Tag Archives: work

Sub Rosa

Sometimes the hardest part of my job is not over-sharing. When I was a principal in China my wife was on my staff. Another staff member told me in confidence that she was pregnant. When she finally told everyone, my wife was the last to know. My pregnant staff member assumed I told my wife, but my wife was her colleague and so I kept the confidential announcement confidential.

Keeping things confidential is part of the job. While my wife understands this, not everyone does. Some people expect explanations, and when I can’t share it can then reflect poorly, or seem like I’m not making choices or decisions that would be expected. There is no easy or polite way to say, “None of your business.”

But there are times when the most prudent thing I can do is keep private information private, and speak only to those who have or need relevant information. It may not be popular, but necessary.

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Postscript: This was written quite a while ago, but I chose not to share it at that time because the subject matter that inspired this post would have been obvious, and this is a public space that I choose to write in.

Challenging Advice

Cal Newport, author of several books including, Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, was on the Sam Harris podcast. I listed to it over the past 3 days and a couple interesting things were discussed.

First of all, Cal has no social media profiles, despite studying social media as part of the research work he does. While I think that’s interesting, I don’t think that I’d want to do that myself. I have drastically reduced my time on social media over the past few years, with time on all sites going down significantly to barely a few minutes a day… other than Tiktok which I will spend up to 30 minutes maximum a day Monday to Thursday, and longer on weekends. Tiktok is more like television to me than social media because I don’t spend any time trying to look at my specific network and let the algorithm decide what I watch next. I watch almost no television and consider TikTok an alternative option to the TV. But while I’ve lowered the social of social media use, I’m not ready to delete or ignore the accounts I have.

The second thing Cal said was that he refined his ideas around doing Deep Work to:

  • Do fewer things;
  • Work at a natural pace; and
  • obsess over quality.

This sounds great! It’s just not workable in most jobs. If I had a job where I could do this, I’d never want to retire. But the reality of my job, and many other management jobs, is that I simply don’t have that luxury.

I want to do more things, because most of the time I spend on things I need to do rather than what I want to do. My pace is often dictated in a reactionary way, rather than a pace I actually choose. And while quality really matters, I’m often working on timelines that force me to do what’s necessary and then move on.

I’ve discussed this before, the challenge of doing ‘what you need to do’ consumes so much time and energy that there is little of either left for doing ‘things you want to do’. And so it’s not easy to take Cal’s advice. While it is laudable, it’s not realistic to try to achieve. I think writers and artists and similar creative endeavours can aspire to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality, but most people simply don’t have the luxury to do so. Still that doesn’t mean these things aren’t desirable… I just don’t know anyone who works at a school that can say these are attainable goals.

Days without scripts

One of my favourite quotes about school leadership comes from Gary, a VP that I had early in my career. He shared this with me after a typically crazy day at our middle school, “Being a Vice Principal is only a 3 to 4 hour a day job… the problem is that you get almost none of it done between 8:30am and 4pm.”

Yesterday afternoon was like that. The over-the-top moment came when someone driving out of the side street, across from our school parking lot, missed her turn, drove into our parking lot, and collided with 2 parked cars. Then she tried to leave the scene yelling that we had a picture of her license plate and no, we didn’t need to see her driver’s license or insurance. After she couldn’t get her car off the curb, she left on foot.

Fortunately that’s when the police arrived and she was apprehended. Speculating, based on how fast she was going, how far off of her intended direction she ended up, trying to leave the scene, and her irate behavior, I think she was was probably inebriated.

Just another normal day at school. No, I’m not saying bizarre parking lot accidents happen all the time, but rather the totally unexpected does. One minute you are working on a task and your day feels quite typical, and the next your entire day is turned upside down by an unexpected issue or event.

