How to manage your time as a professor

A time management field guide for the overworked professor (because your calendar shouldn’t look like a Jackson Pollock painting)

Sometimes we manage our time, sometimes our time manages us.

💌 From my weekly Write Insight newsletter.

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” This Einstein quote hits differently when you’re staring at an overflowing calendar in 2025’s academia. With AI transforming education, rising admin demands, and pressure to publish, time management is vital. It’s not just a nice-to-have skill — it’s academic survival.

Remember that scene in Inception? They’re building dream layers within dream layers, each with its own set of rules and challenges. That’s basically what being a faculty member feels like. Except, instead of dream levels, we’re navigating parallel universes of research deadlines and student emails. And that creature called work-life balance. Because genius-level expertise in your field doesn’t automatically translate to genius-level calendar management.

Let’s not kid ourselves: succeeding in academia requires more than being the top dog in your field (though that helps, woof). It’s about mastering the meta-skill that determines whether you’ll thrive or merely survive in…