Hey, Everybody!
So one thing I’ve learned this week in my online education adventure is that I am somewhat terrible at working from home.
Turns out that being at home around all my things and having the distractability quotient of a Shih Tzu don’t really mix.
Whether it’s a burning desire to binge a TV show, or play the piano, or check my phone, or just eat ALL THE THINGS…
…Managing my time was becoming a problem. During the summer, I had become used to finishing all of my work pretty much every day. Everything was graded, every message was responded to, and all extra tasks had been checked off by the time I signed off every day. Although I remained my distractable self during the summer, I’m a fast worker, especially on a computer, so with the reduced student load, I was able to get through all of it in just a few hours every day. That’s not happening for me anymore and it’s stressing me out!
I mean, I even ship my kids off to preschool every day, and I still wasn’t measuring up to my expectations! Although, that did cause some extra problems, seeing as we’ve all been more or less deathly ill since the first week of school…
However, I got to thinking this week that perhaps I was being a little too hard on myself. Perhaps what was possible during the summer with the reduced load simply wasn’t going to continue being possible for me during the regular school year. As difficult as this was to accept at first (If I don’t get something done during the day, I have a tendency to neurotically obsess over it all night), once I got the idea through my brain, it’s been strangely liberating, and I was able to make a plan to make better use of my time.
First of all, I cleared my workspace, which happens to be a tiny desk in my bedroom, of all potential distractions. Most importantly, I moved my phone charger out of that space and now keep my phone plugged in away from me during the time that I’m working. To go along with that, I’ve started breaking down my work into smaller, (approximately) 45-minute chunks, and giving myself permission to take 10-minute breaks in between those chunks to do something else like check my phone, or do a bit of exercise, or grab a snack.
I’ve also given myself permission to not get everything done every day, and I’ve started creating a prioritized schedule for each day of the week that I’m going to implement starting next week. It’s still a work in progress, as I haven’t figured out the exact timing needed for each task yet, but I’m pretty excited about what I’ve got so far, and I hope it will help me maintain my sanity!
I think my main takeaways from this week are:
- Keep your expectations reasonable, especially the ones you place on yourself!
- Prioritization and organization can make seemingly insurmountable tasks manageable.
I look forward to implementing my prioritized schedule next week. I’ll let y’all know how it goes!
Kameron, it looks like you are learning some important time management strategies here! Try moving out to a library or coffee shop for a bit. It helps bring the focus back! I also remember an iEducator who said she focused on grading just the previous day’s work instead of what was coming in on the current day. Otherwise you feel like you are shoveling during a snowstorm. Would that work?
Kameron, I like what Andrea says about grading the day previous. Her analogy of the snowstorm is great! I know some people balance time by grading an entire gradebook in only a few classes every other day, which keeps them within the window but not logging into all classes. I, personally, try to grade through the day before as, like Andrea said, keeping up with that day’s is almost impossible!