Tales From the Tenure Track: Time Management

Time management is a never ending issue for those on the tenure track. You’ve just about got your email under control and something breaks. You think you’ll have lots of time to write in the summer but suddenly there is random money for renovations. There is always something pulling at your time.

Greg McKeown offers some great advice on existentialism and saying no to be more effective. “…by focusing on the few things that are really essential we are actually able to make a more valuable contribution.”

There’s a lot of ways to try and manage your time, not all of them will work for all people. Here’s a few tips that I’ve found helpful.

Email

Try and keep your inbox at 20 or under, over 20 and it’s easy for things to get buried.

Don’t use auto sorting mail folders unless you either a) really good at checking things other than your inbox, or b) don’t really need to read those emails because most of us will just ignore the darn things.

If you can answer the email in 5 minutes or less do so when you first open it unless there are extenuating circumstances.

Meetings

Look at your week as a whole, make sure that you leave yourself blocks of meeting-free time to get your work done. (Sometimes it is not the number of meeting but when they are scheduled that disrupts your productivity.)

When possible stack meetings on the same days so that you are not constantly being interrupted all week.

Meetings should be scheduled with the time and location displayed on your calendar; add in travel time if the meeting is not in your office, even for meetings in your building. A minimum of 15 minutes travel time will allow you to gather your stuff and walk to another part of the building even with last minute phone or email interruptions. Add more time for meetings not held in your building as appropriate.

Lastly, at a certain point in your pre-tenure career you’re going to have to decide what is essential to you and take a stand because you’ll be getting a lot of conflicting advice on what will make you the best possible tenure candidate. Talk with as many mentors both at and outside of your institution as possible and then find a path that marries what you consider to be essential with the essentials of your department and institution. Sometimes you will have to do things that you don’t care for or disagree with, but as long as they are not deal breakers it is best to think of them as the stepping stones that allow you to make a difference in the areas that really matter.

Leaders of Tomorrow: Annie Pho

Annie Pho's Picture
Annie Pho

I’ve known Annie Pho for so many years now that I’m not sure when exactly we met. Annie Pho is an Academic Resident Librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she works in reference and instruction. She’s currently working on a grant project to implement digital badges to teach information literacy skills online at UIC. Annie is a 2014 ALA Emerging Leader and is working with her team to provide ALCTS with best practices for their social media accounts. She occasionally blogs and tweets as @catladylib.

1. How did you first become interested in librarianship?

I grew up going to libraries as a child. My mom took me there a lot growing up. The library was my homework helper, my entertainment, and my second home. In high school, I volunteered as a shelver at the public library, and when I started at community college, I worked at the circulation desk. I didn’t consider librarianship as a career option until I had moved to Savannah, GA for art school and didn’t end up going (for various reasons). I started looking for jobs in the area and saw an advertisement for an art librarian. I remembered how much I had enjoyed working in a library and realized that it could be a career option. I ended up moving back to CA, finished my bachelor’s, then went to grad school to be a librarian.

1a. If you had a previous career please tell us a little about it and your transferable skills.

I didn’t really have a career prior to becoming a librarian, but I worked in coffee shops for many years. Many of the skills like customer service, staying calm during stressful transactions, and prioritizing tasks really did transfer to libraries, especially when I worked at a smaller library where we had to do a little bit of everything.

2. How would you describe yourself in 5 words or less?

Considerate, collaborative, analytical, motivated, and good-humored.

3. What do you see as some of the major challenges facing librarians in the coming years?

Some of the major challenges are related to budget cuts and having to do more with less. This applies to not only public libraries, but many academic libraries as well. Related to that is the rising cost of journals and decreasing library budgets, and scholarly communication. It’s not necessarily a challenge, but academic librarians are going to need to start talking to their faculty members about the Open Access movement, and other aspects of research like data management.

4. What would you like to accomplish or work towards as a librarian?

As an instruction librarian, I would like to improve as a teacher and explore innovative ways to impart information literacy skills. I also want to contribute to conversations about the lack of diversity in our field. How can we improve this and what can we do to make our field more diverse? That is not an easy task, but it is something that I would like to work towards, along with a community of other like-minded professionals.

5. When you aren’t on the clock how do you like to relax?

I like hanging out with my kitties and my partner, and exploring Chicago. I also love riding my bike and checking out all the bike paths in the Chicago area. Last year I participated in Cycling for Libraries and hope to do it again this summer so I’ll need to train for riding my bike in France!