In rereading the last about teacher burnout, I was struck by a handful of things that my reader mentioned in the email. I thought it was powerful enough that it was worth digging into deeper, and yet I didn’t want to dilute the conversation that might come as a result of the emotional impact of the reader’s email.

With that being said, here are 20 insights from a 17-year veteran teacher about things that teachers ought to be doing.

1. Take care of your body
2. Avoid whiners
3. Get more sleep
4. Accept imperfection from yourself
   
5. Don’t expect to make everyone happy
6. Don’t abuse your sick days, but do use them
7. Relax more
8. Have trusted friends who can smack you upside the head when needed
9. Be sure you have long term disability insurance in place before you need it
10. Have some sort of adequate health insurance
11. Don’t waste time worrying
12. If you’re single, take some risks
13. Always have a backup career plan for if things don’t work out
14. Don’t be too proud to seek advice from others
15. Sometimes writing things out is among the best therapy
16. The logical solution is often the best, but not always
17. Don’t make monumental life decisions in periods of emotional distress
18. Don’t let Christmas, spring break, and summer be your only down time
19. Have patience with yourself and others
20. Not every situation in life requires an immediate diagnosis and prescription

Habit 2: Classroom Habits

5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior

Teacher Burnout: A Sad Story

How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?

Help! I’m On The Verge of Burnout!!! Do I Quit Teaching Or What Do I Do?

10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher

Think back 5 years. March 2004. It feels like an eternity ago! For me, that was when I really hit the wall. That was when my head director told me that my contract would not be renewed. I resigned in lieu of nonrenewal. I spent the remainder of the semester learning like crazy. In fact, that is the experience that eventually formed the inspiration to begin this blog (read more here). But that’s really not the point of this email, the thought just struck me and I realized how quickly time passes and how much I’ve grown since then.

5 years ago, there was no MySpace (until August 2003), no Twitter, no Facebook. Nada. Blogs were beginning to take off slowly. Blogger came on the scene in 1999. WordPress debuted in 2003. That being said, looking at the landscape of the Internet today compared to 5 years ago, it is a completely different place. Back then, people used emails a lot. Text messaging was hardly a way of life for most. RSS readers were uncommon, and sketchy at best.

No longer.

Does the ease of accesibility and availability such a wide range of information ever just boggle your mind? Does it frustrate you at times? I know for me, it can be a huge problem if I let it get the best of me.

These are some steps I have taken to reduce the information flow while still maintaining a bit of a touch on the pulse of the world.

1. Convert RSS feeds to email
   The less RSS feeds I subscribe to in Google Reader, the more focused I can be. As a result, I send many of them over to Gmail. With all of my email (except for school) coming to my centralized Gmail account (how do I do this?), I only have one email account to check. I used to use Outlook or Thunderbird, but have since opted to go completely web-based.
2. Look through my emails daily
   I don’t necessarily reply or read everything I get, but it’s pretty simple to run through the emails and label them or archive them. I label and archive most emails each day. I still see them because I use Multiple Inboxes and so all of my blog emails, as well as Pending, Starred, and School-related emails are still in the main view (how do I do this?).
3. Keep emails organized
   When I get around to answering them all or not, I want to be able to easily find emails. With Gmail, I have so much storage space (7305 MB currently) that I can keep virtually all of the emails I get and simply archive them in case I need to search for them later.
4. Unsubscribe from RSS feeds I can follow on Twitter
   I follow Zen Habits on Twitter. Leo usually posts new blog articles on there, so I have opted to unsubscribe from both RSS and email updates.
5. Turn off @ Replies on Twitter
   This was a huge time saver for me! Problem: I like Twitter, but I don’t like following people when all I read at their replies to people I don’t know. Solution: Go to Twitter.com. Go to Settings. Go to Notices. In the @ Replies section, choose @ Replies to the people I’m following (or no @ Replies if you’re so inclined). Voila, your conversation is back to being a bit more manageable!
6. Favorite interesting articles on Twitter
   When I read a tweet that has a link to an interesting article, I star it so that I can go read it later when I have some more time to focus.
7. iPhone
   I have found some amazing WebApps for Google that really help me with productivity. I also have downloaded some great Apps that help me stay connected. All of these are fully integrated with the standard version of the same sites. So that means if you read an email on your iPhone, it is marked as read on the web. These include:  