It’s the small part of your contract that this falls under: “Other duties as assigned.” Except these emergent issues aren’t really assigned as much as thrust upon you. It’s the leaky pipe sending water gushing down a wall. It’s the messy clean up during the hours in the day when you don’t have a custodian in the building. It’s the student missing from a class. It’s just about anything except the thing you thought you were going to do. Plans go out the window, you go off your planned script, and the issue in front of you builds a new agenda.

…and the days ends with you either staying later than you had hoped, taking work home with you, and/or moving things from today’s ‘To Do’ list to tomorrow’s.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” ~Robert Burns

Get stuff done mode

I must admit that I was lucky. Having been away and needing to do some catch up yesterday, I was working in my office with my door closed. And as it turned out, it was an unusually uninterrupted kind of day. Normally interruptions are what my day is mostly about. But yesterday was quiet and I was in a a real ‘get stuff done’ mode.

It’s not like things didn’t come up that needed my attention, and I had over 3 hours of online meetings that I actually had to pay attention in. But every moment before, after, and between these meetings was dealing with one task at a time.

If I was interrupted, I dealt with the interruption immediately, then went right back into what I was doing beforehand. No squirrel-brain bouncing around and forgetting what I was doing. No email rabbit hole of distractions. It was go-go-go.

Coming off of being sick and taking more days off in a week than I took in the last 2 years, I needed a day like yesterday. I wish every day could be like that… but as I said, I was lucky. Things don’t always run that smooth, and I’m not a hide in my closed office kind of principal. Sometimes the job is mostly about interruptions that can not be easily solved. But I’ll worry about that another day. For now I’m just going to celebrate having a great ‘get stuff done’ kind of day yesterday.

Taking the needed time

I took a sick day on Monday for my first cough in years, and it got worse later in the day. Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I retested myself and tested positive for covid. I avoided it for 2.5 years but here I am now in quarantine in our spare bedroom, only leaving to go to the bathroom. My cough is still bad, but this afternoon my sinuses feel clearer and the low grade but constant headache that developed Monday night has subsided with the aid of Advil. I know it’s not over but if that’s the worst of it, a typical sinus infection of yesteryear was more unpleasant (though didn’t sound as bad with this cough). Still, I have a good feeling that I’ll be in full form next week.

What was interesting these past few days was that the headache kept me from my computer and screens more than usual. I took naps and I listened to podcasts and a book to pass a bit of the boredom by, but it was very unusual for me to listen to my body and not just work from home all day. I did do a couple pressing things and answered some texts, but overall I really took sick days and didn’t just work from home while sick.

This was extremely unusual for me. It didn’t come without stress… I haven’t had this many unread emails in well over a year. I have things on my ‘to do’ list that kept creeping into my thoughts even when I tried to let them go. And, I felt guilty that I wasn’t working. That’s the crazy part, I’m home sick, and much of the day I’m thinking about work or feeling guilty for not doing work. I don’t think that’s what’s intended to be done on a sick day?

I’m glad I took the time I needed and I’m willing to bet that I wouldn’t feel as ‘good’ (well at least as ‘fair’) as I do now, had I not taken this time mostly off. And yet I already know that even though I am not going in to work tomorrow, I’m going to be spending at least a few hours catching up. I should probably take the full day off, but I won’t.

I’ll take this as a win for taking the time I needed the past three days. But after 55 years on this planet I still need to figure out that work/life balance thing a little better, so that I can take a guilt-free sick day… to be sick. I’ll probably retire before I really know how to do it right.

Amazing Support

Isn’t it strange how we take the people around us for granted sometimes? It’s not intentional or hurtful. It’s not that we are taking advantage of them. We simply don’t recognize how the people around us support us, lift us up, nurture us, look out for us, and most importantly care for us. They are just there, doing what they do as a part of our work or family, and they make us better, make our jobs easier, and show kindness when we need it.

Remember to show your appreciation once in a while. Not because they went out of their way to support you… rather, just for consistently being there.

