Ep. 71: Time Management & Supervision Strategies for Busy BCBAs

Ever feel like your BCBA schedule is just one long game of “calendar Tetris”? Between driving to in-home sessions, juggling billable hours, supervising staff, and trying to have a life outside of work, it can feel impossible to fit it all in.

In this episode, Audra and Caitlin break down 10 practical, doable strategies to help you build a sustainable schedule—whether you’re clinic-based, school-based, or driving from house to house—without sacrificing supervision quality or your own sanity.

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Plan backwards from priorities. Start with non-negotiables (IEPs, supervision, contract hours, family time). Protect those boundaries before adding anything else.
• Stop nickel-and-diming your time. Say “let’s debrief later” instead of responding to every hallway request. Constant yes-ing leads straight to burnout.
• Cluster your work. Group by location, building, or grade level to cut down on travel and get more quality time where it matters.
• Build in buffer time. Avoid back-to-back scheduling. Use small breaks to wrap data, reset materials, and mentally transition.
• Theme your days. Assign predictable “observation,” “feedback,” or “planning” days to make unstructured tasks easier to manage.
• Use hybrid & overlapping supervision. Mix in-person and telehealth when appropriate, and overlap tasks (observation + data review) when allowed.
• Enter with a focus. Know your purpose before you walk in—modeling, feedback, goal review, or program check—and prep staff so everyone’s aligned.
• Reinforce staff intentionally. Use specific praise, tailor feedback style to each person, and follow up with quick notes to build strong relationships.
• Use tools that fit you (and your team). Digital or paper—organize systems in ways that make efficiency possible and accessible for everyone.
• Protect your own reinforcement. Schedule admin time, hold boundaries, unplug when needed, and prioritize mental stamina so you can do ethical, effective work.

📦 Resources & Links
• Grab the 10 Tips visual → https://abainschool.com/reg7
• Related Episodes:
Battling Staff Burnout → https://abainschool.com/ep9
Managing paras → https://abainschool.com/ep47
• Join the Misfit Behaviorists Facebook Group → https://abainschool.com/misfits

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📢 Know a BCBA or teacher drowning in their schedule? Send them this episode so they know they’re not alone.

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• Caitlin | Beltran’s Behavior Basics
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Transcript

Ep. 71: Time Management & Supervision Strategies for Busy BCBAs

[00:00:00] Audra: you don't wanna do is nickel and dime yourself to death with all the little things that pop up. And that's where you have to learn the strategy of saying no to requests. 

[00:00:09] Intro: Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Caitlin Beltran here to bring you evidence-based strategies with a student-centered focus. Let's get started. Hey everybody.

[00:00:22] Audra: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorists for this week and we are actually pulling one of the discussion prompts from the Facebook group. Somebody asked if we would talk about building an effective schedule with driving to in-home sessions and making sure all the staff get quality supervision and support, making time to commit to the needs of the client. All that stuff that kind of balances. And this is both for clinical model and school-based model that we know that that kind of balance is hard to strike. You have the pull from your funding sources and from doing the best for your clients and your families as well as self-care. That's all really important. And so we wanna talk about how do you balance that, what are the priorities that you can make in your own life?

[00:01:04] We all face those same problems, making that balance. So I thought of 10 practical tips to make that supervision and balance meaningful and manageable. Manageable for whether you're working in a clinic setting or you're traveling house to house, or you're in the schools.

[00:01:20] So my tip number one would be to plan backwards from your priorities. And we talked about doing schedules not too long ago, Caitlin, and I think you ran that one, which is really good. The same type of ideas when you're creating your schedule to start with those non-negotiables, those IEP meetings, the supervision meetings, the family time that you may have, setting those boundaries for yourself of what your contract hours are and making sure those are non-negotiables. And then once you have all those non-negotiables in it, then you can start adding in the other things. Now, this can be a little bit tricky in a clinic model, whether you're creating your own schedule or you have a scheduler, just making sure that you're doing that backwards planning, setting those things that are most important. Talk to your scheduler if they're doing your schedules to make sure that they know that your contract hours are important and you're not gonna be scheduled past 6:00 PM or whatever it is if you're doing clinic. And setting the time cycle. If you have meetings at your weekly meeting at school for your special education core group or whatever it is that that's part of that. Add those things in first and then start working about, of course then it is how do we fit everything within all the little spaces that are left. So, Caitlin, any other tips here as far as making a schedule work?

