Time Management Strategies to Lighten Your Mental Load as a School Counselor with Kaci Ranger [Episode 156]

Lauren 0:00
Today’s guest is not a school counselor, but I met Kaci Ranger when I needed a gap filled on the back end of Counselor Clique. You’ll probably hear me say multiple times during this episode that this is absolutely not a strength of mine, and so I’m either speaking from a place of lack, where I have tried something and it has worked, or I am reaching out and bringing in an expert to tell us a little bit about what works for them and what can work for all of us if it works for me.

Lauren 0:31
So I worked with Kaci to get some back end stuff figured out before I went to have a baby, and that was with some systems and some organization pieces, and I’m so glad that I did, because my brain is always overflowing with a lot of work at home, tasks and ideas and stressors, and I know that you’re no different. When I went out to have a baby, if I would not have had a place to keep all of my thoughts, at least Counselor Clique related, I don’t know what I would have done.

Lauren 1:01
So most likely you do not need her services for a robust project management tool. But we’re not talking about that today, so good thing, right? Today, she’s giving us hacks and strategies that are most applicable to high school counselors so that we can implement without a big project management tool. She has some simple suggestions that we can take some really meaningful, powerful changes to our department or to the way that we use our to do lists and let go of some of the things that hold our mental load captive.

Lauren 1:36
So let me introduce you to Kaci. With organization and efficiency as her superpowers, Kaci lives for the moments when she can step into a small business and help them manage, plan, track, organize, streamline, and get time back. From being a dental office manager to running a six figure online business in less than two years, she’s helped hundreds of business owners grow by revitalizing their back end of their businesses to make it run more smoothly. Some say that her best skill is taking the jumbled mess inside someone’s brain and turning it into a sustainable system.

Lauren 2:06
Now I can validate that is true. Kaci has over a decade of management experience, specializing in systems and process creation and efficiency. This type A vetted clickup consultant, has managed multiple teams of 10 plus people and lives and breathes organization. Now we all need someone in our life who lives and breathes organization. So if it’s you and you’re listening to this, you will really appreciate the conversation. And if it’s not you, you’re gonna say, Wow, I’m so glad there are people out there who do this. Now what can I take from it? So let’s jump into our chat about balancing the demands of this high school counseling job that pulls you in a million different directions every single day. You’re gonna love it. Here we go.

Lauren 2:50
You got into this profession to make a difference in your students lives, but you’re spread thin by all of the things that keep getting added to your to do list. I can’t create more hours in the day, but I can invite you into my Counselor Clique where you’ll finally catch your breath. Come with me as we unpack creative ideas and effective strategies that’ll help you be the counselor who leaves a lifelong impact on your students. I’m Lauren Tingle, your high school counseling hype girl, here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job.

Lauren 3:22
Hey Kaci, welcome to High School Counseling Conversations. I’m excited to talk about time management and organization of our time. I know me personally, this is a weak spot for me, and I think a lot of high school counselors would benefit to hear from some of the strategies that you’re going to share with us today.

Kaci 3:39
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to chat with you today.

Lauren 3:43
Yeah, I think high school counselors, or counselors across the board, elementary, middle and high school are always juggling a lot of things. Like, it’s kind of just this inside joke we have, like we’re wearing all these hats. We’re kind of the catch all of the school. But I do think it’s important to think about our time management, because if we’re doing the things we are supposed to be doing in the school, like working with students, then we’re going to like our job a lot more. We’re going to have more job satisfaction. It’s going to be sustainable. So talk to us about some first steps that you think counselors should take if they’re trying to not be as reactionary to all the things that are coming up and trying to be proactive about how they plan their day.

Kaci 4:25
One thing that I have found really helps people is building out what I call an ideal schedule. So if we look at our work week, whatever time you start versus time you end, you can build out kind of an ideal or master schedule of if you were not interrupted, which I know is not ever going to happen, but let’s say you were not interrupted, and you could have the perfect work week ever. You will build that out. And what that does is it really just helps you in your mindset of if you do have that pocket of time, you can look at your ideal schedule and say, Oh, this is my admin time. I’m going to fill out those forms that I need to get done for the state, or I’m going to get some emails responded to, different pieces of that.

Kaci 5:13
And also, what’s nice too, is when you’re doing that, you’ve planned it out so you’re not feeling guilty for saying, Hey, I have time on my calendar after this with a parent or a student or admin or whoever, whoever you’re trying to meet with. But it really helps you feel confident in saying like, I’m gonna follow this as close as I can. And I will tell you right now you will never, ever, not one day, ever follow that schedule perfectly, but it’s in the back of your actual calendar.

