There are a ton of websites that are dedicated to the hack, the short cut, the magical cure to "not having enough time. SPOILER ALERT, there is no such thing. Unless you are into some deep physics or you believe in a different universe than time is the same for all of us. So how do leaders, or anyone for that matter "make time" for anything new? Well we have talked about routine before and we have touched on habits as well but one thing that we have not looked at is what are those leaders doing with their time. If you google habits of leaders you will get a ton of sources that talk about pretty much all of the same things:
While you will eventually learn that multi tasking is not possible there is a way for you to combine two activities, one that is on auto pilot... like walking, taking the bus, sitting in the back seat of your chauffeured car (thanks mom and dad) and one that is beneficial like either reading the good old fashioned way or what I do to "make time" for reading. Right now while you are reading this, take out your phone, open your app store and download Blinkist and Headway. These two apps summarize a book a day for free. Usually under 15 minutes, you will get a totally random choosing from these companies. If you like the apps you can upgrade obviously, but 15 minutes of free learning giving you someone else's thoughts to add to your own is an easy way to adopting a habit that all great leaders have. "Never stop learning." How's that for "making time" Richard Hortness
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It's Wednesday morning, and I am waking up to an alarm that I would rather not be going off at all, it's like this. Even though I can Zoom, get a workout in, see the people that I see every week, my friends, the people that will never judge me, the people that will always lean in for a hug, it's not the same, it's like this. The sun that was here yesterday, making my room as warm as a blanket, has been replaced by a steady drizzle of water that drips slowly off of the side of my house. It builds into drops and then hangs ready to fall off the edge of my roof as slowly as some of the days have passed in the last month, it's like this.
I can't stand in front of my students talking about things that I love to share, I have to sit at my computer waiting for a notification that someone has done some tiny task that I can click a box to show that I know that they did it instead, it's like this. But I know that it's like this, I know that I can do what I can to become a better teacher while the day drags on. I can find things to make myself happy, to move forward with projects, to look forward to seeing my friends for boardgames on zoom. I know that I can learn new things and call people that I never had time to call before now I have all the time in the world because, well, it's like this. What we do have at our fingertips is a calm, slow-paced, small project-based world, where I have a job to do, tasks to complete, lawns to mow, toys to fix, and dinners to make. I have 170 students to care about, to worry about, to think about, to check in on because they are mine. It's like this being a teacher. It's like this now but it won't be this forever, it will go back to what it was and we will forget because that is what we do. So, for now, it might be hard but I know it will get better, and we can do this for a while, because for a while and only a while, it's like this. Richard Hortness Greatful, grateful, gr8full, No word of a lie when i started writing my gratitude journal I had to look up how to spell Grateful- 1. feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness; thankful Great-full made more sense to me, full of great right? But I guess that gave me some ammunition for my first entry right? Because what the hell do I have to actually be greatful- there I go again (that is an actual typo) GRATEFUL for. Slowly but surely following Julie Boyer’s steps I ended up finding things every day, big things or small things.Things started popping up around me that I had never taken the time to notice that they were there or that I used them every day. A great pair of sunglasses became a 5 line rant in my journal, a note from my wife written on the window, my kid picking up something that I dropped… But then I started listening to some podcasts and was slammed every day with other peoples stories. Living in the ghetto in Connecticut, growing up 6 people in a 2 bedroom house, nope not my life. Sister with Downs Syndrome that had to be legally separated from her father because he could not take proper care of her and she should not have been living in an institution. Privileged Hollywood upbringing that was exposed to drugs once they got to university culminating in a two hour story on how deep and dark that rabbit hole is. I’m going to go ahead and say 100% I have EVERYTHING to be grateful for no matter how I spell it. Look around the room that you are in and take 5 minutes a day to realize how lucky we are for even the smallest thing. I mean… I’m writing this on a computer I own, in the back of my classroom, teaching a course and a group of kids that I love. Today I’m grateful for that... ha finally, nailed it, grateful. Richard Hortness 20 gratitude quotes from famous people Reframing or taking a different look at a situation gives a lot of perspective. It lets you stop and analyze what is happening in your world, and decide what is going on not necessarily in your world but in the person with whom you have the problem. What brings this up? Late assignments. When I was in school it was never, NEVER, never an option to turn things in late. If you were going to turn it in late you better come in to talk to the teacher beforehand. Like well beforehand. Not in the 3 minutes before the class that it is due but in the days leading up to the due date. Two weeks ago I posted a list of 17 grade 10's that were missing one or more out of 4 assignments that were over the last 4 months, all of which I gave class time to work on and even in one case a week long extension to improve the copy that they turned in on the due date if they were not happy with the final outcome. I try to take the same approach as Howard Aldrich. He does not have a hard and fast rule when it comes to late assignments . If someone comes in and says they are going to turn in something late I generally start with "Ok", and then for seemingly no reason they proceed to give me some long drawn out story as to why it is late.... I just said "OK". I honestly do not care if you turn it in late or not. UNLESS .... You see when you turn something in late it does three things Piss me off, piss me off, and piss me off. Just kidding I just said I don't care. 1) It makes it harder for me to give a fair grade to you and to others if there is any subjectivity to the rubric, because lets face it I am kind of annoyed to be grading this thing after I have graded everyone else's. 2) It puts you at a disadvantage to your peers. You see that assignment you just submitted was tied to you actually learning something. Something that I took time to prepare for you. Or something that we have agreed is actually important for you to become a better person in the big wide universe. 3) It tells me that you don't care about your leaning, about yourself, and that you don't respect me and others in the class (keep in mind this is my personal view and may not be 100% accurate). You see, especially with something like these blogs we need them in on time to have something to do. For example our blog review classes are planned around the leadership students turning in one blog per term on a due date so that they can help elevate those in our class. So back to this whole reframing thing. I understand that we all have busy lives. Students these days have jobs, when I was in school you didn't have a real job. Students are hyper scheduled. Even my two year old has soccer on Tuesdays, and swimming (soon to be gymnastics) on Saturdays. What happened to the good old days of playing in the street? (Thats another blog). Then there is family(guy), Netflix, video games, and whatever else comes up. But what is a teacher to do? I love to remind people that in the business world if you miss a deadline you lose you job or a client. But as a teacher I am supposed to grade you based on the work you do not on wether or not you turn it in on time. So what should I do, give you a zero the day you miss your assignment? Wait 'till report card time and then zero out your chance for that term. Give you an incomplete on your report card and not pass you if you don't turn in a blog? Or just take it and smile? Or should I just reframe my expectations as a teacher? Should I just wait patiently and give out incomplete grades? Dealing with sad students, and angry parents because I was "not doing my job" as a teacher reminding every student, missing every assignment, every time I saw them? The last time I was late to something it is because I spent 20 minutes "posting one thing" to social media. And that turned into an epic marathon of me tweetstorming facetagram. The bad news for me? People were waiting for me when I got there.
There are lots of things that are happening in our lives. All the time. Work, family, friends, that text message, social media, other peoples priorities, that other text message, oh and I have to feed my kids... and has anyone even seen the dog? Finding little things like this article (which you guys are reading as the third article today) Keep me grounded and remind me of things I already knew. Because I can tell you time and the school years may seem long now, but soon.... |
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