While much of our programming focuses on big-picture ideational planning, we do not want to overlook specific planning tools and techniques that help us be successful and productive and carve out enough time for wellness and well-being. 

We provide this page to offer specific planning tools and techniques that help faculty be successful and productive and carve out enough time for wellness and well-being.

The Eisenhower Matrix reminds us that there’s a difference between what’s urgent and important and that what’s one is not necessarily the other. Here is a summary that includes additional time management and productivity tools. It is also a good article for students.

To-do lists: Lifehacker has an article titled “10 Ways to Improve Your To-Do List,” which lists different to-do list approaches. David Allen’s Getting Things Done is probably the most popular to-do list system available, and there are summaries of the approach all over the internet. Therefore, if the Libraries doesn't have the book, you may want to google it yourself.

Raúl Pacheco-Vega’s series of blog posts about how he organizes his work (and boy, DOES he organize!) is worth reading. You’ll learn about the Everything Notebook, TOTOMs and TOMs, the Four-Tray Method, and more.

Various sources summarize formal project planning approaches, including Robison’s Peak Performing Professor. (Hardcopy and electronic versions may be available through the JMU Libraries.)

Rebecca Pope-Ruark writes about how faculty can use agile approaches to project planning in various work contexts (Hard copy available through the JMU Libraries).

Apps like Trello or Microsoft Planner implemented the use of Kanban boards in agile planning. JMU provides a Planner license with the Microsoft 365 suite of apps to faculty, staff, and students. Planner allows for the creation of complex electronic Kanban boards that can be collaborative, can integrate links to documents, and allow for extensive note-taking and drafting.

Kyle Gipson and Andreas Broscheid offered a workshop on this topic in the fall of 2023. View the slides and sources.

Steven Rogelberg has written the book about meetings: The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance. Business Book Summary. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019. (Electronic copy available through the JMU Libraries.)

The growing collection of interaction structures created by the Liberating Structures movement provides helpful ways to make meetings more active and participatory. See the related community-building activities created by Mia Zamora, Maha Bali, and Autumn Caines.

Email takes up so much time in our lives that you may wonder if you could save most of it by reading lengthy articles about emailing more efficiently (and effectively).

You are in luck! The following are in-depth articles about how to write emails more efficiently and effectively to save time.

• Articles about writing emails that do not waste other people’s time

Sehgal, Kabir. “How to Write Email with Military Precision.” Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, November 22, 2016, 2–5.

Harmon, Shani. “How to Make Sure Your Emails Give the Right Impression.” Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, February 6, 2017, 2–4.

• Wise suggestions for managing one’s email load, including a long article about using Outlook efficiently

Outlook Support. “Best Practices for Outlook.” Accessed November 10, 2024.

In Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, Stone, Patton, and Heen describe an approach to conversations in conflictual situations (someone has to deliver unpleasant employment news, someone asks for a raise, someone raises an issue of discrimination, etc.) that they developed for the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. (The 1st edition hard copy is available through JMU Libraries; it may be checked out from CFI or Purchased online.)

Their follow-up book, Thanks for the Feedback, is also worth reading. (A hard copy is available through JMU Libraries.

Patterson et al.’s Crucial Conversations is about the same thing (just using “crucial” instead of “difficult”) and comes from a business consulting context. It's worth reading, and the library has electronic copies and audiobooks.

Another approach to dealing with conflict is Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg, a psychologist who created and promoted it, has been particularly influential among nonprofits. Rosenberg also has a podcast that explains nonviolent communication in more detail than his book and adds the occasional original song.

You probably have preferences for muzak (background music) that helps you work more efficiently. Here are some links with free ambient sounds for your enjoyment.

• Moodist
  
• Sounds of Earth
  
• Soundscape.io