Kaci 5:43
So I actually build this on my Google calendar. So it’s a separate calendar. It’s kind of grayed out, so everything goes on top of it, but it just feels really good to see, like, Okay, I have work block here, I have meetings here, I have this, you know, like, so then when I’m working, it feels good, like, I actually feel productive, you know. And a lot of my clients that I’ve worked with say that that feels really good to build that out. The biggest thing that people say is that they push admin stuff off, or they push, for example, with counselors, maybe filling out forms for the state or responding to non parent emails on last and, you know, end up either working late or maybe taking the work home, and you don’t want to have to do that. And so when you build this out, it feels really good.

Lauren 6:29
Yeah, I would say there’s a couple things that I wanted to respond back to that. When you say, like, ideal schedule, I’m glad you addressed that like, ideal means probably impossible. Like, it’s it’s never going to happen, but at least you’re stopping and pausing and saying, if it were to, if I was able to make my dream schedule, what would it look like? And then also, I just, like, want listeners to not hear that and dismiss that and say, like, well, I’ll never have the ideal schedule like that I think is a limiting belief of just erasing that and saying, Hey, even though this is ideal, maybe we’ll never achieve it. If we can lay it out, we can know kind of what the goals are.

Lauren 7:08
And like, we have goals as counselors, we are preaching that to students to have goals. I love your idea of having that kind of like in the background on your Google Calendar, because then, like you said, you finish a task and you go, Oh, wow, that actually took me less time that I thought it was going to, and now I have this open block. What else can I move up there?

Lauren 7:26
And I know we’ll get into kind of tools and stuff here in a second. But using a digital tool like a Google Calendar is huge, I think, because if you don’t finish something, you can drag it over to the next day. It’s kind of, it’s more flex than that paper and pencil calendar, but I know to each their own. And I know we’ll talk about tips and stuff, but I love just framing it out and saying, If I had my choice of how I’m going to do things, this is how I’m going to do it. It can be flexible. It allows the what you said about the not having guilt about doing the things you have to do. I think that’s important to acknowledge. So I appreciate that.

Lauren 8:06
Let’s talk about, I already said this is a weakness of mine, so what are your tips for someone who doesn’t feel like they are the most organized person? Like, what tools would you use? Where do they start when this doesn’t come naturally to them?

Kaci 8:20
So I would recommend starting very simple. So I would highly recommend to go digital. I know that some people that’s really hard. When people say that, I say, Okay, write it all down, but then take five minutes and put it in your digital area. With school counselors. I would probably recommend Google, or whatever the school kind of allows, which I would, I would assume most of them have Google as an option, but the Google Suite is really helpful. We have the calendar there. You can make events. You can use appointment scheduling there for people to kind of make boundaries around, you know, allowing people just to take over your schedule. You have Google drive to store things. And one thing that I really like that I tell people is I want to use state forms, for example, Lauren, so you mentioned to me before on the call that the counselors often have forms they have to fill out for the state, and there’s deadlines on them.

Lauren 9:16
Yeah, whether that’s graduation or scholarship reports or just the things that you don’t necessarily want to spend your time doing.

Kaci 9:23
Yeah, so I have recommended this to a lot of people. When they are feeling like there’s no organization, they end up, you know, running late, working late, working 12 hour days, etc, put that reminder in your calendar at least 30 days before it’s due. That’s gonna allow you to say, like, okay, it’s coming up, right? Like, start to mentally prepare for the fact that you have to do something you do not want to do.

Lauren 9:51
I was gonna say, do you think that that inspires some dread, like, down deep in your gut? Or you’re like, No, this is a good thing. So that you know, you’re foreshadowing. You know that the deadline’s coming.

Kaci 10:00
So I think this would be helpful. Are you the counselor, not you, Lauren, but who’s listening, Are you the counselor that often returns stuff late, or are you the counselor that is like, on time with everything? If you are like, always turning things in late or missing deadlines, that is where I highly recommend putting these reminders in. Because that means that you will benefit from knowing, oh, this is coming up. I need to do it. It needs to be on the forefront of my mind. And what’s nice about the digital side is you can move that reminder throughout the day or the week or whatever it looks like. If you are wanting to do pen and paper, go put it in your planner right now, highlight it in yellow. You know, whatever you need to do to remind yourself. But it’s really important to obviously know the kind of person you are and know like if something would make you feel good or not, and if you can’t answer that question, I would say, try it out.

Lauren 10:59
I would be willing to bet that a lot of people would be like me in this where there are just it feels like there are so many tasks. So you’re not turning things in late, but you are literally working to the last minute, because there are other things that have deadlines sooner. And you know, I have a wise friend who says, if you wait to the last minute to do something, it only takes a minute, so you procrastinate all the way till the end, and you’re like, Okay, well, I’m gonna get it in on time, and I’m gonna work really fast, but it’s, that’s an adrenaline rush to always be working under that kind of pressure for yourself. And so I like thinking about it like 30 days out knowing, because a lot of these things are not surprises. They happen every year, and maybe they’re quarterly or monthly or once or twice a year, but they’re always going to be about the same time.