    

   • Gmail – http://m.google.com/mail
   • Google Reader – http://m.google.com/reader
   • Google Tasks – http://mail.google.com/tasks
   • TwitterFon – (free app – iTunes download) The simplest Twitter client I’ve found for my iPhone
8. Turn it all off sometimes
   I don’t worry about keeping up when I’m in church, or at a movie or performing a mariachi gig or any other time that I don’t have to be updated. When I blog, I turn things off. Otherwise I lose focus. Heck, when I have things turned off, I have a hard enough time keeping focused!
9. Play catch up when time allows
   I don’t actively seek to withdraw from the real world just to stay updated online. When time allows, though, I’ll try to catch up some. But I have discovered something very crucial:
10. Enjoy the journey
    Catching up with everything isn’t the goal. Nor is it where the most joy comes. The simple act of being less behind now than you were earlier is huge and it helps you to see progress. There has to be time to unwind.

No Rights Reserved

Falling Behind

10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher

Google Wave Will Revolutionize Online Classroom Instruction

The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Teaching Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job

Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, was the subject of the book and movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer. An eight-time National Chess Champion in his youth, he is now a martial arts champion, holding a combined 21 National titles in addition to several World Championships. Josh is president of the JW Foundation, an educational nonprofit– www.jwfoundation.com He is currently training for the World Championships of his third discipline, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and lectures nationwide on the subjects of the learning process and performance psychology. Waitzkin lives in New York City.

A few weeks ago, I returned to the classroom of Dennis Dalton, the most important college professor of my life. From the back of an amphitheater seating several hundred students, I realized how much things had evolved at Columbia and Barnard. The lecture hall was now equipped with a wireless sound system, webcams, video projectors, wireless internet. Students were using computers to record the lecture and to take notes. Heads were buried in screens, the tap tap of hundreds of keyboards like rain on the roof.

On this afternoon, April 16, 2008, Dalton was describing the satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi, building the discussion around the Amritsar massacre in 1919, when British colonial soldiers opened fire on 10,000 unarmed Indian men, women and children trapped in Jallianwala Bagh Garden. For 39 years, Professor Dalton has been inspiring Columbia and Barnard students with his two semester political theory series that introduces undergrads to the ideas of Gandhi, Thoreau, Mill, Malcolm X, King, Plato, Lao Tzu. His lectures are about themes, connections between disparate minds, the powerful role of the individual in shaping our world. Dalton is a life changer, and this was one of his last lectures before retirement.

Over the course of a riveting 75-minute discussion of the birth of Gandhian non-violent activism, I found myself becoming increasingly distressed as I watched students cruising Facebook, checking out the NY Times, editing photo collections, texting, reading People Magazine, shopping for jeans, dresses, sweaters, and shoes on Ebay, Urban Outfitters and J. Crew, reorganizing their social calendars, emailing on Gmail and AOL, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia (I made a list because of my disbelief). From my perspective in the back of the room, while Dalton vividly described desperate Indian mothers throwing their children into a deep well to escape the barrage of bullets, I noticed that a girl in front of me was putting her credit card information into Urban Outfitters.com. She had finally found her shoes!

When the class was over I rode the train home heartbroken, composing a letter to the students, which Dalton distributed the next day. Then I started investigating. Unfortunately, what I observed was not an isolated incident. Classrooms across America have been overrun by the multi-tasking virus. Teachers are bereft. This is the year that Facebook has taken residence in the national classroom.

Students defend this trend by citing their generation’s enhanced ability to multi-task. Unfortunately, the human mind cannot, in fact, multi-task without drastically reducing the quality of our processing. Brain activation for listening is cut in half if the person is trying to process visual input at the same time. A recent study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking your email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment 10 points. That is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana. But to be honest, on the educational front, multi-tasking feels to me like a symptom of a broader sense of alienation.

