You need to decide on the pattern of your week and add standard non-teaching tasks to your weekly timetable. These 'standard' tasks will be routine events in your daily life, and they will happen at fairly regular intervals. These tasks are be explained in detail here (***) all we are doing now is adding them to your schedule. Don't worry if the names are unfamiliar; all will be explained. Here are the standard sessions you need on your calendar:
1. The Daily Check
The Daily Check should take place daily, taking around 5-10 minutes, usually early in the day. If this is not possible, schedule a one-minute task first thing in the day, and schedule your 5 minutes later in the day. If you are not familiar with one minute tasks, click here.
2. Ticks and Twos
Ticks and Twos should happen daily, usually straight after your teaching ends. This is when you deal with your Tick-List. We tackle it at the end of the day to encourage a good night's sleep. You should go to bed each night knowing that there are no surprises lurking, and that you have a clear plan to tackle everything the following day.
This choice of timing, of course, may contradict another TM4T principle: your chronotype may dictate that your best time for decision-making is at the start of the day. Most teachers prefer to do Ticks and Twos at the end of the day, but be prepared to experiment and do what works best.
3. Tens
Tens should happen probably twice a week, but this will vary depending on your workload. Ideally, you should have one one-hour session during your 'bright time' (when you are at your most creative); and another when you are not particularly limited in how much time you can spend (I do mine on my dull Tuesday evening). Most teachers will find that they don't actually have much free 'bright time'
4. X-Time
This is the most problematic aspect of TM4T - and is difficult in any time-management system.. In order to understand what is needed, it may help to remind ourselves of what we have done so far:
To review a summary of what we have done so far, click here
We will review how to use these four TM4T tools in later pages, but it is worth understanding X-Time right now, at the start. To read more, click here.