Kaci 11:43
Yeah, and if you are in the season of this is too much, and I have too much on my plate, and I am feeling very unorganized, and I have no way to control things, I would say before you literally even open your computer in the mornings when you sit down at your desk, take five minutes, sit with yourself and write down just three things that you would feel really good at the end of the day if those three things were done. And I think that will help you start to feel just a little bit more peace.

Kaci 12:15
Like you said, even though things just take a minute the mental load that you are putting on yourself to remember all of those things all of the time, and then also getting interrupted, like 100 times a day, that is so exhausting. Like you are going to just constantly feel exhausted and burnt out, and not like you’re being able to give your best. And so taking these really small steps will help you in the long run and help you kind of get further. So once you like, have I’m feeling really good about how I write three things down every single morning. Okay, maybe now we move to opening up your planner and actually planning out your week on a Monday or a Sunday, if you like you know, doing it before your week starts, then you can grow into, okay, I’m gonna actually, like, put this on my Google Calendar.

Lauren 13:05
Yeah. I love giving ideal next steps of, like, okay, I can start really small with this. And the three things for the day, that’s a great way to walk away and leave work at work and say, Wow, I accomplished something. I accomplished the things I set out to. So now I don’t feel guilty about all the things I didn’t get to like, this is my goal, and I accomplished it.

Kaci 13:25
Exactly. Yep.

Lauren 13:26
I love that. Okay, counselors have a lot of different inputs from places, so things that come from themselves, like maybe have sticky notes all over their desk. They have emails to answer from people within their school, meetings and emails from people outside of their school. How do we reduce the overwhelm when they have things coming from students, parents, teachers, administrators, colleges, I mean, you name it, and their inbox and voicemail is full, and then there’s a lot of stuff going on that they’re trying to remember. People stop them in the hallways and say, Hey, can you check on this? How do we organize that? How do we streamline that stuff so that we’re not overwhelmed and we can actually function?

Kaci 14:07
So I’m going to give a few different tips here, and some of them you may not like but we’re going to go for it. So the first tip that I personally would love for people to see is implementing a Google form. So what that looks like is, if somebody has a request, especially if we’re talking about admin like in your school, if someone stops you in the hall and says, Hey, can you check on duh duh duh, I would love for you to respond. Hey, I would love to help you out with that. Can you please fill out the form that I sent you, you know, in your email? Done.

Lauren 14:41
I like to put stuff like that at the bottom of my email signature too. So like any communication I’ve ever had with that person, they know where to find either the place to make the appointment or the place to fill out the request or whatever.

Kaci 14:51
So I give you permission to do that, to say that, because you are not saying no to them, you are putting the responsibility on them, right? Because they want this situation, but them stopping you in the hall is now putting that responsibility on you to remember something which is not okay, right?

Lauren 15:11
I posted about that on Instagram recently, where it’s not mean to set that boundary. It’s actually a way to, like, respect both people’s time and make sure it gets done with integrity, like, I need to make sure that I do it, but like, I’m gonna forget that student saying, if I don’t really know them, and it’s a request that you have. I love putting it back on the teacher, not because I don’t want to do it. I want to remember to do it, but like, it’s on their mind and it’s not on mine. So, yeah.

Kaci 15:36
Exactly. And also, you are not being mean to them. Because what I always say to people when they do that, even clients to me do that, I always say, hey, I want to do this, but I know that I’m going to forget. I just, I also put blame on me, like I know I’m going to forget. So can you please put it in this format so that I make sure that it gets done for you at the best ability that I can do this.

Lauren 16:01
Yeah.

Kaci 16:01
So it’s really showing that, like, you want to give them your best foot forward, best effort, everything. But you’re also saying, like, you know what, I have so much on my plate, like, I’m gonna forget.

Lauren 16:12
And think about if that teacher could imagine, you’re walking down the hall in between classes, there’s a teacher to your left and right all the way down the hall. There are 20 teachers. If every single one of them was like, Hey, can you check on this student’s grades? Hey, so and so didn’t show up for class today. Hey, this person was a little down in my last block. Can you check on them next? Like there would be so many requests. And if they stopped to think about that, which they don’t, that’s not their fault, but you have a lot of requests coming at you, and that’s not even why you went down that hallway to begin with.

Kaci 16:40
Exactly, exactly. So that is my first tip. Is this Google form. And obviously that form is for requests you know, like, we can’t get rid of a person walking into your office, right? Or a parent or a student walking in, if you know, a student walks in crying and you need to, like, take care of that immediately.