I know what it is like to be disengaged. In fact, the crisis that played a large role in ending my chess career was rooted in becoming disconnected from my natural love for learning. Throughout my youth, I had been a creative, aggressive chess player. I loved the battle, and wild, dynamic chess felt like an extension of my being. Then, in my late teens a coach urged me to play in the opposite style, his style of quiet, positional, cold-blooded prophylaxis. Instead of cultivating my natural strengths, he boxed me into the cookie cutter mold he knew. In time, I lost touch with my intuitive feeling for chess, and without an internal compass I foundered in the swells of fame and high-pressure competition.

I see myself in the eyes of so many kids today. Too many primary, elementary, and high schoolers are being boxed into the mold of conformity required by big classes, competition for grades, tests with multiple choice questions. The first grader who leaps to his feet when he figures out the math problem is diagnosed as ADHD and medicated to sit quietly with the class. Young learners have immense pressure to perform, to get good grades, but no one is listening to the nuance of their minds. They feel suppressed, they are suppressed, and by the time students get to college, they have become disconnected from the love of learning. Then they are asked to read 1000 pages in a week and skimming is the only solution. Many of the students who actually were engaged in the Gandhi lecture, the ones who wanted to learn more than to shop, were taking notes on their computers in a frenzy, researching events online while Dalton described them, typing every last word of the lecture. But Dalton had already supplied them with a detailed course packet with all the relevant dates and facts. His classroom is an environment for reflection, introspection, and letting resonant themes sink into your being. Unfortunately, to these college students the notion of delighting in the subtle ripples of learning is almost laughable. Who has the time?

The societal implications of this educational crisis are huge and the issue must be addressed creatively. We cannot afford to lose a generation to apathetic disengagement. Part of the responsibility lies in public policies like No Child Left Behind, the standardized tests that are turning education into a forced march, and a culture that bombards us with so much stimulation that it is difficult to know what to focus on. But part of the burden also lies with parents, teachers and coaches, and with students themselves. I recently tried to persuade two smart 11-year-olds to give up video games for three weeks. One agreed to the experiment, and to send me a description of how the process feels. The other simply couldn’t imagine life without the PSP, even for a day. Here was an eleven-year-old self-proclaimed incorrigible video game addict!

This story has a happy ending. In the final month of classes, Dennis Dalton discussed the issues of multi-tasking with his students, and many responded. Last week when I went back to hear the final lecture of Dalton’s Barnard career, there were only a few kids surfing the internet—nearly all the students seemed riveted. Many told me they were relieved to have turned off their computers and relaxed into listening. A number of my old classmates came, and afterwards we threw a party for our teacher. After four decades inspiring college minds, he has decided to nip apathy in the bud by teaching younger kids. He will start with high school, but Dennis Dalton, one of our culture’s greatest minds, dreams of teaching kindergarten.

A note from Josh: Dear Teachers and Parents, I am researching the effect of video games on young minds. If you think it might be a healthy experience for your kids, please ask them to give up video games for two or three weeks, and write me about the experience at TheArtofLearning@gmail.com. Thank you!

10 Keys To Unlocking The Best Possible Student Teaching Semester Ever

5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior

What My Classroom Is Really Like

5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers

Clarity Leads To Organization

The Single Most Important Advice Anyone Can Give To A First Year Teacher

Nothing in the classroom is worth added stress in your life. Nothing.

I know so many band directors (and other teachers as well, but mostly band directors) who get so incredibly worked up over their jobs that they lose their health, marriage, youthful physique, energy, or alienate their own children. Why? Because of their own selfish pride.

Just because nothing catastrophic happens this year doesn’t mean that nothing will. Stress can be cumulative in your life and may be building up and festering over a period of a handful of years.

The best solution is to stop. Now.

