The Power Ingredient to Manage Your Time

“I have too many things on my to-do list and not enough time to finish them!” Early childhood administrators have expressed this sentiment often when the subject of workload is discussed. You most likely have said or heard it said as well. Rest assured; you are not alone. Managing time is a universal struggle.

Time management has been a quest of mine for most of my professional career. In my first position out of college, I was given a time management tool to organize work and time. It proved very helpful and launched my pursuit to learn as many time management skills as possible. During my career, I have utilized a number of planners and delivered training on them as well. Even with all my experience with time management systems, I admit they are only as good as the dedication and discipline you put into using them. I have discovered that the power ingredient in managing time is discipline.

The Collins dictionary defines discipline as training that develops self-control. Daniel Walter wrote a book, The Power of Discipline: How to Use Self Control and Mental Toughness to Achieve Your Goals . He said, “Discipline is about doing what you know you’ve got to do even when you don’t feel like it. But for your efforts to make a difference, you must be consistent.”

Any success I experience in time management comes from the discipline of setting aside time daily, weekly, and monthly to determine the priorities of the work and then to put into practice the tools and tips to increase productivity and focus on the priorities of my work and life. Discipline is what sets the casual basketball player apart from the Michael Jordans. Discipline takes commitment and a quest not to back down, but it also reaps big rewards. If you have ever embarked on eliminating a bad habit in your life and were successful, it most likely was because of the discipline you employed to change your thought processes and routines.

When I am disciplined in setting aside time to use the tools to manage my priorities, the results I experience include accomplishing more of my big bucket priorities, feeling energized at the end of the day, and having a sense of empowerment and purpose. These are achieved when the day is comprised of action versus motion.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, takes a deeper dive into this concept in the blog, “The Mistake Smart People Make: Being in Motion vs. Taking Action.” Think of it like an equation: Motion (i.e., planning time) + action on the priorities = achieving your goals for managing time.

Using tools will increase your success in planning time. Here are some statistics discovered in a recent study conducted by Acuity Training in the United Kingdom:

Less than one in five people (18%) have a proper time management system.
Eighty-two percent of people don’t have a time management system. They just use a list or their email inbox.
The Eisenhower matrix is the most successful time management technique.
One hundred percent of people using these techniques feel their work is under control either four or five days per week.
Only 20% (one in five) people carry out a monthly time audit to review how they are spending their time.
Forty-nine percent of people have never carried out a time audit.

Here are the three tools/systems I have found most helpful. Two of them were mentioned in the UK study:

Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower Matrix in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The four-square matrix of “important” and “urgent” aims to focus your actions on the important tasks versus being driven by urgency. Keeping a copy of this matrix handy during your planning time is most helpful.

I like the simplicity of the Ivy Lee Method, and it is a good second step after you have determined the important tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix. List the week’s top five or six priorities and rank them one to six. Do the same each day and determine the top five or six priorities of the day. Start with number one, and don’t move on to others until you complete number one. This method has staying power and has been successful for over 100 years! Don’t be fooled by the simplicity, and enjoy the results you will experience from trying it.

I discovered the Pomodoro Technique a couple of years ago, and it has been a game changer. For me, it is step three and works well together with the other two. This technique is all about focus, giving yourself undistracted time to focus using 30-minute time blocks. Start on one task and give yourself 25 minutes of undistracted time to focus on that one task. Then, take a five-minute break. Depending upon the task you are working on, you may need multiple 30-minute time blocks to complete the task. You will discover how much you can accomplish in 25 minutes when you don’t allow yourself to get distracted.

An additional benefit to these three tools is that you can use them with any time management system you prefer. Several sound systems have been designed to incorporate all of them, but you can modify any tool you currently use to include them.

Consider these action steps:

Set aside 30 minutes this week to read about the three tools/systems.
Set a goal to implement one tip you gained.
Use the tip for a minimum of four weeks.
At the end of each week, reflect on the outcomes.

The tools are helpful, but only if you use the power tool of discipline. Just as establishing a routine of dedicating 20 minutes a day to exercise will have long-term health benefits, giving 10 to15 minutes a day and 20 to 30 minutes a week to establishing your priorities for time will pay off in the efficiency and effectiveness of your week. The purpose is not to increase the amount of time spent working or the quantity of work achieved each day, but instead, shift the focus to accomplishing the work that matters most.

To check out the many resources and professional development offerings at McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership, please see: https://mccormickcenter.nl.edu/

Marleen Barrett, M.S., serves as a leadership training specialist for the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University (NLU). In this role, she assists with the development, facilitation, and coordination of training for McCormick Center Leadership Academies. Marleen serves as a coach for academy participants. She holds a master’s degree in training and development from Loyola University. Prior to working at NLU, she was the director of leadership development for the American Farm Bureau Federation, where she conducted training programs on strategic planning, organizational skills, and team building throughout the United States.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed. Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.