How do you make time and space for big picture thinking?
I haven’t figured out a way to do that except during summer and winter breaks yet, but I’m not sure there’s any reason to do it during the semester, anyway. Once the semester is rolling, it’s rolling. Well, I guess I’ve occasionally gotten a big idea during the semester and tried to hash it out on the weekend or something, but it’s usually on the breaks. I take a whole day in winter and one or two in summer. It’s stupid, but I’ve even taken vacation days to do it just so I could feel OK about not looking at email. It always feels good, though, and I never use all my vacation anyway. I use those giant post-it notes and spread a bunch of blanks ones around the room and sort of let myself go — just writing everything in my head. Now, I sort of think of it as leveling up for the next semester, because I’m usually trying to come up with a better way to do something that needs to be done better, or that would be a lot nicer to do if I thought about it for a minute. Anyway, I’ll fill one of those up on a topic, like scheduling issues or evals or just goals for the department, sort of try and map it out. Usually the first two or three post-its are just brain dumps, and then I refine it till I have concrete things to do. Or not. Sometimes I’ll work on an idea all day, and then figure out some reason it can’t work.
How do you make sure nothing falls through the cracks?
I put everything I need to remember in [Microsoft] To-Do. It’s on my phone, and unfortunately, I always have my phone, so it’s easy to get it there. But I also keep the desktop app open all day. Whatever sort of system I’ve figured out for organizing things is from one of the original big productivity systems called “Getting Things Done,” which I found out of desperation when I was right out of college. His thing is that you have to get everything out of your head and on to a list so you’re not stressing about forgetting something, and so you have your head space for creativity and problem solving. It’s super true for me, and saved my life when I first started in management. I don’t use all the parts of the system but a lot of them have stuck over all the years. When I’m feeling anxious, like there’s something I’ve forgotten, I know everything is in there, and if I have to look at every single thing on every list to make myself comfortable that I’m really not forgetting anything, I can do that. Weird, but it helps with the stress a lot.
How do you process email?
This is a thing I think a lot about. Email is a total thief. You know, you take a quick look for anything important and then you’re still answering messages an hour later — when you actually have way more important things to be doing. Email is rarely the most important thing. I have three blocks a day on my calendar for looking at email. I move them around if I have to do, but I keep them there. On crazy days, I’ll skip one, but I always look at email twice. Anyway, I look at it before I start working and I flag and pin the most important messages. I pin the ones that have to be answered that day no matter what, and I flag the next most important ones. And then, when the calendar says it’s email time, I work through the flagged and pinned ones and answer everything else I can in that block. I also flag anything new that’s important. At the end of the day, I get through any of the pinned I didn’t get to, and knock out some easy ones. Every couple of months, especially before a vacation when I want my mind to be as far from work as possible, I will completely empty my inbox. I can usually do that in 4 or 5 hours. I feel like that actually helps me stay mostly on top of email the rest of the time. I don’t know if that’s really true or not. If I’ve been gone, or there’s just a ton of it, I’ll sort it by who it’s from, and start with staff and bosses. A trick I learned this year, well, I don’t know if it’s a trick for everyone, but I used to file all my messages into a folder for that year, and maybe a project or two that I’m working on. But now I just click that archive icon and search for it later. Faster and easier. I had this one other sort of realization about email a few years ago when I just went for a walk to clear my head. It was a nonstop day. Anyway, I went for a walk and ended up sitting outside. Of course, I started to look at my email, and then I just sort of decided I was going to crank through as much as I could while I sat there. I think it only took me an hour and a half to get through almost all my email sitting out there, totally undisturbed. I still do that once in a while. Even now, I’ll go out to the backyard with my phone and just start cranking through them.
How do you decide what to delegate?
That’s a tough one. I guess, first, I decide with staff who does what according to their job descriptions, so I know who to send something to on the fly. And over the years, I have a better sense of what my work needs to be and what I want it to be, so I prioritize from there. In these jobs it takes a couple years before you’re not just always drinking from the firehose. I definitely delegate more around scheduling, staffing and budget management now, so I can focus more on problem solving, better evaluations and more communication.
What tips you would offer to a new manager?
For hard skills, I would say get a system that works for managing time and projects. Try them out till you find one that works for the person you are, not the person you wish you were. For stuff you do all the time, use checklists so that you don’t worry you’re forgetting something. For soft skills, the best advice I ever got was just to have a relationship with everyone you work with. Get to know them. You don’t have to like everyone, but get a sense of who they are and where they’re coming from and what’s important to them at work — well, at home, too.
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Something to think about:
“What are you doing that feels like work, but is really procrastination?”
attributed to so many people that I’ll just acknowledge it wasn’t me
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The Rabbit Hole (resources, content, etc. that are relevant to the job):
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