How do we avoid stress?
I have written at great length about this in the past, so instead of rehashing the entire month-long series I did on it in the past, I’ll direct you to 25 Tips For Less Stress and let you take it from there. The list of tips is:

1. Drink Water
2. Wake Up Earlier
3. Eliminate Junk Food
4. Increase Healthy Foods
5. Kill Your TV
6. Declutter Your Desk
7. Declutter Your Desktop
8. Declutter Your Inbox
9. Declutter Your House
10. Declutter Your Car
11. Reduce Paperwork
12. Reduce Responsibilities
13. Reduce Phone Calls
14. Reduce Possessions
15. Reduce Your Lifestyle
16. Deepen Your Relationships With Family
17. Deepen Your Relationships With Friends
18. Deepen Your Relationships With Students
19. Deepen Your Relationships With Coworkers
20. Deepen Your Relationships With Books
21. Only Work At Work
22. Work Only At Work
23. Work Hard At Work
24. Don’t Take Work Home
25. Play At Work

Less Stress: Increase Healthy Foods

25 Tips For Less Stress

Less Stress: Drink Water

Less Stress: Deepen Your Relationships With Family

5 Tips To Putting The Pieces of Your Life Back Together

Less Stress: Work Hard At Work

When all else fails…

Side Jobs For Teachers: Make Them Work For You

Top 5 (Plus 14) Character Traits Of Superior Teachers

Zen Habits Interview

This is a guest post by Pamela, who doesn’t currently have her own blog. Pamela teaches elementary in Michigan.

Ideas for organizing your subcategories
In part 1 of this series, I talked about the shortcomings of traditional to-do lists and the increased productivity that results from using a to-do schedule. With a to-do schedule, your list is organized by day, and each day is broken down into subcategories. The schedule makes it easy to plan ahead, since you have a list for each of the next 7-10 days. Today we’ll talk about some of the subcategories you might use for your daily lists.

One way to organize your day is by using time of day categories

• Before school
• During class: without students (things to do while they take tests, etc.)
• During class: with students (miscellaneous things not reflected in lesson plans)
• During prep. period
• During lunch
• After school
• Evening

Why do it this way?
This method makes it easy to follow your list in chronological order, without needlessly spending time scanning your list to decide what to do next. Of course, for non-teaching days (or if you’re not currently teaching), this could be adapted with categories such as: before lunch, during baby’s naptime, etc. Click here for a sample time of day schedule.

Another way to organize your day is by using type of task categories

• Errands
• Phone calls
• With spouse (or with family, or with kids)
• Computer related tasks (non-internet)
• Computer related tasks (internet and email)
• Other

Why do it this way?
This method makes it easy to see at a glance which types of tasks are related. Completing similar tasks at the same time is a great time saver. If you find yourself listing more than 2 or 3 related tasks each day, think about creating a subcategory for those items so that you can accomplish those tasks consecutively. Click here for a sample type-of-task template.

A third way to organize your day is by using priority categories

• A (3 high priority tasks)
• B (2 medium priority tasks)
• C (1 low priority task)

Why do it this way?
This method is great for people who don’t want their list bogged down with every little mundane task they must complete. The user can focus on the overall picture and make sure the big ticket items are accomplished each day. Simply tackle the three high priority tasks first, then the 2 medium priority tasks, and finally the low priority task. Click here for a sample ABC priority template.

Choosing your subcategories
The number and type of subcategories you use will depend on:

• Personal preference
• The types of tasks you’re responsible for each day
• How busy your typical day is
• How well you remember things without writing them down

If you’re a busy elementary teacher, you have dozens of tasks to complete each day and you’re constantly on the go, so you may want a number of very specific subcategories. On the other hand, if you’re retired and have very few things to do each day, a list with general categories like the ABC priority categories may suit you better.

Personally, I’ve found time of day categories the most useful on the days I’m teaching. On non-teaching days, I prefer a combination of the priority categories and the type of task categories.

Scheduling your day the night before
Taking ten minutes each night to review and finalize your list for the following day will increase your productivity tenfold. This is especially true if you’re so busy that you hardly have time to look at the next item on your list, let alone mentally sort through it and prioritize as you go. This is also a good time to reschedule lower priority items if you realize that you’ve already overbooked yourself for the following day.