Lauren 17:00
This is a way to triage something that you can control.

Kaci 17:03
Right. Now, if that terrifies you, I want to offer you another, two other solutions, but one my husband uses, which literally makes me want to die, but it works for him. So what he does is he has a Google doc of a laundry list, literally, of stuff that he has to do, and he color codes. I don’t understand his color coding, but he tells me that red is really important, magenta is semi important.

Lauren 17:34
Wait, this is so funny because you’re a very organized person, and to be married to someone who, like, this is their kind of odd system is pretty funny to me.

Kaci 17:43
Oh, boy, if you only knew. So what he does, though, is because he gets a lot of thrown at him as well. He gets meetings just thrown on his plate. Obviously, he has his work to do, and so when he’s getting requests, he gets them through chat. He gets them everywhere. So he adds them to this Google Doc, and he puts them in a certain color. One thing that he does do, though, is he always under promises, all the time. So he will tell somebody, if they say, Hey, can you do this for me? He says, Yeah, I can get that done in two or three days. He usually has it done the same day. So there’s a lot of under promising going on, and that is one thing that I think would help counselors too, is if they say, You know what, realistically, with the amount on my plate, I can do that for you on Thursday instead of Monday. And then if you can get to it earlier, awesome. That makes that person feel really good as well, because you decided to, you know, take care of whatever it was.

Lauren 18:41
Yeah. And you know what came to my mind when you just said that is like counselors have these time restraints with their student schedules. And so I’m thinking, you know, a teacher asks you to see this student. Well, they might go off campus for half the day to a career center. They might have an early dismissal and might not be there. And so realistically, no, I cannot promise to see that person today, because let me go check their schedule, oh they’re not even here, they already left for the day. And so you don’t want to say yes, I will definitely see them today, and they go home sick or something. Like,, I think the under promising here is really helpful, as long as it’s not a crisis situation where the student is not safe or something, but if it’s something minor that we just need to follow up with that sounds like a good plan.

Kaci 19:22
Yes, so there’s that. Now, if you are the sticky note lover, which Lauren knows about me, I loathe sticky notes. Hate them. But if you’re the sticky note lover, I also want to encourage you to move away from that. For now, though, get color coded sticky notes, so all of your blue sticky notes mean something, all of your orange ones, all of your yellow ones. And I would also encourage you, if you love sticky notes, to maybe kind of categorize them. So like all of your blue ones are in one area, all of your yellow, all of your orange, and they all mean different things to help you. So that means, if you have10 minutes at your desk, you know, which sticky note pile you could go to and get things taken care of.

Lauren 20:07
I know that sounds so simple, but that would be huge on that mental load of either getting things off of your desk like, you know, these are all the one minute tasks that you just need to finish and throw away the notes. But something as simple as where they’re organized on your desk or what color they are, feels frivolous to even have to say, but I think it would go a long way for someone who had a messy desk.

Kaci 20:30
Yeah, it would. And for the people that keep knocking on your door, if it is a request, like we talked about with that teacher in the hall, be like, say the same thing. I would love to do that for you. Can you please fill out my request form, and I will get to it, you know, in the timely manner. Whatever you guys decide on.

Kaci 20:48
Another thing that I really love, and Lauren, you may have mentioned this on your podcast before, but is having an email autoresponder. In that email autoresponder, you’re very nice, you’re very like, excited that they emailed you, etc, and then what I have in mine are specific links. So like Lauren said in your signature, in my autoresponder, I have links to either schedule an appointment or if they need support with something, they have the form right there, all the different pieces that they’re going to need at their fingertips, because a lot of times they email me, and then I don’t need to respond to that email, because they got the autoresponder, and they either just book a call with me, or they go and fill out the support form that we have for our clients. So having that autoresponder on, it also makes you feel good, because you’re not like, oh my gosh, I got this email five days ago and I never responded. Technically, you did. Your autoresponder responded for you,ou confirmed that you got their email. I highly recommend having that on, and that makes you feel really good. And then also, I want to talk about labels and emails.

Lauren 21:55
Can I ask you a question about the autoresponder before you go on to that? Would you do that like during the regular school day, not like just nights and weekends? Okay, all the time. And I think that could be huge around a time when they feel like their inboxes are really overwhelmed with requests. So maybe, like a schedule change season, or, I think that’s a time that we’re saying a lot of the same things over and over again, and they might already have a form for filling out a schedule change request, and people want their answer right away. And so to have that acknowledged, like, I received your email, yes, you did email the right person, and it’s in there, but here is your action step. Like, it’s almost like a templated email, but they don’t have to put the effort into doing it. I think we think to do that on maybe nights or weekends or summertime, when we are giving out resources for crisis situations, like if you need immediate help, you need to call 911, or if, like, you are in a mental health situation where you’re not safe, here are the resources, but we don’t think to do that for everyday tasks. So that’s a great idea.

