Learning the Ropes of Time Management: Surround Yourself with Role Models

When Bill Gorday, MSc, PA(ASCP)^CM, began his job as a medical laboratory technologist 20 years ago, time management wasn’t an issue. But it became one several years later, after he was married, with a young child, and finishing up college.

“I remember doing a class assignment and being up all night,” recalls Mr. Gorday, now NAACLS Program Director of the Pathologists' Assistant MSc Program at the University of Calgary—Calgary Lab Services. “That’s when I realized I couldn’t do that anymore.”

Like many colleagues, he had to figure out a time management plan that worked for him. He began looking ahead on his calendar at what was coming down the pike, breaking assignments into smaller pieces, and working in advance. Along the way, he found several well-respected, high-achieving individuals willing to serve as mentors in the medical laboratory.

“I’d talk with them time to time through casual conversation,” Mr. Gorday says. “They actually held me to task. For example, if I told them I was so busy on something, they’d point out they have more responsibility than me! They’d encourage me to achieve what I had set out to do, and to map out goals and a plan. So, I did.”

Later, he honed his time management skills after taking on more work-related responsibility and enrolling in a graduate-degree program. “At the end of each day, I review what I need to do immediately the following day. I look at all that needs to be done the next day and break it down into segments. Achieving the smaller goals allows me to work toward completing a larger goal.”

Now, as the saying goes: What goes around, comes around. Today, Mr. Gorday is a program director of a master’s degree program with 12 students, and works hard to mentor them to help them develop into leaders in the medical laboratory setting.