TM4T Techniques 5.1.2 - General Techniques: Estimation

Take a look at the diagram below: How Big vs How Often

This diagram summarises one kind of approach frequently used to manage a professional's time. The diagram shows that the time-management activity varies based on the size and frequency of the task. You will see some key features of TM4T start to be mentioned in this diagram: Ticklist, Tenlist, Full Timetable, Yearly Plan and Weekly Plan. These will all be explained on other pages.

For this approach to work, you – the teacher – only needs to have a rough idea about how long your non-teaching tasks take and have a rough idea how often you have to do them.

The reasons for this are very simple. The first reason is that the main focus of your attention should be on the tasks which really eat up your time. If you spend ten minutes doing something once a year, it doesn't make sense to spend ten minutes deciding how to do it.

The second reason is that it saves a lot of time if you can categorise tasks and use a single approach to tackle every task in the same category. If you know the size and frequency of tasks, you have a useful basis for categorisation. This categorisation is a one-off activity – a busy teacher just doesn't have time to categorise and prioritize every task throughout the year.

In TM4T, the basic approach at the start of the year involves three things, as follows:

1. You should analyse your timetable and the school curriculum to establish what-needs-to-be-done-and-when and add these tasks explicitly to your own personal calendar (this personal calendar is called a Department Calendar or a Weekly Plan.

2. Establishing key routines in your Full Timetable, including regular timeslots in which administration activity can be carried out.

3. Maintaining what we call a Tick-list of non-teaching tasks, and reviewing/clearing this list daily.

During the course of the year, you must routinely estimate every task and decide how long it is going to take. You will then either do it straight away, do it in the daily Tick-List review, or schedule it to be done in one of your regular administration timeslots.