessary for certain jobs. This disingenuous yet brilliant tip was offered by a district leader. He found that a tight schedule led to rushing through priority work. Adding a few minutes to the time frame resulted in better performance and more opportunities to nurture relationships.
• Reserve precious faculty meeting time for professional development. How often do you attend meetings that start with the fallacy, “There are just a couple of quick administrative matters before we begin...”? A weekly or monthly staff newsletter may be used to communicate organizational details, such as approaching school events or noncritical policy changes. Keep face-to-face time for what matters.
• “An administrator on his feet is worth two in his seat.” Our new favorite truism reflects the benefit of administrators in hallways and classrooms, where they are literally positioned to implement the Wallace Foundation’s research-validated priority tasks.
• Limit the amount of time you spend in your office. One administrator reported that her well-intentioned policy to be available during the school day left her confined to the office. Instead, hold limited open-office hours at strategic times when staff and parents are generally available: before school and lunchtime.

Time-Saving Tips

We suspect that adding hours to the work day is dysfunctional to most school leaders, who already suffer from an unhealthy school and home-life balance. The crucial point isn’t to work more hours, it’s to figure out how to better allocate the hours you are working. These are some tips suggested by our survey participants.

• There’s no time like the present (aka, don’t dillydally). Whenever possible, eliminate the need to circle back. Answer most email on the first reading. Arrange follow-up conferences at the end of learning walks, eliminating a series of back-and-forth emails otherwise required to schedule the meeting. Set artificial deadlines for report writing or other deliverables, so you don’t let it take more time than needed.
• Delegate responsibility. Studies have found that distributed leadership is an indicator of high-performing schools. As staff assumes leadership functions, their skill set grows, collaborative norms proliferate, and participants gain a state of psychological ownership, the sense of being invested and confident in the job.
• No sense in reinventing the wheel. A wonder of the education world is its cyclical calendar: Every August or September the year begins anew. Maintain electronic folders for every month of the year containing emails, to-do lists, notices, bulletins, newsletters, and other perennial documents repeated, more or less, year after year.
• Generative AI can be a game changer for its time-saving benefits. Useful opportunities include taking meeting notes, drafting routine reports and emails, analyzing data (being careful of student privacy rights and data security) and more. Apps like Zoom allow for automatic transcription of virtual meetings as well.

Recalibrating priorities and embracing time-saving efficiencies enable school leaders to concentrate time and effort on high-impact leadership practices that advance teaching and learning and school culture. The personal effects are noteworthy too. These recommendations allow administrators to reestablish a healthier balance of home and work life, realizing they have a little more time in their days.