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Jordan Powers: 0:15

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:27

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:34

Happy New Year listeners, we hope you're settling well into 2025. For those of you who set resolutions or create goals for yourself, we know that improving time management might be one of the hardest commitments to keep.

Emily Cabrera: 0:47

In fact, one of our UGA Cooperative Extension publications, 10 Strategies for Better Time Management, is consistently a top viewed resource. It's a quick read and provides concrete, actionable steps to help you learn how to manage time more efficiently.

Jordan Powers: 1:01

UGA Extension extends lifelong learning to the public through unbiased research-based education in agriculture, the environment, communities, youth and families. UGA Extension publications, or pubs, are peer-reviewed and connect residents to the results of university research.

Emily Cabrera: 1:18

We spoke with the reviewer of this popular pub, Travis Mountain, an assistant professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia, and a UGA Cooperative Extension specialist in financial planning. We hope you can pick up a few strategies that help you stay committed to your time management goals this year.

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Emily Cabrera: 1:38

Travis, thank you for taking the time to join us today. Before we dive into the ten strategies, tell us why time management is a misnomer.

Travis Mountain: 1:46

With time management, everyone has the same amount of time in a minute, in a day in a year, right? There's nothing we can do to affect that time. What we can do is affect how we use that time, and that's really what we're trying to get at when we say time management is a misnomer. That said, I'll probably use the term time management several times throughout this discussion.

Jordan Powers: 2:04

Well, in the spirit of best managing our time and our listeners time, let's do a bit of a lightning round, highlighting the ten strategies that are in this Extension publication. Starting with number one, Know How You Spend Your Time.

Travis Mountain: 2:16

This is a really big step, and a lot of people don't take this first step. It doesn't matter if we were talking about somebody who wanted to lose weight, somebody who wanted to save more money, or somebody that wants to make better use of their time, we need to first know, how are you using that time? So really, what we encourage people to do is to track their time. Maybe it's just during 15 minute increments, you're just trying to figure out, what were you doing during that time? You're going to track what you did. How do you feel about how you used that time? Was that productive use of your time? Or do you wish that you were doing something else? And then you can just extend that to longer periods of time.

Emily Cabrera: 2:47

Number two, Set Priorities.

Travis Mountain: 2:49

This is also really important. In our publication, we have a nice little section there where it says things that are important, things that are urgent, things that aren't important, and also things that are not urgent. It's really important for you to try to figure out what tasks you have, where they fit in that table, and it's also important to remember something that might be urgent from somebody else might not be urgent for you, right? And that's where we have to decide, can I say no to this particular task? We need to balance, what are the pros and cons of doing something like that.

Jordan Powers: 3:18

And we will definitely make sure to link to the publication as we already mentioned. Let's move on to number three, Use a Planning Tool.

Travis Mountain: 3:24

In this publication, we have a lot of different options that people can use, and we encourage people to see what works best for them. Some people really like tracking things with pen and paper. Other people like using Excel. More and more people now are using technology. So they may have apps right on their phone or on their tablet or even right in their computer, different softwares that's going to track how much time they spent on a particular activity. And you know now with a lot of people's smartphones, you might get a weekly update that says you spent so much time on the screen this particular week. And you can get into more details of okay, of that five hours that you spent on a particular day. Where did you spend that five hours? Right? And this isn't even an app. This is just something that a lot of people have by default in their smartphones right now. So it's really just a matter of looking at, are you tracking your time, and are you using the best use of your time?

Emily Cabrera: 4:09

Okay, this next one, I feel quite seen, Getting Organized.

Travis Mountain: 4:13

In this theme, we're really kind of talking about two different things. We're talking about trying to be not so cluttered, and also trying to be efficient, right? So we know that people who are working in cluttered environments, or living in cluttered environments, oftentimes time management becomes a problem for them because they have these other things that they're preoccupied with. It takes them longer to do a particular task because they may need to find where the items are for that task. If we're thinking about somebody who's working for email, for example, right? I may have a really important email. Maybe I didn't categorize that. Maybe I just have it in my long list of 2000 emails, it might be difficult for me to search for that. So the idea here would be making sure that you have particular folders or some type of coding mechanism so that you can easily find what you're looking for.

Emily Cabrera: 4:54

Our colleague, Maria Lameiras, just collaborated recently with some of your colleagues in Family and Consumer Sciences on a really fantastic article that we'll link in the show notes, Freeing Your Mind and Space from Clutter in the New Year.

Travis Mountain: 5:06

Oh, nice.

Jordan Powers: 5:07

Look at that(laughter, all), love when those things just flow together. So speaking of flowing together, this next one seems to flow quite a bit with planning tools and getting organized. Number five, Schedule Appropriately.