Kaci 22:59
Yeah, I would recommend having it on all the time. Or if you do like you know the idea of a busy season, you can update your autoresponder to whatever you want. So if you’re in that busy scheduling season of reschedules you can update it and turn it on just for that time period. Or if you know that the holidays are coming, and I feel like all holidays are chaotic, you can turn it on during that time, so you don’t always have to have it on. I personally have mine always on, because when I don’t, I feel like I have to at least respond to them that I got their email.

Lauren 23:35
Like, I’m gonna get back to it later this week or something, and then you feel this weight of now I need to respond double, because I need to say I got it, and then I need to say I’m working on and then I need to say it’s done.

Kaci 23:46
Yep, exactly. So that’s why I always just have it on, because it also says in there, it sets some boundaries of, I am super excited that I got your email. You sent it to the right place. I will be responding in the next 24 to 48 hours, and then all the links that would be necessary for them.

Lauren 24:04
And we can do that with our voicemails too. I mean, I know you can’t have a link, but you can say this is a really busy season. I usually would say something like, if you want a faster response, and if you know that autoresponder is on, send me an email here, because I can get to an email faster than I can, looking up your phone number calling you back, like, a lot of times, I can get that to you faster, but we forget to use our voicemail for some of that space too.

Kaci 24:28
Yes, exactly. Let’s talk about email labels.

Lauren 24:31
Yes, let’s do it.

Kaci 24:32
So email labels are my love language when it comes to our email because I really feel like email can get very messy very quickly, and in my industry specifically, we talk a lot about inbox zero, meaning you have no unread or unanswered emails.

Lauren 24:51
That feels like a dream. I don’t know that we would ever get there, but I remember thinking, at least I could filter them into folders or have labels on them. Maybe not have answered them all, but I know where they are, and I know it needs to get done.

Kaci 25:04
Exactly, exactly. So one thing you can do is set up, and this is in Gmail, so if you have Outlook, I’m not an outlook expert, but I’m sure there’s some YouTube videos out there. But for Gmail, you can also set up filters. So anytime, let’s say, we could set up an admin for any time that somebody emails you from the school, it automatically labels them as like your school name or like admin, or something like that.

Lauren 25:29
I love that, because you might have a principal that is email happy and sends emails all the time, and you don’t need to respond to them right now. They’re not urgent because they’re to everyone.

Kaci 25:37
Correct ,yes. So there’s that piece of it where you can set up filters. And then the other part of it, so in our email inbox, we actually have labels set up as inboxes. So for example, I work with clients on like a done for you basis where I build systems for them, right? So if we have an upcoming systems build, we actually have a section in my inbox where all of their emails are stored for very quick access, very easy to grab and deal with what I need when I’m building out their systems. What you can do for counselors is you could have a like parent label, right? So you could have an area where these are all parents that I need to respond to, these are all students that I need to respond to. Not sure, do students email you guys?

Lauren 26:24
Oh yeah. I mean, yes, yes, especially in high school, and especially because they probably have Chromebooks or computers in their room, like that is a fast way for them to get a response.

Kaci 26:33
So having the inbox for students, for parents, you can basically separate all of your inbox. And I love it, because that mental load, again, you are not sifting through a laundry list of just emails trying to find whatever you’re looking for. So we utilize, it’s in your inbox directly, and we have different little buckets that we can put stuff in and it shows up in that grouped area.

Lauren 26:59
And I guess that’s easy enough to do? Would you say, like, go to YouTube and watch a quick video on how to do it?

Kaci 27:04
Yes, yeah, in your settings, it’s very easy to do. Like, if you YouTube, like setting up label groups in your inbox, very easy to do. The other thing, reason I like labels is because, if you have, let’s say you have a parent that emails you a lot.

Lauren 27:23
They get their own folder.

Kaci 27:25
Yes, yeah. I was just gonna say, they have their own. Also I want to just preface this, labels and folders, in my opinion, are like, interchangeable, so I feel like they’re the same idea there. But like you just said, make them your own folder. Yes, make it their own label. Student, name, parent, whatever you want to do on there.

Lauren 27:43
Or you know, the ones that you need to like, keep every reference point, because they’re gonna say, No, I never said that, or No, I didn’t, like you need the evidence, and so you’ve got it all in one folder there for you.

Kaci 27:54
We actually keep every single email that we receive in our business, mainly for some reason I feel like I shouldn’t delete them. But also, it is nice to have those references, right? Even if it’s not somebody that does that, it’s something for your peace of mind, of like, Oh, I know that I corresponded with this person. I have what I need, you know, filed away.

Lauren 28:15
Or when you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re like, did I respond to that email, or did, what was the response on there? Did I tell them the wrong date for this? You can go back and check.

