Our time is finite, our roles are infinite, there's always more to do. For many the pressure of the lists becomes too much, let's be mindful of stress and burnout, what can we do? Could micromanaging ourselves lead us to the answer?
Managing in TEFL, a fortnightly companion for language school leaders, is written by Simon Pearlman and brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training. Email training@activelanguage.net with the header “Subscribe to Managing in TEFL” to get a copy straight to your inbox.
Some of our colleagues seem to have daily to do lists that they actually get done, that seems incredible, impossible even. For many of us the lists go on and on and on, and even as we write them we think of more things to do, more things on the list. We send emails, have meetings and work through things on the list and that just creates more work, more things on the list.
Love the list
The list is good, the list means action, the list hopefully means progress. We need to learn to love the list rather than fear it. Perhaps we need to rename the list; “action station” or “the progress page”? Whatever we call it, it is always there, and in its omnipresence, we need to be friends with it, we need to be comfortable with it rather than something to battle through and fight with.
Give each task full attention
We need to accept the list fully, we need to embrace it and every entry. We can approach each element with mindfulness and try to focus solely on that task as we're doing it, give it our best every time. Maybe we're writing a quick email to a colleague, write it well, think of them as you write, do a good job with it, it might be the only interaction we have with them for a week. It's worth taking an extra minute to make it personal, to care. And after each task, drink water.
Manage the list
We can befriend the list and we can manage the lists. List management is essential for us all; using the Eisenhower Matrix to help us prioritise, focussing on our Comparative Advantages and delegating can be empowering. The list is there, we also need to see beyond the list. We can turn a gentle critical spotlight on ourselves, assess our effectiveness, do our own self-appraisal, think about our own productivity and think about micromanaging ourselves.
https://www.eisenhower.me/eisenhower-matrix/
https://personalmba.com/comparative-advantage/
Understanding our own productivity
Productivity is an interesting concept as a language school leader. For many of us, it feels like we never stop working, its always churning away, it can't stop. At the same time, we're probably in this for the long haul and we need to consider sustainability. We also need to be good and kind to ourselves, many of us are working for ourselves, does it work for us? Are we really working for ourselves? We need to try to understand our own varying levels of energy and productivity as we move through the day, the week, the term, the year.
There are ups and downs through the year for us all; times when we're in flow and work feels great, other times when it's more of a trudge through a thick jungle, others when it all feels too much. Hopefully we can understand, acknowledge and work with these different ways of being. It's important for our mental and emotional health, its also important for our colleagues and our business. Manage ourselves through these periods.
We also need to manage our time and expectations of ourselves through the academic year and through the termly cycles. When should we push ourselves on, when should we throttle back? Balancing our our own needs with those around feels important.
What happens through the day? How and when do we work best? Are we members of the 5am club? Are we night owls burning the midnight oil? Do we work best in the bustle of a noisy language school or do we need quiet to work? Does it depend on the type of work we're doing? There's our language school work and there's also housework, family work, relationship work, etc. There's also you-work, we need to work on ourselves; we need to work on resting, on excerise, on eating well, on meditation. What time do we take for us? Don't neglect all these different parts of work. Maybe all these things should be on our list and in our diaries.
https://www.nextlevel.coach/blog/the-5am-club-by-robin-sharma-a-detailed-book-summary
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
Let's try to use our diaries reasonably. What work will we do best at certain times of the day or week? Always plan in a little more time than you think will be necessary. Is it a quick 10 minute meeting? Allow 30. For a half hour meeting diarise for an hour. Do we want to free up our afternoons to just be in our schools and “manage by walking around”?
https://www.leadingsapiens.com/mbwa-managing-by-wandering-around/
From “to do” to “done”, time for a new list?
A new list? Really? A different list. As well as having a managed to do list and a planned diary, writing a done list can be so helpful. On this list we write what we've done, it can be extremely rewarding to itemise what we've done, it helps us feel good. Instead of focussing on the mountain to do it shows progress, it shows action. It also honours each of those actions, a little celebration of each job done. We can review the done lists to help us understand where we've been actually working, where our attention gets pulled to and where we might want to change things.
We can add timings too. How long does it really take to write and send an email? How long do we spend working with our accounts? How long did I talk to that teacher for? How long did I spend preparing that class? It can be really interesting to see these things.
The done list with timings allows us to congratulate ourselves and also to micromanage ourselves. As we gently and supportively micromanage ourselves we can learn so much about our flow of energy, our productivity and ourselves.
Should we micromanage ourselves? Will it help with greater productivity, better flow and more harmony? Try it for a week, it might be a game changer.
Managing in TEFL is brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training providers of Trinity CertTESOL, DipTESOL and Teaching Younger Learners courses. See www.activelanguage.net for more information.