How many times do you catch yourself saying, “I wish I had an extra hour today,” or “I wish I had an extra day this week”? Do you crawl into bed at night exhausted after taking care of everyone else’s needs but yours? Do you set your goals and look back at them later only to find that you aren’t even on target?

If you answered yes to these questions, time may be getting away from you. It’s time to outline a game plan that will help you manage your time.

Management Misconceptions

There are several misconceptions regarding time management. Perhaps the biggest of all is that we can “manage” time like we manage other resources. We can only manage ourselves in relation to time. We can’t control the amount of time available; we can only control how we use it. Once time has passed, it’s gone and cannot be replaced.

We need to change the way we think about time management. Have you ever heard someone say, “I work better under pressure, and time management would take away that edge”? The fact is, few, if any, people work better under pressure. What happens is they do the best they can under the circumstances. The previous statement may be just a subconscious rationale for procrastinating.

You also may hear people say, “Time management is nothing but common sense. I’m doing OK at my job and at home, so I must be managing my time just fine.” Maybe, but it’s much more likely they are successful in spite of how they manage time.

If you use various “to-do” lists or other types of time planners, you may be having some degree of success, depending on how organized you are in the first place. The biggest problem with a list is that the tasks are not given a home or specific time in which to accomplish them. Without a specific timeline, the tasks lose their importance.

Too often people make a list of things they want to do without asking the essential question: When am I going to do this? Unless a task has a location that is clearly blocked out on your schedule, you won’t get to it. Nothing will get done in your “spare time” because there is no such thing!

Time Traps

All too often, we set ourselves up for time-management failure by falling into one or more of the “time traps” we set for ourselves. Look out for the following time bombs:

Trying to accomplish too much. Instead of listing anything and everything you have to do, try writing a list that has specific tasks and then assign each task a priority. You’ll save many hours of work and get better results when you plan ahead.

Lack of self-discipline. When you set deadlines for yourself, you can more easily track your progress and evaluate the results of your work.

Personal disorganization. A stacked desk may symbolize personal disorganization, indecision, procrastination, insecurity, or confusion of priorities. Find an organization system that works for you. You may need to get a larger file cabinet to keep your papers in order. Don’t leave them in stacks on your desk.

Too much talk. Are you in an office or area where socializing might interfere with your work goals? Control the urge to socialize. Take your breaks in the lounge or somewhere you won’t disturb someone else’s work and encourage others to do so, as well.

Poor communication. You must give and receive feedback to ensure understanding. Have you ever had to redo a project because the directions that you understood were not the directions that were given? Develop and practice your listening skills, and ask questions until you thoroughly understand directions. Determine what information is needed for planning, setting priorities, and making decisions, and don’t make any assumptions about information.

Time Tools

Now that we have looked at some of the things that keep you from using your time efficiently, we’ll look at some tools that will help you use your time more wisely. When people aren’t able to manage their time wisely, they may think of that as a personal failure. This perception is self-defeating. Remember — failure is an event, not a person.

Investing in time. One tool in the time-management arsenal is the idea you have a “bank account” of time. In this theory, there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400, a dollar for every second of the day. However, any amount of this money you fail to invest or spend is forfeited. The bank does not carry over the balance for you, nor does it allow any overdrafts.

Each day, another $86,400 is deposited in your account and each night the bank erases the deposit of the day before. In other words, you use it or lose it. You can’t draw against tomorrow’s deposit, just live in today on today’s deposit. Relating this to time management, you start the day with 86,400 seconds, 1,440 minutes, or 24 hours. This equals 168 hours each week.

Do a quick time analysis and jot down what tasks you do each week and how many hours you spend on each one. Then add the hours you “spend” each 24 hours for seven days, including sleep. Next, subtract those hours from your 168 hours. This total will show you how many hours you have to invest each week. This will give you an overall view of how you are managing your time.

Equate to space. Most people think of time as intangible. It is like the wind — we can see the effects of it, but we can’t get a hold of it. Time isn’t something that can be put in a box and stored until later or moved. Thus, it may be hard to conceptualize the idea of time being managed.

It is much easier to organize a desk or a room. We can see the space we have, and we can see how much stuff can fit in that space. Time is something you feel. And as long as we think about time as elusive like the wind, it will be difficult to manage our days.¹ So, we need to change our perception of time and develop a more tangible view of it. For our example, we’ll compare a cluttered closet to a cluttered schedule and identify the similarities.

Cluttered Closet:

• Limited amount of space
• Crammed with more stuff than storage
• Items are jammed into any available pocket of space available in no particular order
• Haphazard arrangement makes it difficult to see what you have
• Inefficient in its use of organizing tools

Cluttered Schedule:

• Limited amount of hours
• Crammed with more tasks than time
• Tasks jammed into any available pocket of time in no particular order
• Haphazard arrangement makes it difficult to see what you have to do
• Inefficient in its use of time-management tools

With this concept, time has boundaries, and we can look at our tasks differently. Tasks become objects that we must fit into available space, and each task has a specific size. Arranging tasks in our day becomes a mathematical equation. As we evaluate what needs to be done, we begin to calculate the size of the task and whether or not it will fit it into the allotted space.

When we work with time as having borders, just as space does, we become more realistic about what can be accomplished, and we become more motivated to master various time-management tools and techniques to help us make the most of our time.

