Last week I had the privilege of helping to run the College Board’s 2021 Summer Institute for International Counselors, a virtual reboot of what has previously been an on-campus, in-person event. While disclosure agreements prevent my sharing the slide decks, recordings, and the like, I do hope to share some takeaways from my end.
A colleague and I led a session that shared a thematic approach to establishing a college counseling curriculum and then what an annual timeline might look like for a college counseling office/program. At the end, in the final few minutes of the session, I shared a few thoughts about how I personally go about managing all of these competing pieces of the puzzle, the workload of the college counselling life. The number of emails I received about this little bit was surprising, and so in response to the many requests, I wanted to flesh out a little bit more of what works for me to manage the demands of the job.
I want to begin by sharing a few guiding principles that have helped me shape my approach. However, first, I think it is essential to start with the fact that what works for me might not work for you! Of course, we all go about our jobs in our own ways. I’ve come to my current practice through years of trial and error, but hopefully there might be a tip or trick here or there that might work for you! That said, it makes sense to think of what parameters, objectives, and goals are most important to you as you do your work. Here are some of mine that guide my approach:
I prioritize keeping my work within the work day. I don’t want to bring work home when I can help it. Time management at work has become such an important part of my ability to be present for my family. Of course, I do sometimes need to break this commitment, but the occasions are more the exceptions than the rule for me. As such, I do try to cram as much into my work days as possible.
I prioritize face time with students. Ultimately, the best way I can spend my time at work is by being present for my students and their families. By managing my time effectively, I feel that I am able to be there for them whether through planned meetings or for last-minute, more urgent needs.
I prioritize calmness. The college process can elicit stress in my students and their parents, of course, and so by managing my time effectively, I feel that I am able to maintain a sense of calm and not contribute to their anxiety and, if anything, counterbalance some of the chaos. My being on top of my work affords me a great deal of composure, especially when things don’t go as planned.
So, in light of these fundamental premises, I have cobbled together over the years a time management strategy that works for me. What follows are a few of the salient points that I think others might find beneficial… and certainly the ones that I heard from colleagues through the CB presentation about!
Pomodoro Technique. Learn more about this approach here. Long story short, this is an approach to productivity where you set a timer and focus intently on one task for 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break before starting another 25-minute “pomodoro,” so named allegedly after an old fashioned tomato timer. (I use this online timer to keep me honest.) I find that this scaffolding works incredibly well for almost every task and can be adjusted as needed to fit between the various immovable meetings and appointments of the college counselor’s day and week. Seldom am I able to string together more than 2 or 3 rotations in a row, but I am able to book my days accordingly, and I feel the boost in productivity.
Timeboxing. Again, read more about this one here. Essentially, this is an alternative to the to-do list. As such, instead of maintaining lists and trying to squeeze in the time to do things in between meetings throughout your days and weeks (which, for me, inevitably resulted in lots of evening work), this is a practice whereby if I need to get something done, I put it on my calendar. For me, I block off 25-minute, Pomodoro-length appointments with myself for every task that needs to be done. When I know something will take longer than 25 minutes, I will book more than one time slot in advance, but most of the time, when a 25-minute span is done and I am not completed with the task, I merely just create a new appointment with myself later in the day or week. One thing that I have found is that as a result of this practice, I am able to more accurately judge how long something will take me to complete. For example, I know that — when I am in possession of all the accoutrements such as transcripts, questionnaires, essays, etc — I can write a near-final draft of a counselor letter of recommendation in 2-3 Pomodoros.
FedEx Days. This is a real game-changer. I’ve been doing this for probably 15 years after first encountering the idea in Jim Collins’ book From Good to Great, I think, but here is a summary of the concept from Dan Pink, of whom I am a huge fan. Essentially the idea is to devote 20% of your time for unstructured work with the research showing that productivity and creativity are boosted. Throughout the months of August through December, I have religiously blocked off one day per week to be free of meetings and other engagements (as best as possible) in order to focus on writing those letters of recommendation. So aside from unanticipated or relatively urgent unplanned interruptions and pre-scheduled periodic meetings, I select one day per week to chunk up into Pomodoros to write letters of recommendation (and do various other tasks). Throughout the rest of the year (January through June), I find that I am able to use these days more for that essential creative and productivity work that the concept is so well-known for, from writing to preparing presentations to innovating programming and curriculum. One huge benefit that I have found is that when I do not take FedEx days and I am trying to squeeze writing (and everything else) in between meetings with students or other commitments, I have a hard time meeting with more than 5 or maybe 6 students in a day. I am just too frazzled, and I get really exhausted. However, when I have this one day per week to really focus on writing recs (or to do other work), I am able to meet with 12 or more students on those other days without a problem. As such, by sacrificing one day per week in one sense, I am able to be more attentive to my students. In this way, though I have been transparent with this approach with each boss/supervisor I’ve had, I have never faced any pushback at the outset or negative feedback later on.
