Hi Lea... thanks for your post. Two things here - your first point is about setting expectations among your schools (within a MAT?). Someone with experience in this area will I'm sure pop on here with some guidance.

Your second point is something that applies to all of us, I guess. There are many so-called 'productivity tools' out there... but you need to choose wisely or you could spend a lot of time 'managing' your productivity tools and less time being actually productive! I have dabbled in many - including Google docs, Evernote, OneNote... but have settled on something called 'Notion', which syncs across all devices and is basically a well-designed personal wiki/intranet. I find it invaluable.

I'm not sure how your role is defined, but can you allocate specific hours to specific schools? It might help to ensure that those schools know when you're on 'their' time, and they can expect responses in an appropriate timeframe.

With relation to managing tasks, like Steve I've dabbled with a number of different systems. I'd recommend getting hold of a book called 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen - I actually keep several second hand copies in my office to lend to people when they need it. I get the irony of adding the task of reading a book to someone who is already overwhelmed, but it very much helped me to frame the projects, tasks and actions in my workload. Further to that, Todoist is probably my favourite list-based tool, but I usually stick to a pen and paper ...

Hi Lea, we are a 4 secondary schools with approximately 500 staff. I have a routine of monthly meetings with the heads which I find helps to manage expectations and identify priorities. The change that has made the biggest difference to me is taking on a Recruitment Manager. I find job posting is often time consuming but urgent and I have much more control of my time now I’m not doing it myself. I’m with Nina on pen and paper for list making!
Good luck!
Marianne

I've found Kanban the most valuable approach for managing my productivity - I have tweaked it slightly to suit me (backlog and priority backlog) and I try to be disciplined and only have maximum 2 things actually in progress at once. Whenever I get out of the habit, I quickly find myself dropping things or getting overwhelmed.

Hi Lea, in the absence of any kind of Trust wide HR system - I feel your pain!

We have assigned a colour to each academy in our Trust and every "job" is put in a folder of that colour - so we often have a pile of multi coloured files either awaiting action or in progress.

This is a really useful visual guide to not only see how much work each academy is producing, but also as a visual reminder of what job advert / new starter relates to which academy.

We also have a whiteboard in the office to track all recruitment / new starters across the trust and we use corresponding coloured pens.

Another quick tool - think about the 4 square method of prioritising - urgent / non urgent / important / not important.

Good luck - I hope your new role works out for you.