I have resisted the phrase ‘Time Management’ in this sub-heading. Time itself is not something that is within our gift to ‘manage’. Throughout their schooling, young people will have had their time managed for them: their school days will have been divided up and delineated by school bells and formal timetables. Nothing much can be done about that given the management needs of state education. Yet to take ownership of their own learning, young people will have to have some sense of control over their own affairs. Goal-setting has been a theme throughout the CARE model, and there are of course other skills that can be learned in relation to gen-erating feelings of being in control. Developing the ability to organize their activities within a time frame is the first of two key skill sets I think are important to identify for a stage of empowerment.
On a day-to-day basis, we all have an equal share of time, yet there are incredible differences in how we make use of our allocation. My mother always said ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person’, and indeed it does seem that some people will always find time to do something extra despite already leading very full lives.
Rather than managing time itself, what these busy people are able to do is manage themselves to cope with their allocation. Of course you can take a mechanistic approach: young people will probably be familiar with homework diaries and the like, and they can aid our efficiency. But effectiveness is qualitatively different from efficiency and involves far more than the use of particular time management aids.
Being aware of how we individually experience time is a first step towards learning the skills.
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Overall, it’s helpful to have an action plan: something to work through with young people to demonstrate that productive use of time is not something that ‘just happens’, neither is deficiency in that area due to some personal inadequacy. Rather it is something that anyone can achieve with a co-ordinated approach. A simple step-by-step approach could run something like this:
Step 1 Personal experience of time Step 2 Planning
Step 3 Addressing procrastination Step 4 Review
Then the four steps can be broken down into different activities to build a sense of control in relation to time:
Step 1: Personal experience of time
‘Just a Minute’
You can engage young people in thinking about their relationship with time with a simple exercise which can be run with one young person or a group divided into pairs. One person acts as timer, and the other has to sit quietly until they think a minute has passed, then they tell the timer they think the minute is up. No counting or looking at a watch or clock of course! It can be a fun exercise with a group if the timers write down the actual timing when their partners tell them they think a minute is up so the range of different estimates in the group can be seen – you can get anything from half a minute to a minute and a half.
The serious point of this is that it’s a starting point to discuss how time is experienced in different ways. There may be occasions – perhaps during a school day – when time seems to drag. At other times, it may seem to fly. And if young people have experienced being in the ‘flow’ of complete absorption in an activity, they may also recognize these are moments when they can lose all sense of time.
‘Action Research’
Reviewing how time is actually spent can be a really enlightening experience.
However young people may think they spend their time, the chances are an analysis of how time is actually spent will produce some surprises. You could introduce this as a piece of action research that that will give them practice in skills that will be relevant for the workplace.
They need to decide first on a series of codes to identify different activities, e.g.
R for reading/research, J for part-time job, S for socializing, TV for watching TV, etc.
Then agree a period of time when they will record what they are doing – an average
week usually gives a good sample. If they draw up a chart breaking down the days into half hour or one hour slots, they can then use the codes to record their activities.
Analysis in the form of a bar chart or pie chart will give them insight into the actual use of their time. In relation to the time they spend in formal education or training settings, it’s useful to think about whether they are involved in active learning, or something else – such as a distractor activity or day-dreaming. If it’s the latter, it’s worth posing a question about what might happen to change that – and I’ll return to that issue later in the second skill.
That aside, it’s often the case that they find they have more time to give to learning than they realized. It’s also important to stress that this is not an exercise to schedule in as much ‘work’ activity as possible: leisure is just as important and one aim of this exercise is to help them achieve a work / life balance that will stand them in good stead for the future. The whole ethos of the CARE model has been about balance and the needs of the whole person. Discussion can range around how important to them different activities are: there will be some social and leisure activities that it will be important to maintain for their overall health and well-being.
If there’s a temptation to mark up some activities as W for waste of time, you could point out that young people need to have time to enjoy being ‘young’. Even older people need a bit of fun and even ‘silliness’! This exercise shouldn’t be used to instil a feeling of guilt that time is ‘wasted’. That’s just one line of thought this piece of research can trigger and can be part of on-going review at Step 4.
Step 2: Planning
One of the things that can emerge from the research can be a recognition of the particular times when they work at their best. Research is beginning to show that adolescents may work best in the afternoons – not a fact that fits well with having to comply with a school timetable!
But from this exercise they may be able to pick out times when they feel most motivated and energized, and similarly, that there are other times when their energy dips and they find it hard to concentrate. For myself, I know that early mornings are best for anything that needs serious thought, and as I always get a post-lunch energy dip I fill in that time with routine tasks that don’t need much thought until my energy picks up again. Struggling against body rhythms can be a drain on energy and counterproductive in the long term. Learning when to take a break for a drink of water or something to eat, or moving around, are essential short-term strategies.
You can also use the opportunity in coaching to help young people be aware of how they can take best advantage of the brain’s capacity for learning. The brain needs
‘downtime’: regular breaks from active conscious learning that allow the unconscious mind to absorb new material or ideas. Also, as you saw earlier in Thinking Space 8,
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awareness may not be instant: it may need a period of unconscious processing to accommodate new concepts into a person’s mental map.