[00:02:35] Caitlin: Just have to really like, invent time in between the time that you have. No, I'm just kidding. No, I really like that. 'cause I was relating it to, even in a school-based model. Like you said, if I'm planning even as far as beyond scheduling, but like I'm thinking in my day to day, if I have it in my head, I wanna get this and this done, but I really have to get this one thing done. Like I have to show this para this new data collection sheet or something like that. But if I say, oh, but I'm gonna pop into morning meeting and see how that's going and then I'm gonna swing by this and check on that other thing, I am risking not getting to that "have to". So I think it's just a good reminder that should be, and I've learned over the years, that has to be my first stop and then I can get to my "want tos" after my "have tos".

[00:03:16] Audra: What you don't wanna do is nickel and dime yourself to death with all the little things that pop up. And that's where you have to learn the strategy of saying no to requests. Like, somebody pops their head out of the door, I'm having a problem with such and such, "I would really like to help. Let's debrief later, but right now I have to get to this meeting." You have to set those parameters and you have to stick to 'em even when sometimes there are fires going on, but you have to walk away in a situation in order to maintain the overall picture of what you're being able to do.

[00:03:44] Caitlin: If you say yes to everything, you're gonna learn so quickly, which I think a lot of us in the beginning, we always wanna do, right? Because we wanna be available and you wanna be helpful. But I mean, not only are you gonna burn out, it's just not possible. It's not feasible.

[00:03:56] Audra: And then tip number two is to cluster. So cluster by location or by building or by even the area of one school. You know, it's like you're doing all of first and second grade, you're gonna plan for those at the same time, same day. A clinic model, making sure you're talking to your schedulers or making your own schedules. Look at the zip codes or the side of town that you're scheduling those as much as you can, that you're not having to drive from here in the middle of rush hour traffic, even though 20 minutes it would be easy, but it's the middle of rush hour traffic and you can't get over to that side of town, then you're adding stress to already the travel piece of it. So just cluster your appointments as much as you can together. Blocking either by building, by wing, by grade level, reduce that drive and walk time so that you can get that quality time with the people that you're there to see.

[00:04:44] Tip number three is to schedule buffer time to make sure that when you're scheduling, you're not doing two to four and four to six, or eight to 10, and 10 to 12, and 12 to two, and two to four. You've gotta make sure you have those buffer pieces in between the schedules. Now, clinical, like billing codes and stuff, you're required to have a certain amount of time. And in some of the bigger clinics, their demands on their staff are difficult at times. We're requiring a certain amount of billable hours, and so scheduling and making sure you get creative while still following all the expectations of those billing codes is really important. For example, a billing code may be 60 minutes, client is in the room. You may make sure that you end session with the student 10 minutes before, the student is still there, doing independent tasks or free play or something. Give you a little bit of time to breathe, to prepare your materials, to put your stuff away, to finalize your data for the next person. All that stuff while that client is still there. So you're not rushing from the moment that you're done, face to face with that intensity with a student or a client, and then having to turn around and switch gears so fast, you're gonna get burnout really quick that way. So just make sure as much as you can possible to add that buffer into the schedules that you're creating.

[00:06:00] Caitlin: Some days, you just need a chance to catch your breath, right? So I think the more you learn to plan those little like mini breaks in, and I think sometimes we feel guilty just like taking that little like downtime to ourselves to organize ourselves. But we really have to remind ourselves like that's also part of our job, like checking our email and I know when I first started, I used to save a lot of stuff for home or I could do that in the morning or something before I even got to work. And again, just not really sustainable practices.

[00:06:28] Audra: If you feel yourself getting overwhelmed or burned out or something, even during a session, it is okay to just get on the floor and play with a learner. Don't think that because you've chosen in that moment, 'cause either you're outta whack or they're outta whack, that you're doing that, that you're not serving the student. You absolutely are because those connections, those relationship connections are so important. And maybe you both need a little break and today, half the session we're gonna play Jenga or something, to give yourselves that reboot that you may need for the next client that, maybe the next client coming in is a little more challenging. You need a little breather before you go into that one. And so that's okay. Give yourself that grace to be able to do that.

[00:07:03] So tip number four is to, and this is that kind of a creative thing, is to theme your days. And so think about like maybe on Mondays we're gonna do most of our observations, and on Tuesdays we're gonna work on providing the feedback. And Wednesdays we're gonna be planning for sessions and doing data analysis and Thursdays is gonna be collecting the data day or whatever it is, and to make sure that you're finding the time as much as you can to do the non-client specific stuff. The kind of all the upkeep you're talking about that the emails and all the other stuff you need to do. Maybe you leave one day for that. If you set each day of the week to be a specific thing, it makes that predictability for yourself. You know, like our students like that predictability. I really like that predictability. So I like doing that type of thing, keeping it organized. It keeps you calm as well as your team and your students as well.