‘A’ Game

I had a conversation with a colleague in another district yesterday. I was thanking him for suggesting a great book I’m listening to. We talked about the unique nature of our jobs and he said something that hit a chord with me. He said that while he likes his job as an online school principal, and how unique the challenges are, he’s tired of feeling like there are too many things that come at him at once to give his ‘A’ game all the time. He mentioned that it feels like the best he can do is a ‘C’ or a ‘C+’.

He said, “But that’s not how I like to operate. When I was a teacher I had a lot of control about what my day looked like. Sure, I couldn’t bring my ‘A’ game to every single thing I did, but most of my day was determined by me, and I could regularly bring my ‘A’ game. I can’t do that in this job even though I want to.”

I totally get it. It’s like this job is a juggling act and every time you think you can put on a good show, someone adds one more ball to the balls you are juggling. You looked and felt confident juggling 4 balls, and suddenly you are fumbling with a 5th. Just as you feel good about the 5th ball, a 6th is thrown in. You spend more time picking up the balls than you do juggling. A juggler isn’t showing you their ‘A’ game when they are picking balls up off the floor.

My colleague and I both agreed that we like our jobs, and we want to stay where we are, but lamented about our ability to have control over our days… to decide at the start of the day how many balls we were going to juggle that day. I think that’s something every principal feels and understands. We like our jobs, we just wish we could bring our ‘A’ game to it a little more often.

The struggle is real

This is the time of year that I really struggle to find balance. School startup is over but the pace of the new year hasn’t slowed. Emails are pouring in faster than I can manage them. My desk is a mess… and it seems that most of my days are filled with priority ‘must do’ items and almost no ‘want to do items’.

I’m managing more than leading, and I come home exhausted. It’s hard to keep the motivation going when it feels like momentum is swaying against you. Worse still, I’m writing this past my bedtime because I can’t fall asleep and so figure that I should get this out of the way and sleep in a bit later… if I’m up I may as well be productive.

I’ll keep my healthy living routine going, and try to get to bed earlier tomorrow. I’ll block a bit of time to get a little scope and sequence to the rest of my week. And, I’ll take care of a few big priorities that I know will ease the pressure I’m feeling. The challenge is that schools can throw a wench into the best laid plans and completely disrupt the machinery of the day.

Sometimes you just have to struggle through, knowing that things will eventually ease up. Until then it’s go, go, go. And on that note, I need to go to sleep!

Email Fail

I think email is broken.

1. Spam – it’s not just annoying, it’s dangerous and people are scammed all the time. Sometimes you just need to click a link and you are in trouble. I’ve seen stats ranging from 45-84% of all email being spam. While spam filters might block a lot of this, too much still gets through.

2. Unsubscribe – how many things have you not subscribed to that you have to unsubscribe from? And sometimes the unsubscribe process is the way that spammers know they have a working email and so they target you more. I’ve resorted to ‘block sender’ to unsubscribe from subscriptions that I didn’t sign up for.

3. Unsolicited invitations – worse still is the follow-up, “I don’t know if you saw my first email.” I take the time to block sender when I get these. I don’t owe you a reply when I don’t know you and you cold call me through email. I didn’t miss your email, I wasn’t interested the first time, and I’m just annoyed the second.

4. “Thank you.” – You want to thank me, please do so by not sending me an email thank you. Thank you’s are very polite in conversation, they are just another email adding to my inbox when sent digitally. I know this sounds cranky, but unless you are sending me a hilarious gif that says in some way, ‘Hey, I was so thankful I found this to make you smile’, then save yourself the effort and just don’t reply with a ‘Thanks’.

5. Reply All – Hitting Reply All should require effort, such as a double check to make you think about it:

It is way too easy to Reply All, and this is used far too often. Whenever possible, I blind cc emails when they go to a lot of people and might solicit a Reply All. Sometimes I wish Reply All wasn’t even an option. For the amount of times I’ve used it, I would still be saving time if I had to type everyone’s email in to reply to all, but then also avoided receiving so many in my inbox because it was equally hard for everyone else to send them.

