Your busyness does not impress me.

I’m not sure about you, but this term is a very, very busy term for me. Upon reflection, I wonder if it is currently a term that I am spending well. Was it crazily busy, or just unproductive?

Tiredness and stress are not badges of pride they rob you of job satisfaction and they prevent your students of getting the best from their teacher.

Teachers are busy. We rush, photocopy, staple, make tea, eat lunch in a frenzy, photocopy, talk, hypothesise, talk, photocopy and make (more) tea. We rise early, work late, work through lunch, work through recess and take on numerous extracurricular activities. We seem very busy but could it be that we feel busy because we are unproductive with our time?

Could it be that we are tired because we don’t take breaks, switch off or because we don’t each our lunch?

I am a work in progress, but I truly believe that you can have meaningful connections with your family, have a healthy body, and a robust mind, engage in a fulfilling and meaningful career and get a good night's sleep. I'm not sure how to have all of these things, but I am on a journey to try and figure it out.

I am not saying that are we being wasteful with our time. I am suggesting that now and again we need to stop, think about and plan our commitments. Every year or so I reread two books, Insanely Simple by Ken Segall and Getting Things Done by David Allen (I interviewed him here). These two books help me to gain perspective and help me to make sure that I manage my time and energy effectively so that I can teach my students to the best of my ability. I am also quite obsessed with trying new productivity tools, tricks and apps.

Just because we are busy, doesn’t mean that we are being productive. Being tired, looking dead and staying back at work isn’t a badge of honour it is a poor example for our students and our family.

So how can we structure our term in a way that reduces busyness and increases productivity?

Move slowly and consciously. So often we rush from one thing to the next. This has been one of the biggest things I have had to work through. If we are rushing, multitasking and juggling too much we end up doing lots of things badly.

Pause before you say yes. We all get caught in saying yes to too many things. Before we know it we are sitting in on that meeting or we are running the Oz-Tag competition. Next time someone asks you to do that thing, notice your desire to commit and then politely say, ‘Can I get back to you?’

Have a few clear goals for the day. I try and have only two or three significant goals for the day. They may be to return that email, to send that letter out to parents or it may be to finish my students’ assessments. Everything else gets put in the non-urgent section of my diary.

Revisit your goals throughout the day. Despite all your intentions, the school day never quite goes to plan. That teacher is away and you have to cover a duty (that was your maths planning time!) or your class is having an off day and your wonderful lesson in tessellations doesn’t quite get off the ground. It is precisely for these reasons that you need to revisit and adjust your goals throughout the day.

Remember, just because we are busy doesn’t mean we are being productive. Busyness is quite often a nice disguise for our inability to prioritise tasks or organise ourselves.