[00:07:50] Caitlin: I love that one. It helps add structure to those things that aren't as structured, those tasks.

[00:07:55] Audra: And then tip number five uses kind of, if you can, a hybrid supervision. In a clinical model, maybe you're overlapping, you're alternating a live clients in session and maybe the next week you're able to do a video or a tele supervision or something like that. Sometimes you get just a little bit of a break, not having the client right there and being able to do some of the telehealth. But sometimes that's a little bit easier. You're able to multitask some other things and program management stuff is easier to get done in kind of the telehealth setting. But being with the student is also really important too. So maybe you can alternate that within the setting. And then for schools, debrief via teams or Google, whatever you guys are using, doing quick hallway chats, do the little spot checks as much as you can. And then if you can do some overlapping responsibility. So can you be reviewing data while you're doing an observation? You get really good at this and what we're doing. Can you do an RBT supervision during the time that you're working on the program checks? So we do this all the time. Can you do multiple student observations when possible? You know, some billing codes, you're not allowed to do that, but school, you absolutely can. Can you have your two data sheets right there on the same clipboard and you're able to get a couple done at the same time? Just make the time that you have more efficient, get as much done and multitask that you can do, and it's gives you that quality over the proximity of being able to check every single box individually. Sometimes you have to check several at a time.

[00:09:20] Caitlin: Yeah, and I find myself using that chip a lot in my school setting. I would say like a lot of the times that I'm in classrooms observing, I am maybe just ask the teacher, can I park myself at your desk for a while? Keep my laptop open. Maybe I'm doing a supervision check for an RBT, but also watching this one student's program progress, but also checking emails as they come in. And I like that. Because I do it frequently enough where it's not like the only time that I'm in the classroom and I'm risking missing things. But I also think it establishes you as a fixture of the classroom so that it takes away that novelty effect. The kids aren't gonna act much different. The staff aren't gonna act much different 'cause if I do that a couple of times a week, like you said, you're getting the most bang for your buck in terms of time. Then you're also just seeing patterns of behavior that you might miss just from a formal once a week observation when you're just staring at the kids and not doing anything else.

[00:10:11] Audra: Just makes it more natural. Tip number six, go in with a focus. So before you go in for either a direct observation or direct services, just keep in mind really quickly bring top of mind. Are you doing a modeling? Are you doing feedback? Are you doing goal review? Are you doing program management? Are you doing direct services with the client? Just really quick before you set in, have that top of mind. So you go in, you're more efficient with the time that you're doing. Go in with that focus, so if you're going to work in a classroom, send something quick to the teacher, Hey, I'm coming in to see so and so during reading time. This is what I'm looking for. Do you have any questions? So that it's not only on your mind, but also on the teacher's mind. You're going into a clinic model, you're doing an observation with an rbt, shoot them a quick text or an email saying, Hey, remember I'm coming in today. I'm really looking for this specific thing that I'm gonna be looking for how you're doing your DRO, whatever you're working on. So just so that you are on the same page as whoever you're working there, so you're not just kind of checking the box, you're making it really intentional.

[00:11:09] Tip number seven, to reinforce your staff in the same way that you reinforce your students. So that we just talked about specific praise is much better than just saying good job. So get the same way we do with our kids. We wanna make sure you're saying "I love how you use that prompt hierarchy today". I mean, that's so much better so use that with your staff as well as your teachers and everybody else. Of course you don't wanna go around "good job sitting", to your teachers. I'm like, that's a little bit too much. But in the same vein, know the audience that you're with. Know your staff well enough that how does this specific student like to receive feedback? How do they respond? What did we talk about the last time we were here? What simple thing can we talk about for the next time that we work on? So just knowing who you're talking to as far as the adults is what, and we do this with the students as well, just making sure that you really know that audience that you're talking to.

[00:12:03] Caitlin: Yeah, and I find that goes hand in hand with just being in the classroom as much as you can just for those brief fixture visits because then you get to know the staff really well. And I will say there's different ways I would definitely approach that differently with staff. There's some who are maybe in a BCBA course or RBT, who I might say, oh, and did you notice when you did this task analysis, were you going through the jargon like that? And then there's other staff where maybe they have a different sense of humor and I make like, oh, I'm gonna get you a punch on your card. I saw you doing that down a sheet or something like that because it's so silly.

