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Fighting Superficiality by Embracing It
In effect, the manager is encouraged by the realities of his work to develop a particular personality – to overload himself with work, to do things abruptly, to avoid wasting time, to participate only...
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Rules, Tools, and Whose Job Is That?
If we want to get more done as school leaders, what are the practical points where we can make adjustments? In my research, I recently came across a framework for productivity that emphasizes three...
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When Do I Need a Database? How Can I Make One?
How do you keep track of the many kinds of data that you deal with? You probably have a variety of reports and spreadsheets, but you may also want to consider a database. This morning I was consulting...
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Efficiency in Relationships
You’d never hear someone say “We have a very efficient relationship.” Or if you did, you’d be worried. We tend to think of relationships and efficiency as opposites: we can either choose to care about...
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Why You Should Avoid Your Inbox
Recently, I had a very busy day out of the office and came back to a huge pile of email. I had already filtered out some of the junk from my iPhone, so these were real messages that required some...
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Planning Your Work: Beyond the Hard Landscape of the Day
A principal’s work is nothing if not unpredictable, so why schedule out every moment of every day to work on specific tasks? You’re just going to get interrupted. On the other hand, isn’t it better to...
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Productivity Benchmarking
In a 9-to-5 job, your work is over at the end of the day. There will be more work tomorrow, but today’s is done. But we don’t have 9-to-5 jobs. Our work is ongoing, overwhelming, recurring,...
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My New Favorite Whiteboard
When I became a principal, the first thing I did to my office was take down the giant whiteboard behind my desk. I’m an iPad guy, no doubt about it. No one wants school leaders to take advantage of...
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Keyboard Shortcuts That Will Save You 10 Hours a Year
When it comes to technology, I’ve found that principals fall into two camps: enthusiasts and pragmatists. Enthusiasts can’t wait to try every new tool that comes along and figure out every secret,...
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Using Your Smartphone & Tablet Together
Photographers have a way of ending arguments about which camera is best: “The best camera…is the one you have with you.” It doesn’t matter how good your gear is if you leave it at home. It’s the same...
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Next Action Stickies
Here’s my favorite strategy for dealing with a pile of paper that never seems to go away. If you have stuff that’s been on your desk for far too long, defining the next action – a key strategy...
View ArticleHow Do You Use Your Cameraphone?
If you’re tired of sticky notes that never seem to go away, try replacing them with your cameraphone. Any time you have a paper note that requires some action on your part, take a picture and send it...
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Build Trust With Your Calendar
Calendars are ancient technology. Everyone knows how to write down appointments and them in order to show up on time to meetings. But not everyone has a trusting, functional relationship with their...
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The Power of an Empty Inbox
This past week was a busy one for me, and I fell behind on email. I checked messages as I could, and gave quick replies when I could, but I wasn’t keeping up. The iPad has a “badge” that shows how many...
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Following Up on Emailed Requests
When you email someone to ask them to do something, how can you make sure they do it? Ideally, the person you’re emailing is reliable and will do what you ask without you having to confirm. But in the...
View ArticleWhat’s a Tickler File?!
How do you get paper that you’ll need in the future off of your desk for now, without losing track of it? How can you have a clean desk and still make sure you have the documents you need in front of...
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ASAP Isn’t Always Best
Doing something “as soon as possible” (ASAP) is not always the best time. Different types of work that come across your desk are really best done at certain times of day. If you have a disciplinary...
View ArticleTips for Reading Long Articles
As a doctoral student, I often have to read long academic articles in a single sitting. This type of reading stands in sharp contrast to the type of reading I do online, which consists mostly of short...
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Snooze Your Email with NudgeMail
Your alarm clock has a snooze button, so why shouldn’t your email? One of the difficulties with getting your inbox empty is that it inevitably has email in it that you aren’t ready to deal with yet –...
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Inboxes: Where Workflow Begins
When something lands on your desk, where does it go? How can you make it get there faster? When I developed my first-ever presentation on productivity for school administrators, I gave it the subtitle...
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Why Workflow Matters
The work of the principalship seems to come in an endless variety that keeps things interesting – so interesting, in fact, that it’s easy to ignore the patterns and treat every task or issue as if it...
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The Fence
How high is your fence, and what gets over it? How important does something have to be to interrupt what you’re working on? I’ve realized that if I don’t decide in advance what I will spend my time on,...
View ArticleClassroom Days & Office Days
Yesterday was an office day. I stayed in my office writing observation reports and doing other office work almost all day. My door was open, and some people came to see me, but I didn’t venture out to...
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Top Tools for Getting Your Desk Clear
I was talking with another principal on Twitter about having a clean office, and I must say it’s understandable if it sounds like an unattainable goal. My office is not always clean; here’s a photo of...
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Stop Scheduling Via Email – Try Doodle
When you’re trying to get a group of busy people together, it’s often very complicated to determine the best day and time for the meeting. If you’ve ever endured an 18-message email chain among a dozen...
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Managing the Workload of Leadership in Principal News
My article Peak Productivity: Managing the Workload of Leadership appears in the current edition of the Association of Washington School Principals’ Principal News magazine. Another online-only bonus...