The APIE Plan

We use planning in all aspects of our lives. In nursing, we often call it a “care plan,” and nurses use this process to guide their practice. But the nursing care process, or “APIE,” can also be used successfully as a time-management tool. APIE can be defined as “a systematic, rational method of planning and providing nursing care,” but we can change those words to read, “a systematic rational method of planning and accomplishing a workable time-management plan.”

Just as you would organize your closet, house, or desk, first you need to formulate a time-management plan. Think back to your nursing school days and remember APIE:

1. Assess/Analyze — Collect and organize data and form a statement of actual or potential time-management needs.
2. Plan/Prioritize — Formulate your plan. This involves devising goals and expected outcomes, setting priorities, and identifying interventions to help reach the goals.
3. Implement/Intervene — Put your plan into action.
4. Evaluate — Assess your outcomes and see how you measure up against your goals.

Time management is a dynamic process. It is constant action and communication between you and your goals and dealing with changing situations. Life is full of surprises and the ride can be fun, if you have APIE and a way to be flexible and adaptable.

Care Plan Guidelines

When writing a time-management care plan that includes several tasks to “diagnose,” write the task with the highest priority first. If you haven’t written a care plan in a while, remember that a plan must start with the major issues. Only select diagnoses that you can resolve independently. Write down each goal, including the deadline for completion.

A goal without a deadline is a dream. No time-management technique is going to work very well without goal setting. Goals motivate us to do our best. As such, goals need to be achievable and positioned for success, or you will get discouraged. On the other hand, if a goal is vague and unspecified, how will you know when you have achieved it? It must be specific and measurable.

Having a deadline is essential in goal setting. A deadline provides a sense of urgency and a means of tracking progress. Don’t just think in terms of “working on the project.” Instead, assign yourself the task of “completing” the outline, “finishing” the research, or “writing” the paper at a specific time or date.

Author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar teaches us that our goals not only must be must be written, but printed and made visible for constant review. Keep your goals visible so you will be reminded of them on a daily basis. Your goals set the focus of how you spend your time, thus making time management your focus for success.

Write short-term goals, as well as the long-term goal of completion. List specific actions that you need to take to work toward each goal. Remember, the actions must be specific, appropriate, and without important omissions. Although reflection takes time and personal honesty, it is a requirement to keep you on track to reach your goals.

Your goals set the focus for how you spend your time. In a well-known study conducted at Yale in 1953, recent graduates were questioned about their future plans. Only 3% had written out their goals and future plans. Twenty years later, this 3% appeared happier and more content than the others. Plus, this small group had achieved more wealth than the remaining 97% of their classmates combined.¹

When evaluating your plan, this guide can be useful:

1. State when you evaluated the goal.
2. Use the measures you designated for goal achievement to state your degree of success.
3. Draw conclusions on the interventions used related to the outcome.
4. Consider changes or additions to the interventions that might improve your outcomes.
5. For your long-term goal, write: “Evaluation of this goal is set for (state the date and time). I made (no)(some)(significant) progress toward this goal: (describe any movement toward the goal).”

That is what APIE is — monitoring your situation and making adjustments that keep you on track. When it comes to time management, you need to evaluate daily, bimonthly, or whenever your schedule gets thrown off track. Keeping your balance even when your life takes unexpected turns is an art.

Know When to Say No

Remember, you are not CEO of the world. One of the strongest time-management tools in the world is one tiny word: no. There are a lot of reasons why we have a difficult time saying no to requests from others, but the results are always the same: overload, overtime, and overstress. The person who cannot say no always seems to be behind a mountain of work that keeps getting larger and larger.

There is a difference between the problem of attempting to accomplish too much and the inability to say no. Those who attempt too much suffer from overconfidence. The inability to say no means not knowing how or not having the emotional fortitude to refuse.

Timidity, the need to please, fear of offending, or similar emotionally driven impulses lead people to say yes to all requests. The best way to cure the habit of automatically saying yes, even when you don’t want to, is to review the underlying reasons. An underlying desire to please or win approval heads the list. After all, nurses are caregivers, and we want to take care of everyone! The humanitarian instinct to help those in need is a worthy trait, but wanting to please so badly that you lose sight of your own priorities becomes a liability. Say “yes” to yourself first and keep your own priorities in plain sight.

Go Back to Kindergarten

Have you been in a kindergarten or day care center recently? The kindergarten classroom is a model of organization. It is clearly divided into activity centers so the children can focus on one activity at a time. There is a reading corner, a place for naps, eating, music, arts and crafts, playing, etc. In other words, there is a place for everything and everything has its place.¹ You can see how you might apply this principle to any physical space, but how does this apply to time management?
To manage our time means to manage ourselves. One of the reasons many of us find time management so frustrating is because it means we need to manage ourselves more effectively. It is usually easier to manage others than to work on our own self-control. We can be our own best friend or our worst enemy.

Time is a unique resource because it is how we measure the passing of our lives. It can also be a confusing resource. It is at the same time an opportunity and a tyrant. You might feel you “should” be doing one thing or “ought to” be doing another and wind up frustrated and upset. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to these situations. However, we must move forward and make decisions about using our time as best we can.

Judith Brumm, RN, CNOR, has been a perioperative nurse for 21 years and a CNOR for 16 years. She works in the Operating Room Education Department at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where she is a clinical program coordinator.

Reference

1. Morganstern J. Time Management from the Inside Out. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company; 2000.