Kaci 28:24
Yes, exactly. So email labels or folders, whatever you want to call them. When you YouTube it though ,YouTube labels, not folders.

Lauren 28:32
Okay, that’s what they call it.

Kaci 28:33
The technical term. But it’s going to help the mental load. So the main thing that I want this podcast to do for you guys is to really help your mental load. Because it’s not, the to do list is always going to be there, the laundry list is always going to be there. The students are always going to be there. The teachers are always going to be there. You are going to wake up every single day to work. That’s not going to go away, right? What you can change, though, is how your body and your like brain respond to all of this, and the mental load around all of it, and the exhaustion.

Kaci 29:07
So that’s like, what I hope this does to help. Because somebody told me a long time ago, I always felt like if I just got XYZ done, then tomorrow would be a really easy day, or tomorrow would be so much better, because I was able to get all these different things done. And she told me, she’s like, Casey, there’s going to be work tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how much you get done today, because you’re going to wake up tomorrow and come to work and you’re still going to have all these other things to do and all that they’ve added.

Lauren 29:35
I think about that all the time when people are like, I’m going to check my email just at night before I go into work the next day. I’m like, why? Like, even if you answered all your emails tonight, there’s going to be more tomorrow. You’re not ,you’re really not getting ahead of it.

Kaci 29:49
Yes, correct. With that note, get your email off your phone.

Lauren 29:53
I agree. I mean, it can it can change your life.

Kaci 29:57
Yep, keep work at work. When you leave for the day, you’re done. You know that you did your best. You have all these little, tiny tips you know to help you. You organize your sticky notes. You know what you want to do for tomorrow. You have your things. Go home and enjoy time being home. Get your work stuff off your phone. That’s probably one of the biggest tips I could tell you, if you are feeling like you’re taking work home a lot, literally, delete everything work related off your phone.

Lauren 30:24
I always say, like, if someone needs to track you down some other way, like there is an emergency and your principal needs to call you, they will call you. They’re not going to send you an email in the evening that they expect you to respond to. I mean, they shouldn’t.

Kaci 30:35
Yeah.

Lauren 30:36
Kaci, counselors juggle so many things, I know we talked about at the beginning, about them wearing lots of hats, and they have things that are planned, like scheduled meetings where lots of people are coming around a table. They have phone calls to return, emails that never end, so many different things that are in and outside of their control. So are there any other just general time management strategies that you would implore us to try, just to keep our day and check a little bit better.

Kaci 31:03
Yeah, I think one thing, we just talked about getting work off of your phone, but being that counselors are everywhere, right? They don’t get to just sit at their desk and work. That’s not realistic. What I would recommend when you are juggling and you’re out there and maybe you don’t have a request form yet, or maybe you’re not feeling good about telling people that like you haven’t felt you know that empowerment to be like, email the form. I would encourage maybe a Notes app on your phone, where, if you’re out and about, you take down those notes, you bring them back, you put them in your sticky note buckets, you delete the notes. So the important part is deleting the notes because you have transferred them, when once you got back to your desk, you’ve transferred them.

Lauren 31:53
You’ve done something with them, and you’ve incorporated into whatever system you do have at your desk.

Kaci 31:58
Yes, yeah. And that’s one thing that you mentioned before we got on the call, is that it’s often that people don’t want to do anything related to your system, and so you have to kind of bend and make sure that you’re using your system and using it even when other people aren’t.

Lauren 32:16
Because that’s like within the school, everyone can have different systems. It could be within your own department. You work with seven other counselors, and everyone does something a little bit differently, and they’re not flexible,

Kaci 32:27
Right, yeah. So I think when you’re out and about, jot stuff down on your phone in your notes, and then when you get back to your desk, transfer those into whatever system you have, and then delete it. The biggest thing is deleting it, because I don’t want you going home with these notes and then you’re looking at them saying, like, Oh, I could take care of this really quick.

Lauren 32:48
Yeah. You delete your email off your phone just to have now notes on your phone that you’re writing through.

Kaci 32:53
No, we’re deleting all of it. End of Day Delete. That’s part of, like, closing routine. And that actually segues into the next thing is having a morning and a evening or closing after school routine to really make you feel confident that you are going home, not taking work home, and that you did everything you could for the day. Because if you have, like, a quick morning routine, and in your morning routine, I beg you not to open your email. Do not open your email in your morning routine.

Lauren 33:24
That shouldn’t be the thing that starts your day, that dictates your day.

Kaci 33:27
Correct, yes. Because, like you said earlier, even if you responded to all your emails, there’s going to be 20 new emails when you go in. And your email is your biggest time suck. So we don’t want to start our day by opening that email, we want to start our day by writing down our priorities or looking on our schedule for the day to kind of just get in that groove.

