Few things are more important than how we manage our time. If we choose our actions intentionally, and focus our energy on what really counts, truly we will live more meaningful days. Educators, with so many competing demands on their time, especially understand the need to manage time effectively. In the past decade, I've dedicated a lot of time to trying to get the most out of my minutes. I'd like to summarize what I've learned from books about time management and other topics here. I've organized these ideas into a little six-step program.

1. Do Big Picture Planning: Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and First Things First, which he co-authored with A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca A. Merrill, along with David Allen's Getting Things Done, stress that time management starts by asking, "what is most important in my life?" To answer that question, Covey and his colleagues recommend we start by identifying our roles in life (husband, father, teacher, coach, etc.). Allen suggests we create a list of projects (cut the grass, buy a present for Mom, finish grading, get started on that novel). What matters here is that we look over all aspects of our lives and identify what needs to be done each week.

2. Identify Actions: Once we know what's most important, we need to figure out what to do about it. Covey refers to this as identifying the "big rocks" in our lives. Allen calls it identifying "next actions." Once we know what counts, Allen says, the most important question is, "what is our next action?" I've found this to be a great question to ask during team meetings, as well as for my own planning. What's the next action?

3. Work In The Details: The next step is to figure out when we are going to do the actions, and commit to doing them. Covey suggests we plan weekly, making appointments with ourselves that are just as binding as appointments with anyone else. All we need to do is pull out our calendars, and write in the appointments.

4. Make it A Habit: All of this sounds great, but these strategies don't mean much if we don't make the time to fill out our planners. Too often we might not make time to do this. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of The Power of Full Engagement, add another important component to this process. If we want the change to stick, we need to make it a routine. Discipline and will power are rarely enough to make change stick. What we need is a ritual, a habit of practice. Loehr and Schwartz explain: "Look at any part of your life in which you are consistently effective and you will find that certain habits make that possible... Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement" (pp. 14-15). Finding a specific time to plan your week, and making that a simple habit that you always follow, increases the likelihood that you'll actually do it.

5. Say No: OK, so you've identified your goals, figured out your next actions, set up a ritual, and you habitually pull out your planner each Sunday morning to plan your week. Does that mean you're all set for a life of balance and harmony? Unfortunately, no. I don't know what might happen to you, but when I open my planner, I have a big problem. There's no space in my day to fit in the big rocks. My weeks are packed before I start to plan. Now we get down to what really matters. If we want to spend your lives focused on what really counts, we have to cut stuff out. This means we've got to say no. Fortunately, there's a great little book about how to say no, William Ury's The Power of A Positive No. To briefly summarize Ury, telling people you're too busy to do what they ask (join the committee, volunteer, lead the book study, coach hockey, whatever) won't work, simply because everybody is busy. We need to explain graciously why we can't say yes. By explaining why we must say no, we honor the invitation, but also cut the commitment.

6. Expect to Drop the Ball: The final reality is that even if we do all of these strategies, we still will likely drop the ball a few times. As Prochaska, Norcross, and DiClemente have shown in their book Changing for Good, change rarely happens in a flash. It's a back and forth process, and most of the time we need several attempts to actually develop new habits. In a way this is good. It means that if we implement all of these time management strategies for a while, and then fall off the wagon, we're right where we are supposed to be. Most people need several failures before they actually make change stick. Every new attempt just takes us closer to our goal. So if you drop the ball with time management, go easy on yourself. Most of us do. Real change takes several attempts. If we keep trying, Prochaska says, we should get stronger and more capable of truly making good time management strategies an important habit bringing more meaning into our lives.

Recently, I read two books that I loved. Let's call them Time Management 2.0: Tim Ferris's The 4-Hour Workweek, and Leo Babuta's The Power of Less. Both authors turn traditional ideas of time management upside down. I'll write about them in my next post. In fact, I'm going to make that my next action.

You can follow Jim Knight on Twitter or on Facebook. He writes a blog on instructional coaching and updates a Delicious web site. You can download free teaching manuals developed at his workplace, the Kansas Coaching Project, at www.instructionalcoach.org. His e-mail address is jimknight@mac.com.