Teaching Circle Goal
The goal of this Teaching Circle is to explore time management strategies that can be used to enhance productivity of teachers and improve both their professional and personal lives.
Teaching Circle Members
- Gian Pagnucci – Teaching Circle Coordinator
- Tanya Heflin
- Daniel Weinstein
Teaching Circle Readings
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity (GTD)
- This seminal book by David Allen discusses how to be more productive
- Article: “Do You Really Not Have the Time?” by David Perlmutter
- Chronicle of Higher Education article on time management
- The Peak Time for Everything
- Wall Street Journal article
- The Peak Performing Professor by Susan Robinson
- A book on how find and achieve your life mission
Reflective Practice Teaching Project
The Time Management and Teaching Circle is an interdisciplinary teaching circle affiliated with IUP’s Reflective Practice Project. The Reflective Practice Project is sponsored by IUP’s Center for Teaching Excellence. The Reflective Practice Project helps teachers at IUP study their own teaching as well as the teaching methods of expert teachers both at IUP and from around the country.
GTD Lessons
Lesson 1: Managing Knowledge & Information
- Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain

- Read enough so that you can discuss Forte’s basic ideas
- It’s not necessary to finish the book
- Forte Labs
Lesson 2: Managing Time, Stress, & Your Life
- Video: Google TechTalk by Inbox Zero Founder Merlin Mann (58:41)
- This video is about an hour long, but it is exceptionally good, even the very end where Merlin starts doing Q&A (in fact, that Q&A actually includes one of the most important points of the whole video, so you don’t want to quit too soon)
- Even if you know about Inbox Zero or have seen the video before, it’s really worth watching it again; I try to watch it every year or two because it helps inspire me to try to get back on track with my email
- I hope you’ll enjoy it
- Inbox Zero
- This is a website about how to better manage email

- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity (GTD)
- David Allen’s seminal work on time management

- Read enough of the book (a good chunk) so that you can discuss Allen’s basic ideas
- It’s not necessary to finish the book, but this GTD book could just change your life!
- Article: “Do You Really Not Have the Time?” by David Perlmutter
- Chronicle of Higher Education article on time management
- The Peak Time for Everything
- Wall Street Journal article
GTD Tools and Resources
Citation Management
Email Management
- Inbox Zero
- This is a website about how to better manage email

- Video: Google TechTalk by Inbox Zero Founder Merlin Mann
Productivity
- 43 Folders
- A productivity web site
- Lifehacker
- A web site for help on getting tasks accomplished
- The Pomodoro Technique
- A time management system
Task Management
Writing Project Management
- Literature and Latte
- Scrivener software for writing projects