The Way We Spend Our Days
Productivity. Organization. Order. Completion. I love ‘em all. There’s nothing more fulfilling than checking things off a “to do” list, finishing up the final details on a project I’ve been working on, returning my email promptly, sending that calendar request and tidying up my desk before working–all the external markers of completion. Often I will begin my day early with a plan for quiet time: time to write, read and maybe even meditate.
Then, a text from my sister or daughter arrives from the other coast. Better reply! Or my eye is drawn to the latest NYT puzzle to solve. Gotta get to the Wordle before another family member does! Then I might sneak a peek at my email. It would be SO fulfilling to return that email quickly and efficiently right now. All good things and ones that I enjoy but NOT the plan to deepen my attention and focus and center myself in important ways before a busy day.
The writer, Annie Dillard, said: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” This often serves as a reminder to me to be intentional about time and how I structure work, family and personal time. How do I move from busy to a more intentional way of being? How do I create and carve out time for deeper personal connection? What’s the “right” amount of time to focus on work projects? What about the deep reading I say I want to do? Oh, and then there’s the writer I want to be; the gardener I might someday become and 2.3 and 3.0 versions of my career I might want to develop.
There are many prescriptive books out there on managing time, productivity and attention. I recently listened to an Ezra Klein interview with Dr. Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at U.C. Irvine and author of Attention Span which examines the impact of technology on our productivity, happiness and mental health. Marks uses original research in “living laboratories” (our offices and homes) and shares how short our attention spans are and how we can “we can gain control of our attention and achieve wellbeing.” She notes: “Now people have an additional workload on top of their other workload, which is answering email, Slack messages, texting. In fact, we find people check email, on average, 77 times a day.” How can we learn from the research and ask better questions to shape our actions?
As school leaders, we also have the opportunity to guide our schools and students on the construction of how we and they spend time.
What does this mean for the way we design the daily experiences for our students and ourselves? Take a few minutes and ponder how you might use these questions to impact the culture of your school and life.
How might we design our school schedule to build in time for reflection and the inner work of being human? Schools like The Bay School in San Francisco and many traditional Friends schools start the day with a morning meeting several times a week that is about more than announcements and business. There is time for quiet contemplation or for speakers who share on topics that are of inspiration and importance. I worked in and led a college preparatory school where much of the focus (not all!) was on what students need to DO to complete assignments, move on to the next grade level and eventually graduate and attend college. We had to actively adjust the conversation and focus to be on the daily school experience, not primarily the outcomes.
How might we offer opportunities for faculty, staff and parents to see into and reflect on the life of students in our schools? The program, Challenge Success, which grew from Denise Pope’s work at Stanford University, suggests programs such as student shadows and empathy exercises allows staff to see and feel what it’s really like to be a student going from one class to the next. As part of this empathy work, students also wrote down anonymous statements to be read by teachers and administrators which said, “I wish my teacher knew…” When these statements are read by faculty and staff, it extends empathy beyond conversations about grades to conversations about experience. At L+D, we incorporate student shadows and empathy work in many projects with our clients in order to understand the user experience more deeply before designing solutions.
How might we carve out time for our students (and ourselve) to “design their lives” and imagine not only what they want to do but how they want to shape their lives as they go from college to career? Designing Your Life, written by Stanford Design School professors suggests developing Odyssey Plans for our ideal futures. They suggest creating a “Many Lives” model with multiple versions of a future life–some more predictable and some more visionary. Why dream small?
How might we better model–as adults in our communities–what it means to live an intentional life? Do we go from busy to busier? There were times when my now adult kids were in school and they asked me in the evening, “Mom, are you too busy to help me with my homework?” Not a proud moment for me but one that changed how I jumped from dinner and dishes directly to my email in-box. How often do you look at your phone or email during a conversation with a colleague, student or family member? How might you build in rituals and time–even in micro increments– for doing what you really want to be doing?
How might we use futurist thinking in our schools to plan for what’s ahead instead of reacting to a crisis? At L+D, we ask clients to imagine a future that is far, far away. As educators, we are not always savvy about really imagining a future that is different from our school today. Read Imaginable by Jane McGonigal for inspiration. She shares ideas about how to practice time travel, imagining the unimaginable and futurecasting. One of the most helpful tools I’ve found is “signal hunting.” What are the fringe signals that show up now that might impact our schools and students? Ten years ago, we were not imagining the impact of a pandemic, AI or extreme weather on our schools and communities. What signals have you noticed today that might impact your school tomorrow? Ask your board and administrative team to do the same.
As Dillard suggests: What is the story of your life that you hope to live by now and be remembered by in the future? How can you actively design your experience now and for the future? My intention for 2024 is to create the conditions for a better morning routine and see how I do. It’s not about getting it “just right” as each day brings its own set of unique challenges and wrinkles. In my work with schools and school leaders, I also commit to asking questions about the school’s story and how we might shape culture and experiences through observation, reflection and active choices.
Finally, the poet Mary Oliver has some simple instructions for life: “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”