Kaci 33:49
I would encourage counselors if they could not look at their emails for like the first hour and actually have like a scheduled time of when they look at their emails. That can be multiple times throughout the day, but trying really hard to get away from your inbox being open all the time only because of the mental load. So we’re back to that mental load of, if you have your emails open all day, you’re seeing all them that are coming in, you’re constantly in your head like, oh, gotta respond to that. Oh, let me just read that really quick. Oh, and then now you’re wondering why on 6pm on the 30th, all of your deadlines have to be met, and you’re doing all of them right now to get them done. Right? It’s because all semester long, you have had this mental load around just your email of just like feeling guilty that you’re not responding immediately, feeling guilty that you haven’t looked at that email, or you haven’t done this or done that, and I agree with you that if there is an actual crisis at hand, someone is not going to email you.

Lauren 34:51
They shouldn’t. I mean, Kaci, you’d be surprised. Sometimes a teacher will do that, but you got to train them in your school not to. Please walk the student down and tell me this is an emergency, don’t just send me an email at the end of the day.

Kaci 35:02
Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, well, I did not know that they would email you. Okay.

Lauren 35:08
They have before. I will say I’ve spoke from experience. I’m like, wait, you just sent me an email, and now the kid is getting on the bus and they’re going home to an unsafe place. What? Okay, we have some other things that we need to handle in this school, but yeah, for the most part, they should not do that.

Kaci 35:23
Okay. Well, if they are, I would encourage you, literally tomorrow, to go and send out an email to all teachers and all admin saying, this is a policy that I am putting in place for students that I counsel, so that you are not getting crisis emails. Because if it’s this true emergency and true crisis, your email is not the place to communicate with you.You should be walking into that office immediately.

Kaci 35:49
And that kind of talks about crisis moments. And so in crisis moments, obviously you are dropping everything, right? But what’s important is that you maybe have your ideal schedule and so like, you don’t feel this huge burden that you are helping a student, because you know that tomorrow you can try to, like, do a little bit more of your ideal schedule, or you can do this, or you can buffer because you haven’t looked at your email all day, you’ve gotten a lot of other things done. And so it doesn’t feel like such a heavy lift.

Kaci 36:21
And I would have a feeling that counselors probably don’t feel like helping students is a heavy lift.

Lauren 36:25
Correct, they want to be doing that.

Kaci 36:27
Yes, but what’s important is those things are still going to be in the back of your mind, right? So even if you’re helping your student, even if you’re in a meeting with them and you’re like, encouraging them, or whatever the case may be, I can almost guarantee you that in the back of your mind you’re still like, oh, gotta do this and this and this and this, you know, like those tally marks are still there. So when you are utilizing some sort of system, whatever that looks like, you know that you have some time carved out in different areas. You have a morning routine that really sets you up for your day. You have a closing routine. The closing routine does not mean that you respond to all your emails. You don’t spend your whole closing routine doing that.

Lauren 37:05
That’s a good point, because that’s like, how I would feel, like, Okay, well, I need to do this before I close for the day. And in my mind, that’s what my closing routine would be.

Kaci 37:13
I want to encourage, counselors, if you feel like you’re in your emails all the time, I want to encourage you to maybe try to put a limit on how many emails you respond to per day. So I don’t know what that limit should look like, because I don’t know how many emails counselors get, but if you feel like you are literally just responding to emails all day long, I want you to put a time limit on that with an autoresponder, because we talk about crisis as we talk about fires, what truly is a fire that you have to put out? What truly is a crisis? What truly is an email that absolutely needs to be responded to that day? If you can’t answer those questions, I want you to sit down and write down those questions and really answer them, where you feel confident that if you were to leave an email unread or unresponded to, it is okay, because it’s not a fire, it’s not a crisis, it’s not something that is like immediate. And I think that will also help that mental load, right, of feeling okay that you didn’t respond to something right away.

Speaker 1 37:17
Yeah, I think you gave us so many good things to think about. I mean, really, with this whole interview of being reflective on what matters most in your day and with your schedule so that you can do the things you need to do and you can do the things you love to do. I mean, no one wants to sit and answer emails all day. We would have, we would be secretaries somewhere if we wanted to do that. We want to interact with people, and if we want to do more of that, then we have to manage the other stuff that just comes with the job.

Lauren 38:43
We have more of that at the high school than I would say elementary and middle school counselors do, but we have a really rewarding job too. We could have really good conversations with students and parents and help them with their futures and stuff. So it is worth it to be able to juggle all that stuff.

Lauren 38:59
Thank you so much for all of these ideas. Is there anything else we didn’t talk about that you wanted to add about time management or organization or systems?