Five minutes here and there add up quickly
One of the best examples of the importance of organizing your schedule ahead of time is my “during class: without students” category. Here I list things that will take me five minutes or less that I can do when all of my students are engaged in something else. As soon as I realize that I might have a few minutes to myself, I quickly glance at this category and immediately begin a task. In five minutes, I can catch up on some filing, write a quick note to a parent, or check my school email. If I had to spend 2 or 3 of these five minutes scanning my list and thinking about what I could do in that short amount of time, these mini-breaks would go to waste. It may not seem like a big deal to waste 5 minutes, but 5 or 6 of these mini-breaks throughout the day equates to a half hour of tasks that don’t have to be done after school, on my own time. That’s two and a half hours worth of tasks each week that are accomplished in 5 minute spurts.

Scheduling: minute by minute
On teaching days, my lesson plans serve as a structured, “down to the minute” schedule and my to-do schedule subcategories simply allow me to look at what tasks I need to get done during my limited “free” time. When you have exactly 42 minutes for each class period, the importance of scheduling things down to the minute is obvious.

If you’re ambitious and really want to make the most of a non-teaching day, try scheduling your day in one hour (or less) blocks, using specific times. I’ve decided this method works well for me on non-teaching work days (Monday-Friday) when I want to feel like I’ve had a productive day and don’t want to be side tracked by the typical work-from-home distractions. Those of you who are very ambitious (or busy) may choose to schedule your weekends down to the minute or hour. Personally, I like to have a lot of down time to rejuvenate, so I just can’t bring myself to schedule my weekends with such detail. For me, the ABC priority categories work well for weekends. It’s a good balance of letting myself kill time as I see fit, but still remembering the few things I really want to accomplish before Monday morning.

Give it a try
I’ve included sample templates for each of the three types of subcategories listed above. At the end of each template, after the daily lists, you’ll also notice a place to list items that haven’t been scheduled yet (your “to do soon” area). There are a few ways to organize this area – by month or by type of task. I’ve included examples of both within the different templates.

You can use, copy, and customize these templates for your personal use only, as long as the “created by” acknowledgement line remains intact. Permission to publicly post or distribute the templates is not granted, so please don’t do it. 

If you’ve tried one of the methods mentioned above, or you have another method that works well for you, please feel free to share it in the comment section below.

Organizing Your To-Do List for Maximum Productivity: Part 1

New Teacher Survival Kit

Valid Reasons Teachers Quit

The Busyness of Teaching

Habit 2: Classroom Habits

9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick)

In this article, I’ll revisit 10 of my 25 Tips For Less Stress that I have found to be most helpful for me over the last two weeks or exponentially heightened stress.

Christmas is coming, and with is seems to be incredible stress for a lot of people. Perhaps it’s because I am not married and have no children, but Christmastime has never brought a lot of stress into my life by itself. Health concerns have, however, brought about some immense stress into my life a couple of times in December.

My college had a two semester student teaching process (one semester of extended observation, and one semester of down and dirty residency). I was fortunate enough to be able to conduct a piece of music at the Christmas Concert right before I began my “actual” student teaching. The next day, a kidney stone sent me to the emergency room. In the process, we found that I had a benign tumor in my chest, and ended up through a process getting scheduled to have it removed in late January.

This year, the other band director I work with had a stroke on December 7th. This resulted in me taking on much more responsibility than I was expecting. With that surprise comes stress. Not so much mental or even emotional stress, but physical stress.

I teach the Concert Band woodwind and brass classes, supervise the mariachi during my conference period (we have two contracted people who run that class for now), hope the substitute stays in the band hall during the 8th grade Accelerated Reading period so I can have lunch, teach two percussion classes simultaneously (playing completely different music and sharing instruments), relax a little bit during the 7th grade Reading, teach the Symphonic Band brass and woodwind classes, and then teach the 7th and 8th grade Beginner Band class.

I have had after school rehearsals until 5:00pm on two days last week and two days this week. I have attended high school band, mariachi, jazz band, and colorguard performances as well as the 6th grade band concert. I have a concert on Thursday night for both bands, the mariachi, and the middle school colorguard. I had a Christmas Parade the day after his stroke. And I spent two days taking the each band around to four different elementary schools.

I’m not complaining. In fact, it has given me an opportunity to really test out my 25 Tips For Less Stress.

Honestly, I have found that I really don’t have time for some of the tips, but some have been priceless.

