Time Management: Why You Don't Need It, Can't Do it Anyway — and What To Do Instead
2009 TAA Conference Presentation

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Susan Robison

Presenter: Susan Robison, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, College of Notre Dame of Maryland

Are you in charge of your to-do lists or are your lists in charge of you? Faculty come to time management workshops hoping to find time for all the tasks and/or to stop procrastinating. This workshop won't help you with either of those goals. Instead it will encourage you to make time for what is important to you and to procrastinate even more. Come prepared to unlearn everything you have heard about time management so you can apply practices that will increase your effectiveness in teaching, writing, serving, and living well.

You will learn to:

• Develop your Pyramid of Power so you can focus on important tasks instead of wandering from task to task.
• Procrastinate creatively so you can make time, energy, and space for professional activities including research and writing.
• Apply the "strive for nine - or less rule" so that your to-do lists are realistic and achievable.
• Construct "unschedules" so you can play hard to work more productively.
• Plan backward and estimate time-to-completion more accurately.
• Use the "focused 15" to develop work habits that lead to flow, engagement, and fun.
• Develop and apply the CARS that bring you consistent results from your efforts.

Susan Robison, Ph.D. is a psychologist, author, and consultant. A former academic department chair, Susan is a professor of Psychology at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland where she teaches leadership courses in the graduate school. Susan is the author of two leadership books (Discovering Our Gifts and Sharing Our Gifts), a co-author with Barbara Walvoord et al. of Thinking and Writing in College, as well as numerous articles on leadership and work-life balance. She maintains a clinical practice at the Center for Extraordinary Marriages where she is co-director with her husband of 39 years. Her Professor Destressor faculty development workshops are on Peak Performing Practices of Highly Effective Faculty including stress management, time management, leadership, work-life balance, and communication skills. She enjoys coaching clients who want help with improving work-life balance, time management, and increasing productivity. In 2004 the Executive Women’s Network presented Susan with the Mandy Goetze award for service and leadership to business women in the Baltimore area. In 2008 she was selected as one of the Top 100 Minority Business Entrepreneurs in the Maryland, DC, and Virginia areas.