Why Friday Should Be Your New Monday

This morning, a student arriving at school was wearing a shirt with the following phrase on the front:

Got That Friday Feeling

I laughed and then went about my day.

Fridays always seem a bit lighter and loose. For examples, jeans replace khakis. These quiet yet clear transitions to the weekend are normal. Yet can they also cause us to not appreciate the present? We are mentally on Saturday time even before Friday begins.

Related, is this why people generally struggle more with Mondays? As I consider this question, the theory does make some sense. For example, because we prioritize our weekends (as we should), we may also become frustrated with the lack of transition to Monday. All of that paperwork left on our desk isn’t filing itself. It’s like we are almost starting behind when we come back from two days off.

So I humbly suggest turning your Fridays into your Mondays. Not all day Friday. Only part, likely the afternoon. By cleaning up loose ends from the current week, we are also preparing for the following week. Here are a few steps I find helpful. Some of these ideas come from or are adapted from The Together Leader: Get Organized for Your Success – and Sanity! by Maia Heyck-Merlin (there is also a teacher version of this resource).

1. Clear off all of your extra paperwork and scan it (or file it if you must). I use Scannable to create PDFs of documents with my phone. They are saved in Evernote, a digital file organizer that acts as my second brain.
2. Clean up as many emails as possible from the inbox. I will move important conversations that I have responded to in a categorized folder. The rest I delete. Typically I don’t get to “inbox zero”, but then again my email is not my to-do list…
3. …which happens to be Things, an iOS application. I have it on my MacBook Air, iPad, and iPhone. I add tasks that come up during the day to this app which syncs across all devices. During my Friday/Monday time, I move any tasks that didn’t get completed to a future date. There is more to Things than just to-dos, such as project management and creating checklists for regularly scheduled activities.
4. I journal daily. It helps me get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper so I don’t dwell on them over the weekend. If you have not journaled before, consider Fridays as a good day for that. I follow some general prompts when I need direction:
   • What went well this week? What are you happy about?
   • Where did you come up short? Why do you think that is?
   • How is this week’s work connected to our school goals?
   • What needs to happen next week to sustain the momentum?
5. Now that my mind is clearer and my priorities are more in order, I can start scheduling for the following week. I add my big rocks, my priorities, first: daily instructional walks, parent/staff meetings, professional learning team time, a weekly touch base with our instructional coach and my assistant, and deadlines for any big projects. I have a print planner as well. I write these out from my digital calendar to confirm the accuracy of dates. (Some people may not need this confirmation. I am not one of those people.)

With my desk cleared and my mind uncluttered, I am more able to enjoy the weekend. There is less that is mentally weighing on my mind as I enjoy time with family and friends. For sure, I cannot turn off my work brain; I always have lingering projects and tasks that will need to be continued when I come back Monday. Yet even when I am not 100% successful in preparing for Monday, the time and effort spent on Friday does help.

 

Principals: What Is Your Job with a Capital J?

“What is my job on the planet?” is one question we might do well to ask ourselves over and over again. Otherwise, we may wind up doing somebody else’s job and not even know it.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are, pg. 206

In a previous post, I posed the question: “If you knew that your last day at your school was tomorrow, how would you decide to spend your time?” I offered my own response (spending time in classrooms, ignoring email, etc.). Yet I didn’t address a possible follow up question, one that couches us in our daily realities: How do I find the time to spend with students and teachers in classrooms?

This is a reasonable concern. The emails in our inbox don’t magically disappear. Requisitions need to be approved and evaluations have to be completed. What helped me prioritize my limited time in school is to ask myself a follow-up question (adapted from a chapter title in Kabat-Zinn’s book): What is my job with a capital J?

To find out, I created a T-chart. Next, I looked back on my calendar and started listing all of the tasks I had completed in the past along with what I remembered doing but didn’t schedule. On the left side, I wrote down all of the tasks that should belong to me as a school principal and instructional leader. On the right side, I listed tasks that were my responsibility as a principal but didn’t necessarily need to be completed by me.

This idea comes from the book The Together Leader by Maia Heyck-Merlin (Jossey-Bass, 2016)

Here’s the list. It’s evolving. For example, I still do some data entry for discipline. I also tend to take care of a few purchase orders because I get uptight about our school budget. But overall, this process was both freeing and empowering. Freeing because I could give myself permission to not feel like I needed to be everywhere at once. Instead I’ve learned to trust staff to be responsive to students’ needs. Empowering because I am finding that staff members who I have asked to take on certain responsibilities are doing as good if not a better job than I would. For example, some of our most popular professional learning experiences have been facilitating by our teachers. I had as much to learn as anyone.

To be clear, I don’t value my tasks over what others might accomplish with me. Everything is important. What I know is that principals cannot do it all. So we have to be selective about how we choose to prioritize our time every day. If our expertise and efforts are best served as instructional leaders, then we have to find ways to delegate some of the non-instructional tasks to other staff members in order to be most effective.

What tasks have you found to be essential or nonessential to your role as a school principal and instructional leader? How did you re-organize responsibilities? Please share in the comments.

The Tyranny of Time

Although it seems likely that losing track of the clock is not one of the major elements of enjoyment, freedom from the tyranny of time does add to the exhilaration we feel during a state of complete involvement.

• Mihaly Czikszentmihalyl, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Right now I am keeping many plates spinning. There are multiple writing projects on the docket, a new job to prepare for that includes a move to a new town, and a family that deserves my attention. In addition, I enjoy all of my experiences online with others, learning together. Yet something has to give. Time is not standing still.

That is why I am taking a break from blogging, Facebook, and the 24/7 news cycle in August. It is necessary to pare down our tasks at times to focus on what is essential. Some friends of mine, Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan, are doing the same thing with their blog Perspectives. Well known artists and creatives also take breaks from the Internet. John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, is going on a tech sabbatical. He shared this video as a rationale, titled The Distraction Economy:

If you would rather read about The Distraction Economy, check out this article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic for The Guardian. I also highly recommend Stop Googling. Let’s Talk. by Sherry Turkle for the New York Times.

When information is bountiful, attention is limited and precious.

– Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

For longer fare on the topic of focus and attention, I wasn’t disappointed by reading Hamlet’s Blackberry by William Powers and Reclaiming Conversation, also by Turkle.

As I ween down my distractions, I have made a point of learning more about developing routines for my writing. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and The Writer’s Guide to Persistance by Jordan Rosenfeld have been helpful guides. With regard to my role as a principal, The Together Leader by Maia Heyck-Merlin and Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker look promising upon first glance.

Also important is the environment in which I write, work, and live. For instance, we converted our four seasons room into a device-free zone (at least for me and the cats). William Powers would refer to this as a “Walden Zone”, after Thoreau’s famed location:

As my position picks up in our new location, I won’t be able to work remotely as much. I discovered a cabin with no wireless or television through a community connection for a few temporary stays until we officially move in. I look forward to the solitude, although I will miss my family. Hopefully by shedding some connections in my life in August, I will increase my involvement, effectiveness and enjoyment in the tasks at hand.