Here are my Top 10 Stress Reduction Strategies

1. Reduce Responsibilities
   With as many things as I have competing for my attention, I have to say no to a lot more things. This frees me up to focus on the most important tasks before me.
   
2. Kill Your TV
   This concept applies to other forms of entertainment. I spent Sunday afternoon catching up on my Google Reader and deleting some of the feeds. Allowing me to refocus my attention on the more important tasks is vital at this time. I also enjoy blogging, but have not done it much as a result of my increased workload.
   
3. Play At Work
   There would be no other way to handle this whole deal than to have fun despite the situation. We have made cards, I have students coming in to decorate our office for him, and I really am starting to enjoy working with his classes. They laugh a whole lot, so it’s great.
   
4. Deepen Your Relationships With Friends
   I have spent time either talking with students and parents at the concerts, going to dinner with a few friends, I actually went to see a movie (August Rush) a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time I’ve done that since Transformers in July.
   
5. Deepen Your Relationships With Students
   As I said, I have some students coming in to decorate our office. They will come in and chill in my office before school or whatever. I’ve talked with them about his condition, and his wife came up to one of the rehearsals and talked with him. We made a video for him when we went on the Christmas Tour. Students are absolutely the best part about this job.
   
6. Deepen Your Relationships With Coworkers
   I have been emailing our staff on his progress and keeping them updated on the whole situation. I’ve seen some other teachers or administrators at some of the concerts and have made a point to go talk with them. They appreciate the updates on him, and I really do appreciate their notes of appreciation and support.
   
7. Only Work At Work
   It is so tempting to sit down at my desk and just stare at the blank screen or look at the latest news or whatever. I finally came to the point where I have decided that iPods are reasonably priced, so I bought one last Friday. I would love to turn that sucker on and just escape. But there is way too much that I have to do. So instead, I wait until I get home.
   
8. Don’t Take Work Home
   When I get home, it is iPod time! I did take his music home one night and went through each of the three pieces one time. But that’s it. I make every effort to leave the school as early as I can because I know there is so much that I could be doing there that is unimportant or peripheral to everything else that I need to get done.
   
9. Drink Water
   When I don’t drink enough water, my muscles hurt even more than they do normally now. I am working 13-14 hour days right now, and I need as much help as I can get. I almost have to force myself to drink water, because I know how my body will feel if I don’t drink enough. It helps both my mind and body.
   
10. Wake Up Earlier
    It may be partially because I am excited about tomorrow’s concert, or because I am going to sleep earlier, or a combination of the two. I have been waking up before my alarm clock and that helps me in getting ready for the day in a much more relaxed way. I woke up before 5:00am this morning and spent a little while on writing this article. It’s therapeutic for me. :)

So that is the top 10, but I also have a few more than have really been helpful for me. Here are five more with no commentary:

• Declutter Your Desk
• Reduce Phone Calls
• Declutter Your House
• Eliminate Junk Food
• Reduce Paperwork

25 Tips For Less Stress

Less Stress: Drink Water

Less Stress: Kill Your TV

Less Stress: Reduce Phone Calls

Less Stress: Declutter Your Desk

Less Stress: Declutter Your House

This is a guest post by Pamela, who doesn’t currently have her own blog. Pamela teaches elementary in Michigan.

Traditional to-do lists
When I think of a traditional to-do list, I think of a sheet (or scrap) of paper with a list of all the things you need to do. This is a good start, but there are a few problems I’ve found with this type of list:

1. There’s no organized pattern
   As soon as you think of something else, you just add it to the bottom of the list. As tasks are completed, you cross them off. Before long, the list is difficult to read and important tasks are overlooked because there are so many scribbles or checkmarks. If you’re really diligent, you might recopy the list neatly, eliminating the things that were crossed off…but before long, you’re back where you started.
2. The list often becomes too long
   Even if it’s not something you need to do today or tomorrow, you don’t want to forget, so you write it down. The things that must be done today are now mixed up with less urgent tasks.
3. The list often ends up being more like a “wish list”
   You hope to get all those things done tomorrow (or this week or “someday”) but you rarely do.

Maximum productivity to-do lists
If you want to ratchet up the productivity, create a to-do schedule rather than a mere list. Think of it as a to-do list on steroids.