Travis Mountain: 5:17

This goes beyond just having a list of tasks that you need to try to accomplish in a day or in a week or whatever your time period is, but it's knowing when are you most productive, right? So personally, I'm most productive in the morning. So my most difficult tasks and the most important and urgent tasks, those are what I try to do in the morning. My tasks that I know I need to get done, but they have lower priority, I set those aside for the afternoon. So if I have to work on a research paper or I need to prep for class, that's something I'm going to do in the morning. If I have to reply to some emails, that's more something that I'm going to do later in the day.

Emily Cabrera: 5:47

Alright, this next one might be a hard one for people that like to maintain control or do it themselves, but it is Delegate, Getting Help from Others.

Travis Mountain: 5:55

Yeah, I really like talking about this one. And you're right. Some people have a really difficult time delegating different activities, but we all do this, right? If I have to get a medical procedure done, I'm not going to spend 2000 hours trying to figure out how to do the procedure, right? I'm going to go to the doctor. If I have to have a cavity filled, I'm going to go to the dentist. I'm not going to try to do that myself. But a lot of us don't think about delegating in those types of ways. Instead, we're thinking about, well, maybe there's some household chores. With household chores, you could still delegate some of them, right? So, for instance, I pay somebody to mow my lawn. I never thought that I would do that, right? Growing up, my dad had a small landscape business. I worked for him. It's something that that I can clearly do. But then I looked into how expensive would it be for me to buy a lawn mower. How long would this take me to to actually mow my lawn? What would be the upkeep and maintenance on on my lawnmower, that kind of stuff, right? So I was looking into that, and then I sought out people who would mow my lawn. What are they charging? And I did the analysis of, okay, based on what they're charging, it makes a lot more sense for me to delegate that task, because now, instead of mowing my lawn for four hours, or however long it's gonna take, I can do something that's more productive with my time.

Emily Cabrera: 6:59

Yeah, one area I've used this approach, and Jordan, I know you've done the same, is with ordering groceries through an app, which saves me a ton of time.

Jordan Powers: 7:07

Exactly. I'm already spending enough time meal planning, building a grocery list, but being able to delegate the actual shopping allows me to swing by and pick up the order and recuperate that time to pick up the kids from school, jump into homework, dinner prep, and all the other things that parents do that we can't delegate.

Emily Cabrera: 7:24

All the things

Jordan Powers: 7:25

So many. So in addition to delegating another thing that I know that I'm guilty of because I'm thinking of all the things I need to do, is not doing any of them. So that leads to number seven, Stop Procrastinating.

Travis Mountain: 7:36

Procrastinating is really easy for people to do, right? And the idea with procrastinating would be, maybe you have some time allocated this afternoon to work on a project, but you don't do it. You put it off till tomorrow. Tomorrow comes along and you keep on doing that. That would be what we're talking about with procrastination. And this is bad from a lot of different fronts, right? It kind of can lower your self esteem, because you know that this is something that you said that you were going to do a couple days ago and you haven't gotten it done. It's just something that's always going to be nagging you until you actually get that done. That's a little bit different than when we were talking about earlier, about setting priorities, right? You might have something that is an important task for you to do, but it's okay if you're going to say, Okay, this task, I'm going to do it next week from now, right? That wouldn't be procrastinating as long as you actually get it done next week.

Emily Cabrera: 8:17

And the next one, Managing Time Wasters?

Travis Mountain: 8:21

That's a really good one. And this kind of comes back to number one, where we're trying to figure out, you know, what are you actually spending your time on? So time wasters could be something such as email, right? A lot of people, they get to the office first thing on Monday, and they're looking at, okay, I have all these emails, I need to get through them. But the question is, Do I really need to get through all those emails? Right? How important are they? It could take an hour for you to get through some of your emails, right, and you get to check off that nice box that says, Okay, I got through all these emails. But how important was that? How urgent was that, right? Also thinking about the different types of meetings that you're gonna have. Since COVID-19, a lot of us now have these virtual meetings via Zoom or via Teams, something like that. And a lot of people like to schedule these meetings. But the question is, Do I really need to have this meeting via Zoom? Do I have to have it via Teams or some other type of virtual programming? Could it be that we're going to actually talk on the phone and I'm going to walk and do some, you know, health exercise or something like that, while I'm on the call? Right? Those types of things. Try to make sure that you are using your time as efficiently as possible.

Emily Cabrera: 9:19

You saying all of this, and I'm realizing I have so many time wasters.

Jordan Powers: 9:24

Another one that I think a lot of us were raised saying is a good thing, right? But we're seeing number nine, Avoid Multitasking.

