Approaching Labor-Day weekend. A three day-weekend, yes, but also the start of the class I’m teaching on weekends as a volunteer, and a retreat that may take up much of the long weekend. Time. Time is so precious. As I do more work and experimentation with time management and prioritization, I’m starting to think prioritization is where the real art of it is. You can only shuffle around what you are doing so much. It’s what you’re doing that requires deep thought, and some degree of willpower and good habits, to master. There are so many things I want to do, but there simply isn’t time for all of it. What I choose to actually do has to do with what I value most, along with what I’m capable of doing at any given energy level/emotional state, along with what I need to do for self-care, as well as what I need to do, for any of the other relationships in my life that I value, as well as considerations for compounding or combing effects, where doing two things together gives outsized benefits that one or the other on their own wouldn’t give.
It’s complex. I’m going to have to finish this on another day since I’m out of time today.
I’ve been listening to a book on tape by Cal Newport called “Digital Minimalism,” mostly because of one concept he mentions, where, when removing most of your digital ways of having fun and connecting, you need to replace them with high-quality analogue alternatives. I’d like a nice beefy list of such alternatives, though at this point I’m not sure I’m going to get it. I don’t really need such a list though, I think I can brainstorm enough to get by. But crowd-sourcing ideas for that might come up with a bunch of gems I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.
Perhaps my experience setting the screen-time limiter on my laptop spurred me on to read more about that kind of thing, as well. I like his approach, because it’s pretty level headed. It’s not saying that technology is bad and you can’t use it, it’s saying that much of what we use technology is for is unhealthy and we should take a much more intentional approach, curating what technologies we use and how we use them, to get the most benefit from them with the least negatives.
It seems very sensible, but the approach he recommends requires some investment in time, thinking about how to implement it, and I’m already full, in terms of behavior change missions, so I’ll just have to keep doing my ad-hoc method, which is still much better than nothing. My technology sticking points are pretty limited at least in quantity, so it’s feasible to deal with them one at a time, starting with those with the most negative effects and easiest fixes.
In any case, I started another book, after trying to find a good way to implement time-blocking (something Cal is a big fan of.) An acquaintance of his that he partnered with on a project wrote a book called “Ultralearning” and in spite of the flashy title, I thought it might have some reasonable info on best practices for self-learning. And my two main goals these days are time/prioritization, and teaching. I was thinking of the ultra-learning practices mainly for teaching. I don’t think there is much learning left to do with the time management/prioritization, I think it’s mostly practice and refinement. But for teaching, it is very necessary. I don’t have a clear pathway, though I do have an excellent mentor and environment for learning, so it makes it urgent that I get a pathway and plan set up, to make use of this singular opportunity.
The problem, again, is time. Everything takes time. Planning and troubleshooting takes time. Figuring out what to prioritize, what to spend time on, takes time. Mapping out best practices for my learning as a teacher takes time.
This is why time management/prioritization is sharing top priority with learning to be a good teacher. It is the leverage point, the choke point, the key to everything else I want to do, due to how limited my time is.
Speaking of which, it’s time to go back to work. Bye for now! :-)
I Out
Whoops, not quite yet, need to think up a title….
…And almost a week later, finally finishing it. Whoops.
No comments:
Post a Comment