Managing Workload 2

I recently read The Managing Workload Pocketbook from the brilliant Teachers' Pocketbooks series. The book was written by Will Thomas.

The book is full of excellent ideas for how to manage your school workload more efficiently. This is something that I particularly struggle with and so I was keep to find out some ideas. In this second of my posts about this book I will consider the idea of prioritising tasks.


Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill the time you make available to it."

Thomas suggests for each task you consider the urgency and the importance. By organising your tasks into the categories in the diagram, you can quickly see which tasks need to be tackled first.

Thomas writes, "Get into the habit of considering the urgency and importance of each task. If it isn't a UI or a NUI, then lower it in your priorities, or strike it out altogether. Tackle first the thing on your task list you most want to avoid."

I think this is a really quick and simple way to examine tasks, and therefore prioritising them is much easier. It is important to review the tasks carefully as, of course, some tasks become more urgent and more important over time. This could be done as part of a weekly review.

I like the look of the Any To Do app for the iPhone which sets task lists out in this way. It will also sync with Evernote which would be very handy.

Some general rules suggested for Paperwork and e-work:

• Have a tidy desk.
• 'A place for everything and everything in its place'.
• Be ruthless with paper.
• Treat emails as you would paper.