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If you are a Support Coordinator or Recovery Coach, you’ve probably felt like time was not on your side. It often seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day - let alone billable hours.
In this article, we’ll discuss some typical scenarios and unpack the “why” and “how” behind our decision-making processes, leaving you with some practical tips that will help you feel in control of your workload.
Our responses to situations can turn Support Coordination from an admin role into a capacity-building support. So, let’s look at ways to manage our time and attention that will leave us with the energy to keep coming back and doing amazing work.
Time management as capacity building
One trap we can easily fall into is an elevated sense of responsibility. There are two drawbacks to taking on more responsibility than we should: it can lead us to burnout, and it can deprive others of the opportunity to have ownership over their own lives.
I didn’t always like the word responsibility, because I saw it used punitively or unsupportively. It helped when I learnt to break it down into its two parts: response and ability. In other words, who has the ability to respond?
Many people I’ve worked with, including me, who have lived experience of emotional distress and/or disability, say that we are rarely given the opportunity to make decisions for ourselves; not trusted; not given the chance to experiment. The responsibility that each person would normally have for their own lives was taken over by someone else. Once we’ve heard that enough times, we start to internalise it. We begin to believe that we aren’t capable of doing things or making decisions for ourselves – perhaps to the point where we stop trying.
Placing the responsibility, or opportunity, for decision-making and self-direction back with the person is one thing we can do to make space for that person’s recovery journey.
Triaging - Saying no to one thing is saying yes to something else
Have you ever been told you need to ‘prioritise’? One of the implications we often don’t think about is that if something becomes a high priority, something else must become a lower priority. These can be painful decisions because we know that everything we do is important.
Saying “yes” to anything that pops up in front of us - or saying “yes” to the people who happen to be asking with the loudest voice - becomes a silent “no” to the people who express their needs in more subtle ways, or who aren’t there to ask for it.
We have to decide where to place our priorities, because we alone have the context of how the needs and wants of many people balance out alongside each other.
This becomes harder when someone contacts us in distress. As people with a lot of empathy, it can be hard to balance many people’s needs simultaneously. But to be able to give the best quality service we can, we’re going to have to make some decisions.
We can ask a few curious questions, with the utmost empathy, to figure out whether there is a need for urgent action or whether it’s the emotions that are urgent. If it’s the latter, it might be more appropriate to spend some time attending to the emotions. Make a plan for a proper debrief in the future or figure out who else can help. A commitment from you to attend to the situation together in the future could be the reassurance the person needs in the moment.
Creating time for the background work
Do you get that little dopamine hit when you see a new email notification? It’s very tempting to stop what we’re doing and have our attention stolen away by all the things on our screen.
I used to keep getting frustrated that my list of reports and other office-based tasks were piling up. It took me a while to get my head around the idea of turning off my email notifications for chunks of time. I worried that something would go terribly wrong if I missed seeing an email come in straight away. I had to remind myself that if I were with a participant, I wouldn’t be expected to constantly check my emails.
It becomes easy to put aside the things I think of as “my” tasks, like writing a report. But writing a report still benefits the person it’s for, so we don’t need to feel selfish for respecting the time we’ve put aside for office-based tasks.
Allocating time realistically
Are we realistically allocating time? It’s tempting to allocate the amount of time we want something to take rather than how much time it actually takes. A report that takes 3 hours “should” take 2 hours; a case note that “shouldn’t take any time at all” might be assigned 0 minutes! If we notice we’re becoming a little too optimistic - or too harsh with ourselves - about how long things are supposed to take, we might need to step back and be a bit more generous about how much time we allocate. If we over-estimate - great, we’ve got some spare time up our sleeve!
Working with our emotional experiences
As logical as we like to think we are, our emotions are stronger than our thoughts. What makes them even more powerful is that we’re not often in the habit of acknowledging them. Emotions are there for a reason. They don’t need to be in charge of our decision-making, but they’re indicating that something about the situation is getting to us. When we understand that emotions are playing a part in our decision-making, we can use that knowledge to take a step back and figure out whether this is serving our end goal or not.
Some questions to ask yourself might be: Is there something about the situation that is triggering a stronger-than-usual emotional response? Is there something I’m avoiding? Do I have certain fears or worries?
The version of me from a few years ago would hate the following advice: if I notice something I’m avoiding, it probably needs to be at the top of my to-do list.
I also learnt that the one tiny thing that is niggling away at the back of my head that “shouldn’t” be important is probably the very barrier that is making it harder to get on with what I know is important. Simply acknowledging it, whether that is to a trusted colleague or in your own private journal, is often enough to lift the pressure.
If we’re stressed out to the point where our fight or flight response has kicked in, we won’t be able to access the level of executive functioning (logical decision-making, planning, weighing up complex ideas and different points of view) that we normally would. If we’re dysregulated, the first and only thing to do is calm down. Signs of being dysregulated may include a feeling of panic, over-thinking, trouble understanding things that people are saying - it will vary from person to person, and it can take a bit of practice to notice your own signs. Understanding more about your stress responses will put you in a better position to take a step back from the situation and return to it in a calm state. Decision-making will come a lot more naturally after that. It’s worth the time!
Boundaries revisited
I’ve met so many incredibly dedicated recovery coaches and support coordinators - the last thing anyone wants is for them to burnout!
A practical suggestion: only work the hours you are paid to and turn off your phone outside of work. If you’re a manager, enforce this amongst the team and role model a healthy work/life balance.
When we’re using lots of methods to maximise our efficiency and it still feels impossible to keep up with everything, the answer isn’t just to work more hours. If this happens continuously, it might indicate that there is an unreasonable workload.
Moreover, role boundaries are incredibly important. Delegating actions doesn’t just save you time, it also means you won’t end up in the position of disappointing someone when say no to something you’ve previously done. Being consistent is a part of building trust with the people we work with. A hard but practical lesson to learn is that other people won’t respect your boundaries if you don’t demonstrate respecting them yourself. So, before you say “yes,” take a moment to think about whether this is the best value use of your time – and the time of the people you support.
Being in this type of role, we have a ton of skills. Communication skills. People skills. Keeping-up-with-the-NDIS skills. Time management in all its parts, like boundary-setting, decision-making, and emotional regulation, is another skill that can be learnt and practised. Some weeks we can find ourselves still getting caught up in the hectic pace of the work we do. Some weeks we nail it and come away feeling clear and with some energy left over. It’s worth constantly improving our skills when it means we’re better able to stay focussed on the things that allow us to do the best work we can.