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To Do (But Not Today)
How do you track the work that you won’t get done today, but still need to get done? As I talk to school leaders around the country, one of the most vexing challenges I see time and again is the need...
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High-Performance Workflow: Dependencies & Roadblocks
When we fall behind and become overwhelmed by our work, or just aren’t as effective as we could be, sometimes the answer lies beyond the obvious mess, such as a pile of paper on the desk or an...
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The Power of Policy
School leaders know well the power of policy to increase clarity, reduce conflict, and simplify decision-making. We have policies for tardies and absences, discipline, appropriate dress, and more, and...
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Smart Habits for Email on Smartphones
I used to check my email only at certain times of day, in the belief that I’d get more done if I limited email to a few narrow timeslots each day. For years, productivity experts have recommended that...
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Tickler File Labels
I’ve written before about how a tickler file system can help you become more organized with hardcopy mail and documents that you’d like to see in the future, but don’t need on your desk right now. To...
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Smarter Multi-Tasking
Multi-tasking has gotten a bad rap in recent years, mainly from studies showing how difficult it is to effectively work on several things at once. But multi-tasking doesn’t have to mean talking to one...
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Program the Robot
It’s the time of year when we’re inundated with articles about new year’s resolutions. While I’m not a huge fan of over-promising ourselves how we’ll make immediate changes when the calendar rolls...
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Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands
Instructional leadership is always hard work, but it’s even harder when our plates are overflowing with other responsibilities. The truth, for a lot of us a lot of the time, is that we can barely even...
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How to Be Productive Even When You’re Interrupted Constantly
The boss turns to the secretary and says “Clear my schedule.” With just those three words, the boss turns and retreats to the seclusion of a closed-door office. I always chuckle when I see this scene...
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Breaking A Bad Email Habit
Have you ever suddenly realized that a habit you’ve been practicing for years—YEARS—is unhelpful or even completely backwards? Sometimes we just do the only thing we know, until we wake up one day and...
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The Productivity Killers (and How to Stop Them)
Piles are deadly to your productivity. Why? because when stuff piles up, it enters a kind of Twilight Zone. Not a spooky kind of Twilight Zone, but a form of limbo where no work gets done. Piles reek...
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Fresh Produce or WIGATI Wack?
In the “olden days” a to-do list was something you wrote in your planner on a daily page. When the day was over, your tasks had better be done, or else you’d be recopying them to the next day. The...
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Tim the Toolman Taylor Would Love Evernote (but still wouldn’t be a great...
We’re producing the Going Digital module on Evernote this week, and the introduction video is now ready: I think you’ll enjoy this look at high-leverage ways to use Evernote in our line of work, from...
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Does Some of Your Email Belong in Evernote? 4 Ways to Get It There
You have lots of information that you need to keep for documentation purposes. You know, just in case. The kind of information that you hope never comes up again, like that parent who was mad one day...
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Why Zero Emails is a Good Goal for Your Inbox
Email is a communication medium. As my friend Dr. Frank Buck says in his presentations, you’d never take something out of your physical mailbox, look at it, then put it back in. So why do we do this...
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Drawing the Line on Stress
Yesterday, I wrote that we shouldn’t see stress as a status symbol, and that stress can come from a mismatch between the situation we face and our level of skill. But stress can also come from having...
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The Stress Equation
Stress isn’t a status symbol, and we have to draw the line somewhere—so that what we commit to doing, we can do successfully. As a school leader, the number of things you could be doing to improve your...
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Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail (And How To Fix Them)
The general consensus seems to be that New Year’s resolutions are terrible. We don’t follow through on them, despite making the same resolutions year after year. Usually goals—maybe even SMART...
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How to Keep an Unsatisfactory Teacher Evaluation from Failing
Most teacher evaluations—I’ll conservatively say 98%—are “satisfactory” or better. (Here are some numbers from 2013). That doesn’t mean that nearly all teachers are doing a great job; it just means...
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Saving Emails in Evernote vs. Your Email App
A Network member emailed me to ask: Why do you recommend filing emails in Evernote? I am wondering because I have tended to file in inbox folders. This is a great question, because while I believe that...
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How to Type On Your Phone, or Why I Can’t Recommend SwiftKey for iOS
Mobile devices are erasing the limits on where we can do our work. Work we once might have done on the desktop can now be done from an iPhone or Android tablet. We have more ways of interacting with...
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So Happy Together: Task Apps and Email
Email can easily get out of control for school leaders and anyone else who has a lot to deal with. Among the challenges email presents: Anyone can email you It’s easy for other people to create work...
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The Brilliance Two-Step: Turning Ideas Into Action
Why do some people seem like they’re rocking it, making big things happen in their schools, while other principals can barely manage the day-to-day? The basic answer is, of course, productivity....
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3 Ways to Use Your Mental Energy Like Steve Jobs
Mark gets an early start on the day, arriving at 6am to check email, get organized for the day, and get a jump on his work. After 45 minutes in his inbox, he’s mostly caught up on email, and after a...
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