Time Management For Teachers: Importance

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To-do lists are a great help when it comes to tracking all the tasks that you need to do. Especially when you are a teacher, you have tons of tasks, including school and student-related, managing your personal life and overall productivity. 

Also, it’s an ideal part of time management since you have all things listed, and you know what time and how long it will take to get it done. 

But do you know the right way to make a to-do list? If not, here are some tips for teachers to improve their skills and manage time well. 

Why Does List Be Important For Your Time Management? 

It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks you have in hand; it can also lead to missing deadlines or sometimes you forget something crucial. 

All of these signs show that you don’t have a proper to-do list. Since the tasks are not prioritized, you have no idea what to do first. 

Because of this, you put the effort and time into doing things that can be done later and avoid what is actually important. 

When you keep the list, you know which tasks are one, and you won’t forget. 

So prioritizing tasks, you can create a plan and order of doing those tasks. This helps you in knowing which works need your immediate attention and what can be done later. 

To-do lists are important for teachers so they know how to beat the work overload. But if you are not using it effectively, this can make you unreliable and unfocused. 

Do You Really Need To Have To Make A-List?

Well, yes, no matter what you believe, having a to-do list can help you in managing your time much more easily. 

Since you are a teacher, you might have tons of stuff to do on one very basic level; maybe you need to make question papers, check the notebooks or manage your students. Along with that, you need to pay attention to your personal life. 

In this mess, there are a lot of times you might forget some tasks, and they can be important. 

So having a to-do list can help you in organizing your day in a way that includes all the important things and gets them done first. 

Also, it works only when you put in the effort; your brain is trained to love tasks when it’s organized. However, when you are not putting the conscious effort into getting those tasks done, then it won’t be useful for you. 

steps create todo list

Tips For Making Your To-Do List In the Proper Way 

Well, no doubt being a  teacher can cause a lot of stress as you have to focus on thousands of things. 

To make sure you are managing your time well, you need to have a to-do list that can be effective, and for that, here are some of tips. 

tips creating todo list

Add Why Each Of Your To-Do List Is Important 

For a lot of you, a to-do list might make you feel like a shackle. They can make you feel miserable and sap your energy instead of motivating you to get more things done. 

Art Markman, a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas, says that to-do lists are too often to get collections of boring, stressful, and banal tasks. 

To avoid it, you just have to follow the simple solution and,e refrain from the list to be focused; you need to see the bigger picture. 

If you are connecting each of your task’s to-do lists with your bigger purpose then you feel less banal and boring; this helps in making the tasks motivating and important. 

Consider adding a sentence for each task you need to do the work and its value. 

So if you are defining the tasks and the reason it will help you feel much more motivated when you get them done. 

Delete Tasks Which Hold Low Or No Value 

Another benefit that you can get is when you define the value of tasks that you have added to a to-do list. 

This helps you in finding if the tasks are worth it or what value they will provide when you complete them. 

If it doesn’t offer the value or it’s low on value, you should delete it from the list. 

One of the most common issues you get and what actually leads to feeling overwhelming is when you add new to-dos, which gets bundled up. 

Every day you have to decide which tasks you need to focus on, and since the list keeps growing, you feel stressed out. Also, you never get through it. 

So focus on deleting the tasks which are low value and nice to do; this can help you create a manageable, less stressful, and skimmable list. 

With that, keep the important and pressing tasks on your mind, this helps you in avoiding distractions, and you don’t need to keep pushing yourself. 

Create To-Do List For Each Day Or Week 

If you are fleeing the tasks with no or low value, you might still get the to-do list feeling overwhelmed. 

Since you are adding everything in one place, it’s all jumbled up, which can be frustrating. 

There are different techniques that can help you in creating a do list for each and every day, depending on what fits your way. 

MIT 

Leo Babuta from Zen To Done recommends that you start each day by picking off one to three tasks and focusing on those tasks. 

This helps you in focusing on the most important tasks or MITs; this also helps you not work on anything else until that work gets done. 

Ivy Lee Methods 

At the end of your workday, you can choose the six tasks to focus on, and you need to get all of those tasks done by tomorrow. 

To make it easier for you, prioritize this from 1 to 6 and start working on it. 

1-3-9 

At the beginning of your workday, you can choose the thirteen tasks you need to focus on; here, one should be your high-priority tasks and the medium property taxes and nine low priority tasks. 

Focus on getting your high-priority tasks first, then the medium-priority, and finally, complete the low-priority. 

Well, it also depends on what kind of tasks you have and how you are looking to complete each work. So if your work needs a few fours, you can do the daily work much better, and if it’s mostly multi-day tasks,  you can plan and prioritize on a weekly basis. 

Break Down The Large To Do Into Smaller Ones 

One of the easy ways to help you feel less overwhelmed is when you look at a to-do list; this can help you get much clear attention to what you need to do. 

So look at what you need to get done; if the tasks are larger in size, divide them into smaller ones and create the next list. 

Instead of having a big list of tasks, spend some time breaking those larger tasks into smaller ones that can be easy. 

This helps you in making it easier to plan the days and weeks. But this can make you feel satisfied as you will be doing much more tasks and crossing them off the list. 

Create What You Properly Do List 

The author of different productivity books, Mark Forster. He conducted a productivity experience where he created a to-do list for the day and then put it in a drawer. 

He hoped that the writing list would be enough to make him reenter what he is required to do. 

Sadly when the day ended, and he checked the list, he realized that none of the tasks that he did were from the list. 

Considering why the experiment failed, he came up with an approach. And the next day, he wrote a list of things he would do. 

This was more like a prediction list than a hopeful wishlist.  And he did the same, but this time he managed to complete all the tasks without looking at the list. 

He came up with the solution that you should question what you would do today before you start. 

When you answer the question, this will change how you create the to-do list. So instead of hoping for what to accomplish, you plan based on what you actually believe you would accomplish. 

This makes the to-do list much more realistic and better. 

With this, you can get more things done and also manage your time well. You don’t have to match the plan ahead of time; focus on the to-do list, answer the question, and see what difference you can notice.

Draw The To-Do List 

To remember what you need to do instead of using a list to remember it; there are chances that you keep forgetting. So draw instead of writing it down. 

Since when you are drawing, you put effort and image things you need to get done, this makes you much more active. Also, help in creating stronger memories. 

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