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.

 

Productivity Tools: What Do You Use?

My goal as a school leader this year is to become more organized. One of my colleagues was surprised when I shared this goal, mentioning that I was an “organizational freak”. While I appreciated her compliment, I think I have been organized enough to make sure most tasks don’t go by the wayside. However, I wasn’t making enough time during the school day for professional reading, classroom visits and community connections. These activities would get pushed back into my personal life, which takes time away from family and friends.

I have been reading The Together Leader by Maia Heyck-Merlin for an upcoming Middleweb book review. So far the resource has been very helpful. I am at the point in which I need to develop a “later list”. This is where a school leader would keep track of long term projects and tasks that do not need to be taken care of right away and/or have many steps to address in order to complete them.

This year, I have decided to keep all things school within Google. Prior to this year I used a blend of different digital tools to be as productive as possible. The problem with that was these tools didn’t “talk” to each other. I would keep some things in Evernote, some in Google, and everything else on my desktop or in our district server. Having one overacrching software to reference has been really helpful in decluttering my professional life and keeping it separate to a degree from my personal endeavors.

The challenge is that Google, to my knowledge, does not have a robust productivity tool in its bank of apps and extensions. There is Google Keep, but it seems to be a lesser version of Evernote, which I love for my writing and research life (and for me, Microsoft OneNote is in the same camp as Google Keep). To note: I am an avid user of Apple products – I have a MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad. I have explored what the App Store has to offer. Things and Omnifocus have jumped out as possibilities. But do they sync with Google Calendar, which I rely on for my day-to-day tasks? Wunderlist has also been considered. I am not a fan of subscription-based apps but I would make an exception if Wunderlist is excellent.

So that leads to the purpose of my post: what application(s) have you found to:

• be excellent in keeping track of projects and later lists,
• “talk” with Google Calendar, and
• offer an application for Mac, iPhone and iPad?

If you are not aware of a tool in which I describe and desire, I highly recommend you create one. I will be the first person to write a glowing review in the App Store. If you do know of such a tool, please share in the comments.