
Time Management
Prof. Dr. Lana Al-Nasour
Dean of the College of Entrepreneurship
Time management is one of the fundamental challenges and vital skills that determine the success and continuity of a university faculty member in their academic and professional career.
Time management is one of the fundamental challenges and vital skills that determine the success and continuity of a university faculty member in their academic and professional career. The nature of a university professor's work is not limited to delivering lectures in classrooms, but extends to include multiple dimensions spanning teaching, scientific research, and serving the community and university.
The time responsibilities of faculty members are distributed across several main areas. The first and most visible is the teaching aspect, which includes lecture hours, prior preparation of academic material, curriculum updates, grading tests and assignments, as well as office hours dedicated to academic advising and student affairs. The second axis, scientific research, represents the backbone of academic advancement and knowledge distinction, encompassing reading modern literature, conducting experiments and field studies, writing research papers, reviewing and refereeing scientific journals, and supervising master's and doctoral theses. The third axis involves administrative tasks and community service, such as participation in department and college councils, quality and academic accreditation committees, organizing conferences, and providing scientific consultations to external institutions.
To succeed in facing these multiple burdens, the Eisenhower Matrix for prioritization emerges as a methodologically important tool for organizing faculty time. This matrix divides tasks into four quadrants based on two criteria: importance and urgency. The first quadrant contains "urgent and important" tasks such as delivering scheduled lectures, attending emergency college council meetings, and grading final exams. The second quadrant represents "important and non-urgent" tasks — the most critical quadrant — which includes planning future research, writing working papers, self-development, and critical reading.
Effective time management requires applying practical strategies that ensure maintaining high focus and sustained productivity. Among the most prominent strategies is using "time batching" or day allocation, whereby specific days in the week are dedicated to teaching and office hours, while other full days or closed morning periods are reserved exclusively for scientific research and academic writing. Investing in modern technologies, such as reference management software and educational platforms for managing and grading assignments electronically, also helps save long hours of routine work that can be directed toward innovation and research.
In conclusion, time management in the life of a university faculty member is not merely arranging a schedule, but a comprehensive work culture and methodology that requires high self-discipline and flexibility in dealing with cognitive and administrative variables. Achieving a smart balance between the demands of classrooms and administrative work on one hand, and the calm and depth of scientific research on the other, is what creates a distinguished university professor capable of continuous giving, graduating promising generations, and enriching the scientific library with original research.
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