The year is 2008 and there so much to accomplish. I am approaching my 35th birthday this year and for those of you reaching this milestone in your life, if you are like me, it hasn’t really hit you. I am sure that you have thought about it and how things might change now that you are closer to 40 than 30 but it hasn’t really “hit” you yet.
Being in this mindset lately, I am drawn to inspirational posts and articles about ways to enhance creativity and efficiency in my life. I came across this post at “gapingvoid,” a blog I read once in a while, and felt the need to pass a couple of points along. The gist of the post was applying “creativity” to your professional life. Ways in which we can take what we already deal with on a day to day basis and tweak it a bit.
There are a few more but these two resonated with me:
1. Add 25% to amount of hours you work every week, and fill them with fun stuff. Google allows its employees 20% of their work time to devote to their own personal projects. If your employer won’t allow you to do this, you should unilaterally make the time for yourself, hence the extra 25%. Your peers in the office may think you weird at first, but after a while it’ll start paying off.
In the educational environment, balance is sometimes overlooked because our time management is somewhat limited by the bell schedule and most importantly, student needs. Our home time becomes grading or planning time so we sometimes forget about the “25%” put aside for fun stuff. This is something that I am not good at, but I would like to become better at taking care of myself.
7. Always remember: You’re playing the long game. General Kutuzov told the Russian Royal Court that all he needed to defeat Napoleon was “patience and time”. His approach horrified a lot of people close to the Czar, who were hoping for something a bit more swift and glorious. But it was “patience and time” that allowed the good ol’ Russian winter to come along, and freeze all those poor Frenchman to death. The rest is history.
This idea is great but time is thing that most of us are short on. It is an environment of urgency that we find ourselves in the midst of and more often than not, a little “patience and time” is all that is needed to make things work. The luxury of having this control over the things we do may be a pipe dream to some, but by thinking in the long term, you may fiond yourself having to to “redo” less which translates into more time available for other things that are important.
These are only two ideas and there are a few more on the original post. So think about these and add your own ideas.
Here is to a healthy, happy and productive 2008!
Perhaps you have come across this before. I heard it during a new teacher training years ago, then came across it here at “A List Apart”. As teachers, the biggest rock to put in the jar is class time spent with students. Everything else falls to small pieces of time in between. But there are other times too. When I match my creative desires to what I teach or some other need of the school and make the time, the pay off is big and even though I “made” the time, I don’t feel that I needed anymore time than usual. Somehow it all gets done.
This is a great time of year for this post.
[...] to learn. Well actually I have been forgetting to process what I learn. A while back I posted about balance in one’s life and I have not been taking my own [...]