Read home emails ONLY in the morning before school. My sister figured out to text me instead of emailing me.
Read work emails when I get to school, during team time (3rd period this year), during plan time (10th period), and before I go home. I do NOT read work emails at home during the school year.
Get as much work done as possible at work. I go in very early in the mornings, as I'm up early and like to drive early so I don't drive alongside rushed drivers. This alleviates stress for me. This may mean staying late one (or two?) day(s) a week to get a few more things completed. I also try my best to give feedback to student writing at school. This is a bit trickier, as I record it. So sometimes during our writing units, I work 1-4 hours on weekend mornings.
When it comes to "extra" work, or "fun" work, or work that seems more like a "hobby," such as social media, blogging, sharing ideas from my books, reading books about education, it gets a bit more tricky for me...
Set a time for these "fun" or "extra" bits of work.
Make a plan to help you decide when it's a good time or not. Here's my thinking process for when I get excited to do this extra work I enjoy:
Keep my phone away until lunch and then put it away again afterwards.
Get as much work done as possible at work. I go in very early in the mornings, as I'm up early and like to drive early so I don't drive alongside rushed drivers. This alleviates stress for me. This may mean staying late one (or two?) day(s) a week to get a few more things completed. I also try my best to give feedback to student writing at school. This is a bit trickier, as I record it. So sometimes during our writing units, I work 1-4 hours on weekend mornings.
When it comes to "extra" work, or "fun" work, or work that seems more like a "hobby," such as social media, blogging, sharing ideas from my books, reading books about education, it gets a bit more tricky for me...
Set a time for these "fun" or "extra" bits of work.
Make a plan to help you decide when it's a good time or not. Here's my thinking process for when I get excited to do this extra work I enjoy:
For example, when it came to writing this post, I knew I could make the time, as Hubby was watching golf, and I was eating lunch (I like to multitask - a whole other habit to evaluate, right?!). I can eat and think while I type, tuning out the television in the next room of our cozy home. I also thought this post might be helpful to other educators (and thus helpful to their families, as well), so I thought it was a valuable use of my time. It took me about a half an hour, and then I had to save it as a draft to head out with my niece and nephew. I came back to it when I had another half hour (golf is on a lot) the next day.
Since COVID messed with our routine in March of 2020, I've noticed I do more with Hubby and family than with work. I put off more "extra" work than I used to, and made a priority to relax and be more in the moment. What's my ONE priority? My health - both mental and physical. Following this routine helps me do just that, which, in turn, helps my home and work life.
Joy, I love that flow chart. It is important to ask those questions. So often when I was teaching, I would have a good idea (I thought so at the time) and run with it even when the answers to those questions in the diamonds were YES, and I should have just written it down and saved it for later when I had the time for it. Thanks for sharing!
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