Calendly. There are a number of other applications out there, but I have long been using Calendly to allow people to book directly into my calendar. Of course, this requires some careful maintenance of your calendar, but the various features of Calendly allows me to send a link to people (and to include the link in my email signature) to allow people to see common availability and to book directly. I found that it is an enormous drain of time on email to go back-and-forth with students, colleagues, college reps, parents, etc trying to book meetings. Especially when navigating time zone differences, sending off a link and inviting people to book directly saves a ton of time. I tend to offer 15-minute and 30-minute meetings open to the public, but I have hidden meetings for college reps and parents that I can modify to be outside of office hours, if need be, and the number of which I can limit per day. (For example, when scheduling hour-long family meetings, I limit them to just 3 per day so as to maintain time for the other things I need to do.) There is also functionality to choose where a meeting takes place, either in person or through Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc. And I love the features that automatically send reminders and follow-up emails. Each time I use it, I seem to learn of new bells and whistles. Again, others have recommended other software, but I’ve never explored any others because of how satisfied I’ve been with Calendly.
Calendar Grooming. This is perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned with this approach: while it makes me servant to my calendar, I am willing to make that sacrifice to commit to the guiding principles above, especially affording me more time with my family; however, it requires constant vigilance in maintaining and grooming my calendar. Additionally, it requires that everything gets booked, including calendar grooming time and more menial tasks like checking emails. Still, it has become a habit. For me, what works is that at the beginning of the week, I go through and map out my week, placing in my Google Calendar everything I need to do for the week in 25-minute appointments. (For more pressing items, I list them as “busy” so I cannot be double-booked by Calendly, while others are marked as “available” so students can still book meetings. Additionally, I mark most everything as private so my daily to-dos are not for public review.) I have a handful of tasks that I do on a weekly basis that I set as repeat calendar events, all at 7pm on Sunday nights, so when I get to work on Monday morning and it is time to plan and evaluate my calendar for the week, I just drag them to wherever in the week works best. I do this again for the following day as the last thing before I head home each day; this way I have a concrete plan for what needs to be done the following day, especially if things that I had planned to do didn’t get done and in light of any new meetings that have been scheduled in the interim through Calendly or otherwise.
One thing that this plan has given me a new appreciation of is how I spend my time. For example, I color-code my work, and it allows me to see generally what I’m putting time into. I use orange for meetings with adults and yellow for student meetings; I also use green for work-related tasks. In looking through a given week, I can see pretty clearly whether I am remaining committed to my goal of prioritizing student attention. This sort of focus is more consistent with social-emotional counseling, which tends to track minutes spent. This can be helpful when articulating needs to supervisors, such as perhaps when making an argument for additional counselors, etc.
I mentioned this previously, but this approach gives me a great sense of how long different activities take me. In really focusing in on one task at a time, I’ve found that I don’t need 25 minutes for everything I do, so I’ve taken to grouping things together. For example, first thing every morning is sometime like “Groom Calendar, Check Email, and Prepare for Meetings,” a time during which I get myself situated for the day and handle emails. These began as three separate 25-minute duties, but over time they merged as I realized I didn’t need all that time.
One final word about this approach for me is that commitment to calmness from the guiding principles shared at the outset. It is certainly possible to become too zealous in keeping to the planned schedule for the day, and it can result in a sense of inaccessibility to students who sometimes have immediate needs, not to mention colleagues, etc. What I have found is that this approach actually allows a great deal of flexibility for me; when sometime comes up, since I know what is essential to get accomplished in the current day, I can move things around easily and bump to later in the week those things that are less urgent.
Again, hopefully there is a pointer or two here or there that might help you with your work or that you might try out. In chatting with a friend about this, he pointed out that all of these tips would work for people not in college counseling or even education as they apply well to other industries and domains. That said, he also reminded me that these are also effective tactics to teach our students! And, of course, I have tried to find ways to teach these approaches in my work with kids, lest that point be missed.
Finally, as I shared at the outset, what works for me is not guaranteed to work for you! I don’t claim to be providing the end-all, be-all of time management for college counseling, but maybe something works for you!
If you have thoughts or feedback on these or other tips that work for you, I’d love to hear them!