TM4T Background 1.1 - Task Analysis - Types of Work

There is a devil in the detail of time-management, which can confuse even the best-organised teacher.

The devilish part is a paradox - here's the puzzle: the tricks and techniques involved in time-management are in most cases simple, even trivial: ticklists and diaries, routines and roles. Anyone could do it.

Yet some people - obviously successful people - report astonishing results which have transformed their lives. And, even more puzzling: some people who seem to use pretty much the same techniques gain no benefit whatsoever; other people find that the techniques seem to work one day, but don't work the next day. Why? What's going on? How can such simple tools produce such astounding - though apparently contradictory and inconsistent - results?

The answer is that you need to use the right combination of tricks and techniques in the right situation. The techniques are each simple in isolation, but powerful if combined in the right mix, in the right sequence, in the right situation. You must, though, choose your tools correctly: you don't hammer nails with a screwdriver, and you don't tighten screws with a saw.

It follows therefore that we need to know and understand three things:

a) a range of tricks and techniques

b) the different types of work we do

c) which tricks and techiques apply to which types of work.

Simple really. This website is all about the the tricks and techniques of TM4T, but they will be of no use to you unless you're clear about the three types of work.

Everything that teachers do - apart from teaching itself - will fall under one of three headings. We will call these three types of work operations, projects, and disruptions; here is how we distinguish them:

• • the operations of an organisation represent the bread and butter activities of what that organisation does. If the organisation is Nissan, the operations involve making and selling cars; if the organisation is a school, the operations involve planning and delivering lessons. Of course, the operations of car-manufacturing involve a lot more than metalwork - for example, Nissan would also do financial accounts, human-resource management and warehousing. Similarly, in a school, activities like assessment and pastoral care would be included in the definition of 'operations'. In TM4T we will use a simple practical definition of what is and isn't classed as 'operations'. If you knew that it had to be done at the start of the school year, we will class that activity as 'operations'; otherwise we will treat it under one of the other two headings. From the perspective of time-management the distinctive thing about 'operations' is that they can be planned effectively well in advance. The techniques we will use here have names familiar to teachers: we call them timetable techniques and routines.

  • Projects are how organisations respond to their environments and how organisations change. They introduce new ways of working, they develop new products to suit the demands of the market and so on. Similarly, in a school, new initiatives, policy changes and challenges are not unusual. Using our simple definition, any activities which we do not know about at the school year will fall under the heading of projects - as long as we do not have to do them immediately, at this very moment, now. This feature is the distinctive thing about projects - they can be planned shortly before they happen. The techniques we will use here are scheduling techniques.

  • Disruptions happen all the time, in business as well as teaching. Unprepared-for events, unco-operative people, and leftfield challenges. In business, though, a lot more effort goes into removing or reducing their impact than in schools. The distinctive thing about disruptions is that they need to be responded to immediately, right now, at this very moment. They cannot easily be planned for or scheduled for future action. The techniques we use to deal with these are called interruption techniques.

So: teachers do three different kinds of work - how does that help us in time-management?

The first point we need to make clear is that these categories are not fixed in stone or predetermined - there is a subjective decision involved. We can frequently choose whether to treat a particular event as an operation, or a project, or a disruption. Let's take an example: an Ofsted inspection. For many teachers, this is a disruption. They are given two days notice of a possible inspection, and at the same time they are given a set of preparatory tasks by their school management - tasks which they are expected to do immediately, thank you very much. In a well-run school, however, many aspects of Ofsted preparation are either treated as operations - the actions are pre-defined, pre-planned and pre-prepared at the beginning of the school year - or are managed as projects: when the inspection is announced, an agreed schedule of events and actions is put into action.

The principle here is clear: operations are better than projects, and both of them are better than disruptions; 'better' in terms of efficiency, in terms of effectiveness and in terms of stress-free working.

We should therefore choose to standardise as much of our work as possible and make it into routine, planned-in-advance operations. This is something we will do at the beginning of the school year and tweak between terms.

We should definitely avoid disruptions as much as possible, and treat as much other work - work which appears magically during the term - as a project. We will set up processes (yes, these will be classed as operations) so we can handle projects easily during term.