[00:12:34] Audra: And that is just knowing your audience. I like to leave written notes afterwards, depending on the audience, whether it's more formal, like an email or just a quick post-it note. "I love how you did this and this today. That was really great to see," little kind of follow ups. Plus in the moment, if you've been on the receiving end of a feedback or an observation, you don't always collect everything that's happening in the moment, but if somebody sends you a wrap up or something later, it's just easier to understand and remember and internalize it. And so sending them a quick writeup or a note afterwards is really helpful and that kind of helps you build that relationship, that sustain you through the chaos that we get later on.

[00:13:12] Then tip eight would be to use the tools that work for you. So whether you're doing digital, you're doing Google Calendar or Trello, or notes templates, or you're doing digital data collection systems. There's so many out there right now, especially in clinical models. Making sure that system works for you and if it's not working for you to talk to your supervisors. Some people are just not tech savvy enough to get it, what are some accommodations that you might need to be able to be efficient with the time? For some people, some of the digital, especially some of the complicated digital systems out there, it's more cumbersome for them than doing the old standard paper pencil stuff. So how can they be accommodated so that they're most efficient. In fact, I had one when we were starting to do digital, and it was so hard for him, and we created a system where he would generate all of his data on paper just like the old ways, the clipboards and stuff. And then we would transfer that synopsis into the system that we had. And it worked. It wasn't great, but it worked. If you're still doing paper pencil stuff, there's some ways that you can organize that, whether you're color coding your folders by site or you're color coding within the folders that you have, whether you're using a box. We used the flip up box file folders for all of our students. And everything was ordered and consistent and all this stuff was in there. Just keeping it really organized. The more organized you're able to be, both for you and for all the other staff, especially if you're running a full ABA program with lots of different hands in the box or whatever. The more organized you're gonna be, the more efficient the time is gonna be.

[00:14:43] Caitlin: I love the idea of being flexible within a program because I feel like sometimes we can be a little rigid, us BCBAs, so we might have a new data system that we're very excited about. We want everyone to do it exactly the same way. But you know, we found, of course, there's times when, like you mentioned, there might be a staff member, it's not clicking with them. And I think it could be easy to miss that and just try to keep plowing ahead and making it fit when it's never really gonna fit. And then seeing that other option of how easy it could be to just ask this team member, like, "how would you go about this? If you didn't have this, what would you do?" And seeing if you can bridge the gap in a way that you described.

[00:15:21] Audra: Tip nine would be to build systems from the beginning for connection with your staff. So whether you're doing weekly staff check-ins, whether you use text or slack or sticky notes, whatever you're using anonymous surveys or feedback boxes we used to have in the clinics a feedback or question box. It was anonymous. Anything that gives them a chance to give feedback or ask questions in a safe, neutral way. And then here's another idea that I came up with that use that drive time. And it's so easy now with the technology we have in cars to be able to shoot a quick text to one of the staff, whether you're coming to their place or you just saw them, or somebody's just on your mind. Maybe somebody's on your mind because the cosmos is telling you you need to check in with this person. Whatever it is, use that little travel time you have between clients to send off a quick text while you're driving along or listening to a wonderful podcast.

[00:16:09] And then the last tip would be to protect your own reinforcement, to make sure that your burnout is not going to affect everybody else. 'Cause it really, it helps nobody. It's the most ethical you can be by making sure that you're protecting your own time, your own sanity, your own mental health. So schedule some of that no travel admin time weekly. Make sure you protect that. Don't let people take that from you. And if it gets to the point where you're feeling too much pushback, then start talking to your higher ups or something. Sitting down with people and telling them, you gotta voice these concerns 'cause some people can go forever work your 80 hour shift week or whatever. I'm not one of those people. And so it is okay to say "for me, these are the boundaries that I have, and if this situation we have here doesn't work, then I need to find something else to do" because you have to be able to conserve that, that mentality.

[00:17:02] So those are my 10 tips, and I just wanna point out that you cannot pour from an empty tank. Just make sure that what your schedule is in such a way that you're most efficient, but you're also maintaining that mental stamina that you're gonna need because the job that we do is difficult and it can be very draining.

[00:17:22] So this week, my challenge is for you to audit your schedule. So take a look at it, sit down. What can be trimmed, what can be grouped together, what can be delegated, what can you get rid of? And then choose one thing and really try it out this week. Then try it, tweak it, see if something changes. If you feel a little bit better, it's okay too to walk away from situations to go "this weekend i'm not even gonna open up my email. I'm not gonna answer any texts from anybody that's not family." You know? It's okay to do those things to recharge and make sure you come in fresh for the new week. And so those are my challenges this week. We'll see you the next time that you're here to listen with us. See you later.

[00:18:01] Intro: Thanks for listening to the Misfit Behaviorists, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.