Buffet meals – love ’em or leave ’em? When I was a college student, my friends and I would save our pennies and go to your run-of-the-mill, inexpensive, all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. We would gorge ourselves on a Sunday evening so we could live off ramen noodles the rest of the week. It was great. We would grab plate after plate of food until we were more than full. We would then coax your stomach to handle dessert by making a trip to the self serve ice cream machine as we left. The only limit to our trip to the restaurant was dictated by our stomachs. Wouldn’t life be great if our time limits were dictated only by a sense of fullness? Some weeks you could gorge on time and have days that are well beyond 24 hours. Other weeks, you could live slimmer and have days that are less hours. Unfortunately, our hunger for productivity cannot dictate the hours in a day. Time is static – your day does not change size. To align with the buffet analogy, instead of time being a product of your stomach, it is a product of your plate. In this case, one, single, 24-hour plate at a time. And, the only way to get a new plate is to enter a new day.
Last summer, I helped to lead a session for the Ohio Agriculture Teachers’ Conference. The session was less of a traditional workshop and more of a “conversation” around the future of school-based agricultural education (SBAE). We had over 30 teachers attend ranging from pre-service teachers (college students) to teachers in or beyond the 30-year mark. We would pose questions and collect immediate data using the polling platform Poll Everywhere. Although these results were not generalizable to the entire state of Ohio, the data gave us a glimpse as to what some Ohio ag teachers are thinking. One of the themes that emerged was that of time management. Although time management is not a unique problem to agriculture teachers, I would argue that managing time is specific to your career and the demands placed on you in your work setting, within your profession and among your stakeholders. We have to think about the strategies we apply to the buffet line of life.
We have one plate per day (24 hours). When you walk through the buffet line of life, you can lump all kinds of things on that plate. You can mound stuff on top of each other, but then things get messy and out of control. Certain foods may not mesh well; your dinner roll might get soggy or a savory dish might bleed into your sweet dish. If you’re strategic, you might be able to fill your plate without consequences to your different foods on your plate. No matter the strategy or philosophy, there is one truth that you have to wrestle with – that plate isn’t getting any bigger. You can only control portions.
There’s a good reason why we shouldn’t go to the buffet restaurants every day. It’s unhealthy. Even if we can convince ourselves it’s fine to eat more, it doesn’t mean we should eat more. But, if I let you loose in a buffet line and give you one plate, you start to think about your choices differently than if you had unlimited plates. You might be strategic about how your approach the buffet. Your approach might be to stick to foods you know and get more of what’s comfortable, which may mean less types of food. Your approach could be the opposite where you take smaller portions of many foods. You might sample less so you leave less unfinished food waste on your plate. Regardless, you probably wouldn’t mindlessly add food to your plate because there would be consequences to that choice.
Different phases of my life have required different approaches to time management. As an agriculture teacher, 7 hours of your day are locked to teaching classes. There were many balls up in the air to juggle and there were numerous events and opportunities with which I could engage my students. I didn’t always have the time to reflect on my teaching like I wanted to do. At the end of my days, it was common to be both mentally and physically tired. As a college professor, the stakes were high to publish research so I could earn tenure and keep my job (and a job I had spend years in graduate school having taken a major pay cut). Yes, I’m teaching less hours than when I was a high school teacher and therefore my schedule is more flexible. However, I’m also doing jobs like researching (which, if done correctly, is not a fast process), advising, attending (many more) meetings, and building stakeholder and collaborative relationships in ways I did not as a high school teacher. At the end of my day, my tired looks different as compared to when I was an agriculture teacher. Two different positions – or two different types of buffets – both requiring different approaches.
Time changes how we approach this buffet we call life. I draw upon my experiences as an agriculture teacher/FFA advisor to illustrate. The opportunities for high school agriculture students/FFA members doubled from the time I was teaching in the early 2000’s from when I was an agriculture student in 1990. For a single teacher program in a school, that’s more opportunity to juggle. And not only that, but changes in education profession have required certain helpings of food on your plate regarding accountability measures and parental involvement, whether you want those portions on your plate or not. Student accountability measures, early career benchmarks and programs, paperwork, and classroom procedure requirements from your school administrators have all changed over the years.
As you think about your strategy of ways you want to build your buffet plate and ways you don’t, I recommend asking these questions before taking a spoonful:
- Does it move the needle? (Do my foods have nutritional value?) – In this question, I look for impact. There are really “neat” things out there that can occupy your time. Dig deep to determine if those neat opportunities make a real impact or simply look cool. For example, I see this play out with novice teachers (both high school and college) who spend hours preparing for activities that have a “cool appeal” but ultimately add little to real, powerful learning.
- Does it allow me to have a life outside of this job? (Am I choosing different kinds of food?) – There is a Forbes article that teases out the conversation of work-life balance versus work-life integration. Regardless of what you call it, I challenge you to think about having an identity that is beyond work, whether that’s family, friends, hobbies, interests, and/or passions. Sometimes, those things overlap your work (e.g. if you love showing livestock and are in a job where you are involved with fairs and shows) and sometimes they don’t. Find ways to spend time on things that don’t overlap – unplug from work and come back to it refreshed.
- Does it bring me joy? (Did I splurge, just a little?) – This seems like a simple question, but sometimes we die on hills doing things because we think we have to do them, not because we want to do them. It is more than acceptable to choose to do something at work, not because you should, but because it makes you happy. It will make the things that drain your joy more tolerable (let’s face it, no job let’s you do 100% of what you want to do 100% of the time – we just need to get as close to that as possible). You can’t choose the fun things all the time (your plate shouldn’t be filled with desserts), but you have to make room for them.
- Can it wait? (Can I find room for that food on tomorrow’s plate?) – I would be remiss if I didn’t share that this one is particularly difficult for me. I love to crossing things off my list. I love seeing a small red bubble on my mail app indicating few unread emails (which has been my true to do list as of late). But, many of us are in jobs where the “end of the list” simply does not exist. When we finish one big project there’s more to do and more that could be improved. When possible, find a way to identify an end of your work day. Set boundaries. Turn off email notifications on your phone (or for some, take it off your phone completely). Leave that text unread until the morning unless it’s an emergency. You will likely have all-day work days occasionally because of events or activities where you play an integral role last beyond the standard work day – sometimes that is part of the job. Just make sure the days that follow are ones where you can leave work at work.
This is not easy, but finding a framework (or a set of questions) that helps you evaluate what to add on your plate – and if you are going to add it to your plate HOW MUCH to add – can be a powerful tool in determining priorities. If you ask the right questions, they will, from time to time, force you to face bad habits or face decisions that could lead to bad habits. Finally, there are many ways to be successful and there are different strategies that help us achieve our outcomes. Finds the strategies that fill your plate in a way that leaves you full, healthy and satisfied.
I still struggle with time management. I’m not sure you ever master time management. But, like any relationship, your relationship with time requires work. Like any relationship, your relationship with time will change as you get older. And like any relationship, your relationship with time can bring your great joy.