Travis Mountain: 9:31

Yeah, that's something that I thought growing up too, was something that I should get good at, proficient at, and be doing. But more and more research is coming out saying that we are not able to do that very well, right? You're much better off doing some type of bucketing system where you're going to say, Okay, for the next half an hour, the next hour, I'm going to work on this project. Once that time is up or that project's done, then I'm going to go on to the next project. It's really a better way of trying to accomplish these goals, as opposed to saying I'm gonna try to work on these two things simultaneously for the next two hours, or whatever your time period is. Research shows that chances are you're not gonna get either of them done, or if you do, neither of them are gonna be done very well.

Emily Cabrera: 10:05

All right. And finally, Stay Healthy.

Travis Mountain: 10:08

The whole idea here is just trying to figure out, you know, how well are you managing your time? What are the trade offs for different things that you're doing? Do you have a pretty good work life balance? I know that term kind of gets thrown out a lot, but some people really stress out over some things that aren't that urgent or aren't that important, right? It's the ability of saying, Okay, this is everything that I want to get done today, right? Do the things that I have on this agenda or this task list that I have, are they really important? And what happens if I don't get those things done? Right? And kind of the trade off between my work time my family time, how do I feel about the time that I've actually spent if I'm looking back over a period of time?

Jordan Powers: 10:42

It is interesting. You know, I think in the new year, we hear a lot health focused as far as like, I'm gonna get on track with my fitness, but our time management is part of our health. So it's really interesting to hear that talked about a little bit more. So now that we know the ten strategies, let's talk about the"so what." Many listeners, sometimes, myself included, think that they're doing just fine on the time management front. But what do we gain by putting a more intentional focus on our personal time management practices?

Travis Mountain: 11:06

So that's a really good question, right? And a lot of people do think that they're doing things that are fine, just like when I'm talking to people about their finances. A lot of people do think that they're doing things fine, but really, until we evaluate and we do kind of a retrospective analysis of how we're using that time, it's really hard for us to say how good are we at time management, or how good are we at tracking our calories or our budget, those types of things. There's research out there that shows that people who have better time management, they're more productive, they have more energy for things they need to accomplish. They feel less stressed. They have more time to do things that they really want to do. They get more things done. They relate more positively to others, and they feel better about themselves.

Emily Cabrera: 11:42

All of this is incredibly helpful information, and I'm just sitting here listening like, Okay, I will work these ten steps as soon as we're done recording (laughing).

Jordan Powers: 11:51

Sponge mode(laughing).

Emily Cabrera: 11:52

Yeah, we know that time management is only a portion of your research and Extension education interests. Can we continue our lightning round with a bit more detail on some of your other work?

Travis Mountain: 12:01

Yeah. So I have a couple different projects. Some of my Extension activities are looking at trying to improve people's credit scores. So we got a grant through the Small Business Development Center, which got money from the Treasury to try to improve people's credit scores. And the whole idea with this is these are people who want to be small business owners. They have good ideas. They want to have this business but their credit scores aren't high enough, so they can't get these business loans. So we go around the state through myself and also through Extension agents, we try to educate people to try to improve their scores. So that's one of the big factors, and we know that there's a lot of misunderstanding about scores. Some people, you know, they've had credit cards or they've had loans for decades, and they're mismanaging those, right? So there's a lot of information out there that's wrong. If I just do a quick internet search, I may be searching for something related to credit scores. There's a decent chance that it's wrong, right? So a lot of people are just unsure about credit scores. I'm also heavily involved with VITA, and VITA is the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, and there are many different Vita locations across the state and across the country. University of Georgia is involved with VITA. We have done approximately 1200 tax returns just on campus last year. So anyone who's in the area, they can come to campus, they can get their taxes done. But then, through Extension, we've also done a little over 1000 tax returns last year. So this upcoming year, tax year 2025, there's over 20 Extension agents in different counties who are willing to help you with your taxes. So that's also a great service that we provide on the Extension front.

Emily Cabrera: 13:28

And we'll be sure to link to VITA and some of those publications that you have worked on that really get at credit scores and other financial planning tips.

Travis Mountain: 13:37

Yeah, that'd be great.

Jordan Powers: 13:38

Absolutely, incredibly important and an amazing resource that's available. And now with the time management focus, I'm like, I need to put taxes on my calendar so that I make them priority and urgent (laughing). Well, Travis, thank you for your time today. We really appreciate you coming in and talking to us. This is a topic that, of course, we were interested in in the new year, because people do put a renewed focus on their priorities and their time, but it's something that I think is a really good reminder throughout the year. So hopefully this is an episode that people can keep coming back to, and we will, of course, link to all those amazing resources, and we're just very appreciative of your time.

Travis Mountain: 14:10

Great. Yeah, I'm glad to be here, and maybe people are going to listen to it at one and a half times speed just to get more of that time back (all laughing).

Jordan Powers: 14:16

I love it. I'm glad I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that.

Emily Cabrera: 14:19

Thanks Travis.

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Jordan Powers: 14:21

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.