Guest Author: Angela Kelly Robeck, Host of The Empowered Principal Podcast
If there’s one resource that most school principals struggle to manage, it’s their relationship with TIME. In fact, I’ll venture to say that most educators feel at odds with time, including teachers and district administrators. Here’s why.
Technically, there IS too much to do and not enough time. You could prove this in a court of law. If you add up the math, the amount of work that a principal is expected to complete in a given day, week, month, or school year is significantly more than one leader can realistically do. So, it’s not wrong when principals say there’s too much to do and not enough time – but how it is that some school leaders feel calm and accomplished while others feel completely overwhelmed and overworked?
Here's the secret. The difference between feeling accomplished or feeling overwhelmed has nothing to do with the clock or the calendar. It’s not a time issue.
WHAT?
I know. It FEELS like a time issue. You have evidence to prove it’s a time issue. But what stands between overwhelm and success is a THOUGHT. A sentence in your mind. A sentence that’s repeating itself and triggering waves of overwhelming feelings in your body. The sentence “There’s too much to do and not enough time” is the obstacle that prevents you from feeling organized, efficient, and productive.
When you believe that you lack time, your brain gets to work searching for evidence that you lack time. It sees all the ways in which you lack time and how that lack of time prevents you from feeling accomplished. It’s like the power of suggestion. Someone mentions they bought a new red Honda Pilot and suddenly you see dozens of them on the road. A thought floats through your mind that you are too busy and there’s not enough time and your brain suddenly sees a dozen ways in which you lack time. This process will loop and compound itself until you feel unable to get ahead.
I call this the Overwhelm Cycle. Your brain responds to the chaos of school leadership with uncertainty and confusion of where to start. Then it slips into doubt and disillusionment, wondering if it’s possible NOT to feel overwhelmed. So, you hustle to get more done resulting in exhaustion. When that doesn’t work, you feel ineffective and inadequate as a leader, and consider if you are cut out for school leadership.
UGH.
Here’s the good news. There’s a simple solution to shifting from an Overwhelm Cycle to a SUCCESS Cycle. The solution is less about what you need to do and more about what you need to think. Let’s play this out.
Imagine a school leader who isn’t overwhelmed. They come to school to plan and prepare for the week. They enter campus calm, certain, and confident. When unexpected issues arise, they handle them and adjust their calendars accordingly without giving up personal time and commitments. They feel in control of their schedule even when emergencies occur and their day doesn’t go as planned.
What is this school leader thinking that’s different from an overwhelmed and frantic school leader? They believe they have time. They have created a healthy relationship with time in their mind. They understand that time is abundant and that they always have plenty of time to complete what’s most important. They see time as an asset that they can leverage instead of using it against themselves. They know that when they shift gears based on the needs that arise during the day, that is the most valuable use of their time and that the other priorities will still get done. And they give themselves grace when they don’t spend time the way they had planned.
Here's the thing. Both trains of thought are true. You can prove that time is scarce and it’s equally true that time is always available. You might as well choose the belief that best serves you and your school. Being a school leader who’s made peace with time and works with it instead of battling it is attainable for you this school year. Here are some innovative time hacks to help you feeling accomplished and skilled at time management.
HACK #1: Implement Equal Airtime
Your brain will wake up each morning telling you how busy you will be and that there won’t be enough time to get everything done. There’s no need to scold yourself for thinking this way. Allow your brain to tell you all the reasons why you should believe time is scarce. Then, for as many minutes as it shared all the time-scarce thoughts, ask it to consider time-abundant thoughts. It’s like weight training. You don’t work out one side of your body and not the other. The same is true for our thinking. To build your capacity to believe that you have time, you must give an equal amount of time to step into time-abundant thoughts. Try them on and notice how they feel. You can always go back to time-scarce thoughts, but my guess is that time-abundant thoughts will feel so much better than time-scarce thoughts.
HACK #2: Use one calendar for professional and personal tasks.
You’re one human who can be in one place doing one thing at a time. There aren’t two of you – one to take on the personal calendar and another to take on the professional calendar – so why would you plan your time separately? Perhaps you’ve been told to compartmentalize your personal life from your role as a school leader, yet there is a difference between focusing on work while you’re at work and having a comprehensive vision of how your personal life and professional life work in harmony. You’re more likely to stay focused at work when you know that your personal priorities have been granted time and attention.
Furthermore, juggling multiple calendars makes following a schedule more complicated. It’s easy to double book yourself or miss an appointment – and it takes more time to manage two calendars than one, so you’re actually wasting time by trying to keep two or more calendars up to date.
Make life simpler and easier. Use ONE calendar for ALL your life’s plans. You’ll be able to see all the moving parts and know how much time you have to work with. You’ll also be able to see what areas of your life receive the most time and determine if your time is being spent on what you value most.
HACK #3: Add the real deal to the calendar.
School leadership is full of interruptions and impromptu appointments, but you never see these on the calendar, so when they happen, they set you off track and feel like an annoyance. By the end of the week, you’re wondering what you’ve accomplished because what WAS on your calendar didn’t get done, but you can’t pinpoint how you spent your time. This is the fuel for frustration and disappointment.
Try adding a block of time each day for interruptions. I recommend an hour, but you can review your schedule and add more if it rings true for your work week. It doesn’t matter when you add it to your day as you can’t know ahead of time when interruptions will occur. What matters is that you have acknowledged the truth of how you spend your time during the workday, and you’ve created space for the realities of the job.
This means that you’ll have less time to schedule other tasks, but you won’t feel as stressed when interruptions and emergencies arise.
Get the Support You Deserve
Being a school leader can be an isolating and lonely experience – especially when you’re new. If you are a school leader who wants practical solutions to every aspect of the school leadership journey, I invite you to check out The Empowered Principal® Podcast. As a former teacher, instructional coach, principal, and district administrator, I personally know how challenging school leadership can be and have developed dozens of highly effective tools and strategies to support fellow school leaders. I share my best tips every week on the podcast so that you can create exceptional results and enjoy the school leadership experience.
