Can Principals Get Anything Done During The School Day?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how principals can make progress during busy school days by using small pockets of time intentionally.
Key Takeaways
- Constant interruptions are normal - If you're needed all day long as a principal or assistant principal, that's a common reality of the job, not a personal failure.
- Use small pockets of time - You may not get hours of uninterrupted time, but five or ten quiet minutes can still be enough to make meaningful progress.
- Focus on the next action - Break large projects into the smallest concrete step so you can move work forward even during brief openings in your day.
- Check your to-do list, not email - When time opens up, going to email first usually wastes the opportunity instead of helping you finish anything.
- Build systems over time - Principals need routines and task-management systems that make it easier to capture work and act on it quickly.
Full Transcript
Is it possible for principals to get any work done during the school day?
I'm Justin Baeder, director of the Principal Center, and having been a principal in Seattle Public Schools, I can tell you I know the feeling of being on your feet and being in firefighting mode all day long.
And it can certainly feel like you can never take a moment to sit down at your desk and get some work done. And if that's your reality, if that is your daily reality, day in and day out, that you're just always on the go, always on the move, people are always calling you, people always need you, know that that is normal. Know that that is common in this job. If you are a principal, if you are an assistant principal, some sort of administrator working in a school, being needed constantly all day long and never having a moment to yourself to get some work done is normal. So, don't feel bad about it. Don't feel guilty if you can't make a lot of time to sit down at your desk and work.
Don't feel guilty if you can't close the door and say, don't bother me. If you are meeting the needs of the people around you, that is a good thing. Now, having said all of that, I think we also need to work over time to build systems that allow ourselves to get work done during the school day, right? It might not be two hours, it might not even be 15 minutes, but it might be five minutes here, 10 minutes there. And if we have those quiet moments that come up because everybody's in class, nobody's getting sent out, nobody's knocking on your door, we can take advantage of those times to get some work done. Now, you may have a project that's gonna take a couple hours, and you may look at your day and say, I'm not gonna have a couple hours.
And you're right. You are not going to have a couple of uninterrupted hours during the school day. So it's critical that you find a way to identify what David Allen calls the next action. Don't think, okay, I need to get this whole thing done. Think, what can I do now to get the ball rolling or to move the ball down the field. How can I take the next action that will give me some progress, that will give me some traction?
That's actually why we call our to-do app Traction, so that you can keep track of your tasks, break them down into manageable chunks, and then get some traction on them, even if you only have five minutes or ten minutes at a time to work on them. The other critical thing that I'll say about getting work done during the school day, you know, if time makes itself available, if nobody is bothering you for a minute, what you don't want to do with that time is sit down and check your email. Don't look at your email and say, okay, what do I need to do? Because you're only going to use that time checking your email and really just looking at it. You're not going to actually get anything done. So if you find yourself with some time, here's a tip.
Don't look at your email at all. Look at your to-do list. Look at the list of things that you've planned in advance to work on and pick something from that list and do it. Don't check your email. Don't see who needs you because I'm sure somebody's going to need you. If you want to get something done during the school day, look at your to-do list, identify the next action, and get to work.
And by the time you get interrupted, you may find that it's done.
