My journey with faculty leadership and management.

There is so much on the go.  I really need to sort my daily routine out so I can be much more productive and effective than I was in term 2.  Particularly towards the end of term 2 I would spend large portions of time looking at my endlessly growing To do list, but not knowing where to start. Currently there is about 80 job on the list, some of which are small tasks that will take 30 minutes or less to complete, others are large projects running over weeks.  Problem was I could not find a place to start work and would get distracted by solving computer issues or re-arranging my desk.  Neither fit in the formula for effective work.

I am also critically aware of my large periods of absence from my faculty and staff.  To me this means I need to be visibly involved in faculty leadership and management work whilst I am there.  If I spend large amounts of time achieving little, then am absent on regular occasions there is a real possibility of developing the perception that the faculty is of reduced importance in the range of roles I work within.  I needed to develop a planned work flow to enable enhance productivity.

To do this I’ve gone back to the age old advice from the first Deputy Principal I worked with.  I was only in the same school as her for a semester but she has had a profound impact on my professional life.  My favourite catch phrase of hers is “Just make sure your own world buzzes, the rest doesn’t matter.”  This is something I have kept in my mind consistently, and in reality is probably on reason I continue to put my hand up for projects that come my way – simply because I enjoy being involved and working within a range of teams.

Another catch phrase she used to say was “Always clean your desk before you go home.”  Now until recently I took that literally, as her desk was always pristeen.  But I am now thinking about it a little more metaphorically.  My desktop includes the actual desktop, my intray, email inbox, thoughts, notes in diary and default evernote notebook and my whiteboard.  If the desktop is clean but the rest still cluttered, then organisation of the following workday is a challenge.  So this term I am focused on cleaning my entire desk before I go home.  To achieve this I will need to revisit a theory I have blogged about before – “Zen to Done.”  Specifically the ubiquitous and complete capture.  I need to devote an hour at the end of each day to “process” and plan for the following day.  I believe if I can come into work with an achievable list of tasks written on my diary then my stress and procrastination may reduce.

Why written notes?  I put a lot of information on my computer and in the cloud.  I think I need to list the working goals separately to reduce distraction.  And I need to realise my achievable list may have few, or even single items on it.  I will never get all the hours allocated to me to complete work. As a leader and manager I need to plan for interaction and problem solving with staff.

So wish me luck, hopefully I leave term 3 under a deal less stress than I did term 2.