Time Management Principles 1.4 Prioritisation

If you have learnt time-management in college, you will no doubt have been bombarded with advice about prioritisation - a big buzz word in the hive of time management.

Of course we teachers need to prioritise our work - we would look pretty silly if we concentrated our efforts on unimportant tasks. However, in practice this routine decision is typically made for us by the key stakeholders in our lives - our partners, our management team and our students' parents will be quick to let us know if something is really urgent.

Otherwise, the worrying fact is that just about everything in a teacher's life is important: the safety of the children, their career choices, learning, behaviour, university entries, GCSE qualifications and Special Educational Needs. The list goes on and on. A concept which is much more relevant to teachers than prioritisation - and much more useful - is opportunity cost, which we described earlier.

As an example of why prioritisation is not a key theme of this website, consider the options below - which should a sensible teacher choose?

A A solid two hours marking GCSE coursework

B A bike-ride to the local swimming pool and back, with a dip in the middle

C A spell of directionless coffee-fuelled Web surfing to research a topic of interest

D A visit to old friends for a couple of happy hours.

This is the kind of prioritisation which the average teacher makes at weekends, usually applying their professional conscience and wearily prioritising Option A.

I am sure you have guessed what answer this website recommends: do all of them. As often as you need.

If there really isn't enough time, well, I guess we need to mark a little faster, pedal a little quicker, or get our friends to visit us. The alternative - prioritising 'work' over leisure, health and creativity - is an invitation to Stress.

Don't do it.

As far as possible, you should avoid using prioritisation as an everyday tool of time management. That doesn't mean that you should disable your common-sense, of course; it just means that there is little to be gained by agonising over which student to help or which important task to tackle. They all need doing, so let's get 'em done. You should definitely avoid a point of view which chooses to do task 'A' while delaying, deferring or ignoring task 'B'. This is simply a flawed point of view: you are going to do task A and task B. You will do both of them at the most appropriate time, and you will sleep soundly knowing that both have been planned, and if they have been planned, they will be done.