Kaci 39:08
I think the only last thing I’ll say is have some sort of scheduler situation, which I believe, Lauren, you’ve talked about a lot with your counselors, of having a way for people to schedule time on your calendar.

Lauren 39:23
Yeah, there’s all sorts of tools out there that sync with whatever calendar you’re using, if it’s Google, if it’s Outlook. I mean, there are things like Calendly or Book Me or Book a Meeting, like they’re all, there are lots of things out there.

Kaci 39:34
Yeah, and I don’t know if this is allowed, you can tell me, Lauren, maybe putting some boundaries around when people can schedule times with you.

Lauren 39:44
Oh, I definitely did that. I didn’t allow someone to schedule a time if it was less than 24 hours in advance. Like, I didn’t want to go to bed at night and then not know that there was a meeting before school started in the morning or something. Like, no one could do that. Like, yes, if they call me and say I need a meeting today, or, you know, I just didn’t want to be surprised walking into my office because someone was able to schedule a meeting in a short amount of time.

Kaci 40:09
Okay, good. So you can put some boundaries there. I would encourage that. And again, when you set that up, you are emailing all teachers and admin that this is not a time to schedule a crisis.

Lauren 40:21
Who schedules a crisis? Yeah, don’t put it on my calendar please.

Kaci 40:26
Please walk into my office. And also, in that email, you can set boundaries, right? You can say, like, if you need a non emergency meeting, here’s the link. If you have a request for me, here’s the link. If you have a crisis, please walk into my office. You are more than welcome to come into my office for a crisis. When you form the words that way, and also, if you want to use chat, GPT, go for it. Like if you want to have AI help you write this email to sound really nice, go for it. Because I’m not like a nice writer. I have to use things to help it, you know, sound a little friendlier, but that is now giving them permission to come into your office, but with boundaries. That’s not inviting them to come into the office at any time for a non emergency meeting, that’s not inviting them to your office to give you a request, that’s inviting them into your office in a crisis, emergency situation.

Lauren 41:18
Yeah, and I think that this feels really daunting, if there are no systems in place in your department or in your school, like you feel like I’m the bad guy, like setting these boundaries, but you’re not. I feel like it frees people up to know that your own time is valued, like you get to believe that and live it, but their time is valued. Because when they are constantly dropping into your office and you’re not there, or you’re with another student, or you’re in another meeting, they start saying, well, she’s never available. She’s never in her office. I felt like when I switched to having some more boundaries around that and giving them systems to sign up for meeting times with me, everyone’s time was valued more. Mine was, theirs was, they got to see me when they planned on seeing me, and it was a good thing. I mean, there’s a learning curve. You have to practice it, you have to say it over and over again. You have to send it in emails or have it in your signature. But it is so worth it once you get it going in your school.

Kaci 42:09
It allows you guys also to actually perform your best, right? You’re able to give your all and your best to your students, which is your whole goal.

Lauren 42:20
And that’s what I would say, too. Like when you’re in that time, you know that this time is for that student or that parent, and you’re not returning phone calls, you’re not answering emails, you’re not telling other people to come back at another time, because you have the system in place, like you’re going to have my undivided attention if you make a meeting with me. And I’m being able to vocalize that to them, makes them know that their time is valued too, and that they are a valued person in front of you.

Lauren 42:42
So, great tips. Thank you so much. I hope that people found encouragement wherever they find themselves on the organization or system spectrum, whether they are disheveled and full of sticky notes or they’ve got some good things working for them. This would be a great episode to share with a department and everybody kind of listen together and then come back and talk about. So thank you for all of your tips, Kaci. I know listeners are going to have some really practical things to take from this episode.

Kaci 43:09
You are so welcome. Thanks for having me.

Lauren 43:11
Of course.

Lauren 43:13
I hope you jotted down a few notes or made some mental notes of places that you’re going to tweak a few things to do with your time management. But just remember to delete them out of the Notes app in your phone once you’ve found places for them back at your desk, right? I love these strategies because they’re all things that you really don’t need much in the way of learning a new software or perfecting some new really complicated system. You just need tiny tweaks that you can find that make the biggest difference. And there’s something in this episode for everyone. I really do believe that after we finished this conversation.

Lauren 43:45
So just start somewhere. Start wherever you find yourself, whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced, and then take your steps from there. She gave great examples, really practical things to do in whatever season you find yourself in there. I’d love to hear which of the first things that you’re gonna implement from these ideas that Kaci gave us. So send me a DM on Instagram and let me know. I’m also serious about using this as a conversation to start some more dialog in your department. So share this with your co-counselors and let me know if you’re gonna put any of these ideas into practice with them. I’ll see you next week.

Lauren 44:20
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of High School Counseling Conversations. All the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram. Feel free to send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C-L-I-Q-U-E. I’ll see you next week.