Thoughtful Thursday: Thinking About Time Management

This is my "questioning" face

A question was posted on one of my social media feeds that concerned intern training and the number of hours that interns "should" be doing certain tasks. The person who posted asked for recommendations for how much time interns should be engaging in a number of tasks, and the question just set me back on my heels for a bit.

I've been thinking about this ever since I saw the question initially.

When I first applied to be an internship director, The National Association for Music Therapy (yep, I am THAT old) asked for a breakdown of how many hours an intern would be engaged in clinical contact, planning for sessions, training, and other topics. We had to make an estimate of how many hours interns would spend during their 1040 hours with us on each of these tasks. When I was asked to be on the AMTA Association Internship Approval Committee, I asked why we were doing that structure. A group of like-minded internship directors agreed that those hour estimates were not really competency-based, so the requirement was dropped and changed to a visual schedule indicating when there would be time for all of those things.

My philosophy for this type of skill-development for interns is the same as my own - there are a certain number of tasks that need to be done and there is a certain amount of time to get them finished. It is my job (and the intern's job) to figure out how to get all the tasks done in the time that is available. My goal is to have my interns occupied for the entire 42.5 hours per week that they work with me in music therapy related things but only that amount of time. I don't want them to be taking copious amounts of work home with them - unless that is what they want. Personally, I do most of my Therapeutic Music Experience and all of my visual aid making at home because I find those tasks to be so relaxing and fun! They are easier to do at home, so that frees up some of my work time for other tasks.

I figure that my interns can find their own way into getting their tasks done. There is no need to tell them how much time something "should" take - aren't we all wonderfully and fully diverse humans who have our own ways of getting things done?

We do talk about this topic throughout their internships, but more from a standpoint of "are you able to do your work load during work??" than "how many hours are you spending on task A??" I think I will make a visual with the tasks that have to be done to put up in my own office - just to remind me...