Introduction: Barbara L. Cohen explained that based on responses from the questionnaire we sent to Forum participants,Time Management was far and beyond the most requested topic participants wanted to discuss at today's meeting. Clearly, based on our job description, most of us do not have enough time to accomplish all of our tasks. The sense of feeling in control of our time is a rarity for all of us, and a struggle for many of us.

Spend Your Time on Your Values: Barbara introduced the concept that the way we spend our time should reflect our sense of the "big picture," and our own personal value systems, but that all too often we spend most of our time doing things we do not value highly. (How much of your day gets spent helping others, doing busy-work or troubleshooting?) She recommended Steven R. Covey's time management book First Things First as a great model for reprioritizing how to budget your time. Covey explains that all of our work can be divided into four "quadrants," as illustrated below.

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	I Crises Pressing Problems Deadline-Driven Projects, meetings, preparations	II Preparation Prevention Values Clarification Planning Relationship Building True re-creation Empowerment
Not Important	III Interruptions, some phone calls Some mail, some reports Some meetings Many proximate, pressing matters Many popular activities	IV Trivia, busywork Some phone calls Time wasters "Escape" activities Irrelevant mail Excessive TV
© 1994 Covey Leadership Center, Inc.

Barbara then asked everyone to take out their calendar for the next few days and to create a "to do list" for the following Monday, trying to place each task in the correct quadrant. Quadrant II, tasks that are both important and not urgent, (i.e. all of the team-building, skill developing, planning type activites,) is where we should try to spend more of our energy. The best way to get more time in our schedule? Trying to cut out as much of the Quadrant III and IV tasks, the stuff that's not really important. Although as several participants pointed out, Quadrant III is how OTHER people want us to spend our time, and Quadrant IV is crucial as "down-time."

Many of our Forum participants are already doing many things with their time that are both important and not urgent, but by doing them they are educating others about how to properly utilize their services and limited time. Here are some comments and suggestions from Forum participants:

Anna: Sends a newsletter to her staff informing them about her time and availability, and what is happening in her department.

Art gave suggestions about educating parents who demand more of his time with a newsletter. All teachers get a copy of the schedule. Communication is essential.

Jim: put up a website to educate and communicate - post schedules and questions.

Wade: shared his daytimer; he's already doing the activities outlined in First Things First and it has helped him reprioritize his entire life.

Barbara shared about a speaker she heard who distributes a troubleshooting checklist to teachers. They can't pester her with troubleshooting issues until they've completed the checklist, and many times this helps them solve their own problems!

Mary: posts a sign-up memo to staff, giving her schedule with the times she's available to help them. She then checks the list to see when people signed up for her help. She also asks those people who have problems to sign up for mini-lessons where the problems really are. She is always very clear about parameters, hours and what she can realistically do.

Doug: One high school tech coordinator he works with has chosen department technology leaders and focuses all of her training on her "pioneers." They are the ones who receive all the equipment and training and then they will in turn transfer their knowledge to the rest of the department.

Dee Anne explained about training two leaders per site. They were the trainers of teachers and students. They now have four tech specialists at each site and 5-6 students who are trained as troubleshooters. She is very clear about what the specialist will do and won't do.

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