6. Email doesn’t stop – I have a vampire rule for email that I follow: Unless someone that works for me asks a question or needs my help (invites me in), then I’m not allowed to enter their inbox on weekends or after 6pm on a work day. It is annoying how many steps/clicks it takes to delay an email delivery until the next morning, but I’ll do it to avoid sending someone an email when they won’t be dealing with it until the next work day anyway. I rather inconvenience myself than add work to people at or after dinner or on their weekends. Even if I’m sharing a useful resource, it can wait until the next morning. I wish more people did this. If someone wants to think about work on their time off, it should be because they want to, not because a work email came in to interrupt them at home.

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In a blog post titled Finding Balance, that I wrote over 8 years ago, I created and shared the image above and I said,

“Email is not a productivity tool. It is a poorly used form of communication that engulfs productivity time and requires a disproportionate amount of our lives.”

In the past 8 years I haven’t seen any innovation in email and it still hinders more than helps productivity. Currently I use Microsoft Teams with my work teams and tell them that I will check messages there before email. At least this tool lets me contextualize the messages and so prioritizing my teams is easier than looking at the most recent email that has come in. But email still sucks too much of my time for the value that it does (and mostly does not) return.

Essentially, email has failed, and I would love to see it go away in the same way the fax machine did.

Quite Quitting

I stumbled across the idea of #QuietQuitting which led me to this TikTok video.

The premise is that you don’t actually quit your job, you still perform your duties, but you quit the idea of going ‘above and beyond’. You view work as something you need to do, not something that defines you or determines your self worth.

There is a part of me that struggles with this idea. I can’t see doing the job I have and not wanting to do more, to give more, and to give myself over to my job. Then there is a part of me that totally gets it. I have a job where no matter how many hours I put in beyond the work day, my salary doesn’t change. I’ve fallen into cycles where I’ve dedicated so many hours to my job that I’ve had nothing left for myself or my family. I’ve left work late, and then stayed on my phone working, then gone to bed thinking about the things I still needed to do.

I have recently found a good balance. I get up very early, write, meditate, and exercise so that I feel I’ve accomplished something for myself before I even start my work day. I will stay at work an extra 30 minutes or even an hour longer than planned, but then I don’t do work when I get home. These things provide me with some balance and help me enjoy work more, and still feel like my whole life isn’t work from late August until early July.

But going back to the idea of #QuitQuitting, I see the appeal for people. I don’t think I could do it, but I understand the desire to separate work life from life, and to compartmentalize the two experiences. There are companies now that are seeing the value as well. They are doing things like telling employees what their expectations are and not requiring 8 hour days, (‘This is what you have to do by the end of the week and we don’t care how long you spend doing it or what hours of the day you choose to do them in’). Or, giving employees 4-day work weeks, or ‘Friday optional’ days if work is completed. When you think about it, for many jobs a 40 hour week is completely arbitrary, and a 60 hour week isn’t sustainable for healthy living.

Now in education, where you are responsible for the care of students, a shift to a 4-day week would take a major shift in a culture to adopt, and unlikely to be seen any time soon, but in many other jobs, this is a very likely possibility on a large scale. That said, I think our school, Inquiry Hub could do this. For example, we could make Wednesdays completely optional days, and I could have half my staff there on those days to support students doing their projects. Or we could have Grade 9’s and 10’s off on Mondays and Grade 11’s and 12’s off on Fridays, and focus our learning and support on half of the school on each of those days.

My point is that there are options… and these options can provide a balance for people that give them more time to live their lives outside of school/work, and thus reduce the desire to ‘quit quit’. Because this isn’t just something people are doing at work, I see kids doing this at school too, showing up just to do the minimum.

Maybe the 5 day work week is the problem. Maybe it’s time for us to reevaluate the way we distribute our time between work and the rest of our lives and then maybe people won’t see the need to be #QuietQuitting. Maybe quiet quitting is a signpost that we need to create more work/life balance rather than people trying to unsuccessfully do it on their own.