In this respect, it can be the case that they don’t always identify the difference between time for research and production time. Trying to conflate the two can lead to misjudging the time needed to complete an assignment, which can be anxiety-provoking. Generally speaking, for any piece of work, a longer timespan invested in the research and planning stage will mean less time spent in production, and this is another principle that can apply when planning learning.
This is all part of developing judgement in relation to the time needed to com-plete tasks. Young people may put off starting a piece of work because they think it is so large and will take them a great deal of time. On the other hand, they may delay starting because they think a piece of work will not take long; then when they do start they find it is taking much longer than they estimated and they are then up against a deadline.
Thinking Space 21
‘Procrastination is an inbuilt human defence against pain and stress, although an accumulation of tasks set aside can result in much greater stress.’
David Clutterbuck 1998:61
Overall, the insights gained can help them construct their own schedule that will maximize their prime time potential while minimizing the effects of their least productive times. As always, language and terminology are important for the meanings they generate. I would steer away from the term ‘timetable’ – young people have had timetables imposed upon them throughout their school years. Since the schedule is something constructed by themselves and for themselves, a term such as
‘personal life and learning time chart’ may be more indicative of the overall aim of achieving a work/life balance.
Step 3: Addressing procrastination
We probably all play games with ourselves to find good reasons why we shouldn’t get on with something important or undertake some serious learning. As William James is reputed to have said: ‘Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging-on of an uncompleted task’.1Yet time without number I’ve heard students say ‘I only start an essay at the last minute because I work best under pressure’. And because the outcome has usually been satisfactory, they’ve been able to convince themselves this is the best way of working. The reality is if mistakes are made because work is rushed, there’s no time to correct them. And when the unforeseen happens – as it frequently does – it can create unnecessary stress.
Leaving things until the last minute means the motivation has come from the externally imposed deadline, rather than an internal motivation to do their best work. Part of taking control for themselves can be using a ‘Game Plan’ that helps them recognize the excuses and delaying tactics and counter them with prompts for action. Using this in coaching can help young people open up the range of options they have (see Fig. 24). Starting may be the hardest thing to do but it is the most important. It’s helpful to remember that, in engineering terms, moving friction is greater than starting friction, so it’s important to start somewhere and get going!
Excuse Response
I don’t like doing this Find which part of it you do like doing to get you started.
Reframe self-talk from ‘I don’t like this’ to tell yourself which part you do like.
Give yourself a time frame to work at it – and decide on a reward to give yourself when you’ve finished – ring a friend for a chat, play a computer game, etc.
Visualize the reward you are going to give yourself when you’ve finished to get you started.
It’s so big I don’t know where to start
Use the ‘salami’ approach and slice it up.
Start on a small part, not necessarily the beginning, but start somewhere.
Even better, do the worst first and get it over with.
I don’t know how to do it
What help do you need?
Who do you need to ask?
What’s stopping you asking for the help you need?
I need more information before I start
Where will you find it?
What’s stopping you finding it now?
I’ve got too much to do How important is it in relation to the things you have to do?
How urgent is it in relation to the things you have to do?
Can you afford to put it off?
How are you likely to feel if you put it off?
Will putting it off mean you’ll have to rush to finish it and don’t have the chance to do your best work?
Figure 24: Procrastination game plan2
Step 4 – Review
The first crucial difference between a timetable and a ‘personal life and learning time chart’ is that the latter is something owned by a young person. The second difference is that, while a timetable will dictate fixed points, a time chart will be a living document that is open to change as goals evolve and a young person learns more about themselves.
A time chart will of course start with a framework of fixed commitments that
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provide a core. Around that, it will be for the young person to arrange their activities and learning to best advantage. It can be a learning tool in itself: what at first thought may seem a good arrangement, may not work out in practice. A coaching discussion can be used to reflect on the reasons why this might happen, leading to a deeper understanding of what works.
A time chart is a useful, if not essential, tool for ensuring goals are achieved.
Plainly, it will be comparatively easy to schedule achievement of short-term targets.
But it is in thinking about long-term goals that a time chart really comes into its own.
If you’ve used the ACORN method in Chapter 7 as a strategy for visualizing a long-term goal, then a time chart can be the means of stimulating purposeful action towards its achievement.
Thus a review of a time chart during a coaching discussion can help define the difference between those things that are urgent and need to be done, and how the important steps towards long-term goals and development can also be factored in. It is very easy to fill time with ‘busywork’, reacting to short-term deadlines and dealing with things that seem urgent. As Anita Woolfolk Hoy (2000: 268) puts it in a telling phrase, we can all be seduced away from real productivity by ‘the dazzle of doing and the press of the practical’. Defining the difference between urgent and important may involve a recognition that producing work to deadlines and completing tasks may not necessarily equate to significant learning, as Andrew Pollard (2008: 288) reminds us:
‘Active learning’, as opposed to just ‘busy work’, is a qualitative category not just a quantitative one. ‘Active learning’ is linked to further factors such as motivation, stimulus and concentration.
This is a quote that sums up the essential difference between a mechanistic activity of acquiring a set of tools and skills, and a more fundamental approach where a change in behaviour is underpinned by a change in thinking and motivation.