If you’re using a notebook, I would suggest writing today’s date at the top of the first page, tomorrow’s date at the top of the next page, and so on for the next 7-10 days. You might also use a few pages in the back of the notebook for general categories, such as “home maintenance” or “computer projects”. This is where you’ll add low priority tasks that you hope to do sometime, but don’t yet know when you’ll get to them.

Now, each time you want to add something to your to-do list, think about when you could realistically get it done. By preplanning when you hope to tackle each task, you accomplish more of the things on your list, because your list is organized by day and each day is broken down into sub-categories. It also gives you a dose of reality when you start scheduling your day and realize that unless you suddenly grow an extra set of arms, you’ll never get all of these things done.

By giving yourself a more realistic view of what you can accomplish, you’re able to prioritize the most important things and save the rest for another day.

You can schedule your daily tasks down to the exact hour or minute that you plan to do them, or you can simply schedule them into rough time of day (morning, afternoon, evening) or type of task (phone calls, errands, emails) categories. When I’m adding something to the to-do schedule for next week, I’m more likely to list it in a “type of task” category. However, when I’m planning my schedule for the following day, I try to take all of my tasks and figure out exactly when I’m going to do them.

For instance, perhaps I’m going to block off my prep period for the five phone calls I need to make. As I’m planning the schedule for the following day, this is the point at which I’ll often discover that my task list for that day has grown too long. Trust me; it’s better to realize this before it’s too late. When this happens, I just choose the most important things, plug them into my schedule, and then cut the rest of the items and paste them to another day (preferably one with fewer tasks on the list).

Your to-do schedule can be high-tech or low-tech. Some people use portable devices like Palm Pilots, which sync up to their computers. Other people are more comfortable with a good old-fashioned notebook. My current to-do schedule is what I’d call “medium-tech”. It’s in a Microsoft Word document on my laptop. My laptop goes back and forth to school with me and even comes on vacations, so it works pretty well for me. On the occasions when I know I’ll be without my laptop, I simply print my list and go.

The page orientation of my to-do schedule is landscape rather than portrait. This makes it easier to read the entire page on the computer screen without scrolling. I also have it set up with two columns, so it’s a bit like two adjacent pages in a book. Typically, each column constitutes a day. My document is multiple pages long, because I have a column for each day, going forward about 7-10 days. This way, if I know I need to do a task but won’t get to it until next Wednesday, I can type it directly in the task list for next Wednesday.

As each day comes to an end, I delete that column. (If you’re using a notebook, you’d rip the page out, or put a big X if you still need to use the other side of the page.) Every few days, I cut and paste the template to add columns for more days, so that I always have a list for each of the next 7-10 days (if you’re using a notebook, you’d write the next few dates on top of the next pages, and write in whatever categories you use on each page).

At the end of the 7-10 days worth of lists, I also have some general categories (household maintenance, computer projects, etc.). I use these categories to remember tasks that I don’t yet know when I’ll complete (if you’re using a notebook, these category pages should be clustered at one end of the notebook).

Advantages to this method
Let’s take a moment to look back at the three problems with traditional to-do lists mentioned at the beginning of the article. How does the to-do schedule solve these problems?

1. Rather than one big to-do list, you have smaller, more manageable daily lists
   Each of those smaller lists is broken down into sub-categories. At the end of the day, your entire list is done and can be ripped out. If one or two items remain, you can immediately reschedule them.
2. Since each list only contains a days’ worth of tasks, the list isn’t too long
   You’re not distracted by tasks that don’t need to be completed today.
3. Urgent tasks will be written directly into the schedule
   “Wish list” type tasks can go in a separate category list (home maintenance, etc.). These serve as a reminder and you can schedule them when you have more time.

In part two, I’ll discuss in more detail some of the sub-categories you can use for your daily task lists. I’ll also give some sample templates that you can customize.

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I have decided to compile all of the articles from my series 25 Tips For Less Stress into one handy ebook. The Instant De-Stress Handbook is completely free to download. To get your copy, simply download it here.

Go ahead, tell your friends. Email the ebook to them. Recommend they come check out my blog. You know you want to!

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This past Tuesday, I took a day off of school. This is not normal for me, and I even had to fight my urge to go up to school and make sure things were running smoothly. I even drove up to the school and chose not to get out of the car.

Why? Because I had a chance where I knew I could relax for a day and things wouldn’t fall apart. I suppose it’s sort of a building process for me of letting go of my band.

I don’t like to miss school. I remember my parents encouraging me when I was in high school to miss a day when I didn’t fell well. I have been debating missing a day just to miss a day for over a month and finally bit the bullet. A friend says that her principal encourages the teachers to take a “mental health” day each month. I have nearly 50 sick days available and so I figure I’ll use some this year.

Taking off of work is a great trick to avoid burnout. We’ve all seen those teachers who show up to punch their time card, and then race the students out the door at 3:29. If we’re not careful, we too will turn into those teachers.

I’ve been doing some research lately and found a few articles that relate to job burnout.

• The Simple Dollar is a great place for some practical, common-sense advice about personal finance. Trent writes about Dealing With Professional Burnout Without Quitting Your Job.
• WebWorkerDaily has a good article about How To Cope With Job Burnout.
• Vandelay Website Design shows us 12 Ways to Avoid Blogging Burnout.
• Collective Creatives shows us How to Recover & Recharge from Creative Burnout.
• Agile Ministry shows us visually in an article entitled Leadership: Balance or Burnout?
• BootStrapMe shows us 20 Tips To Avoid Burnout.
• Intensive Care For The Nurturer’s Soul sends us 7 Keys To Avoid Burnout.
• Rags Studio shows us How To Avoid Burnout.
• Andrew Shim tells us 10 Tips To Avoid Burnout For Home Business Owners.

Taking these articles and looking at some of their key points, I have compiled a list. Read the articles for more details:

65 Things You Should Do Right Now To Avoid Burnout

1. Stop now! Not tomorrow, Not soon
2. Make a list of the items that you do at work that you enjoy
3. Make a list of the items that you dislike doing at work
4. Spend a week or two doing only the tasks you enjoy
5. Hand off some of the burdens
6. Compress the periods where you do the things you don’t like
7. If there are strong interpersonal issues and you work in a large organization, request a transfer to another area
8. If the situation is truly untenable, work on preparing your resume to move on
9. A job that makes your entire life miserable is not worth it, no matter what
10. Get some help
11. Reach out of yourself
12. Hibernate, Sleep, Take a serious break
13. Start a side job
14. Choose a topic that you’re passionate about
15. Set a realistic schedule
16. Plan ahead
17. Celebrate you accomplishments
18. Have a long-term focus and avoid focusing on current problems
19. Don’t spread yourself too thin
20. Limit the time you spend on statistics
21. Accept guest posts if you need more content than you can produce
22. Build a network
23. Use designated times for email
24. Find things that motivate you
25. Take a break
26. Dump it all out
27. Escape for a while
28. Read a book
29. Take a walk outside
30. Set up a “busy schedule” and stick to it
31. Schedule down time
32. Squeeze in walks
33. Avoid overwhelm by making lists
34. Put your perfectionism on the shelf
35. Get support
36. Eat at least one meal a day with family or friends
37. Set up accountability
38. Build in consequences
39. Eat right
40. Set up email filters
41. Turn off email and the phone for set hours
42. Play hard
43. Know your own “Relax” buttons
44. Watch your estimations
45. Lay down the law
46. Prioritize by your core values
47. Put intensive self-care as a top priority
48. Practice the 3D Principle (Do it, Delegate it or Dump it)
49. Learn to say no
50. Learn to let go
51. Avoid multi-tasking
52. Slow down
53. Ask who’s the boogey man?
54. Listen!
55. Ditch things that aren’t important but restore your dream fully
56. If your dream cannot be restore fully. Look towards God for refinement
57. Lastly, you need to have someone to talk to if you need to talk!
58. Don’t lose sight of your principles
59. Stretch yourself
60. Be realistic
61. Learn how to communicate effectively
62. Manage your time
63. Don’t blame yourself (or others)
64. Enjoy the ride
65. Read 25 Tips For Less Stress

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