Productivity Update

I have always been interested in improving my productivity;  I blogged about organization skills and tools nine times over the years.

Earlier this school year, I decided to join a Facebook group called Principal Productivity, Becoming a Productive Principal. I have been working on this for my entire principal career. Considering that there are more than 1,200 member of the group, I guess this is a widespread issue. Anyway, to get into the group, I had to write a productivity challenge statement. Here is what i wrote:

"Getting into classrooms and doing the other stuff later while still seeing my children everyday."

Over the past few years, I have gotten increasingly better at getting into classroom (more on that in another blog post). I get most fo the "other stuff" done at some point, and I see my children and spend quality time with them throughout the week. Now, I am not perfect at any of this, and some weeks are far better than others. Over time, I think that I have a decent record due to a bunch of strategies and tools/

To stay organized and be productive, I use a variety of methods.

• I keep my email inbox empty with liberal use of the snooze feature and with forwarding to a to-do program or Evernote. 
• I keep an Evernote doc going with next week’s staff email memo so that I can edit it quickly and get it out on Thursday nights.
• I keep a digital to-do list using Toodledo. The free version does everything I want, and they update frequently. I especially love being able to email items, schedule a future start date, and sync between devices.
• I also keep a physical to-do folder where I put a sticky on each paper identifying what actions I will need to take with that paper.
• My secretary/admin assistant passes papers that need my attention in “The Folder.” Most staff have learned that the folder is the best way to get a quick response from me. I look at the folder several times throughout the day and either act of stuff immediately (if it will be quick) or save it for later when the students are gone.
• I track longterm goals and projects in Evernote because I have been using it for years (there are frequently articles talking about other note apps and why they are better).
• My google calendars know more about me than anyone in the world - my wife included possibly. I share calendars with my secretary and my wife. This way, my two bosses can always know where I am supposed to be and add appointments for me.

Keeping all this going does take a little bit of time to maintain, and it has been worth it. This year has been one of the smoothest of my career with more documented classroom visits then ever before. I recently made another change so that I am spending longer periods of time in a classroom. I walk in with my to-do folder and my laptop (MacBook Air), then I sit somewhere in the room and work on whatever is pressing (or sometimes I get some old thing done). I stop my work frequently to listen to the classroom chatter and to ask students what they are learning.

All this is to say that time spent planning and organizing helps me to be more productive which helps me spend more time with the things that really matter.

The incredible growing todo list

So, I have this staff member at my school in a new position who still has a lot to learn about todo lists. I was checking in with her during the in-service before school, asking if she needed anything. She pulled this little piece of a sticky note out and showed me. I was amazed that she only had two things to remember to do, but I remembered that she was new and the students hadn't arrived yet. Then it hit me, here was a staff member using **scraps of sticky notes** to keep track of tasks. Aargh!

How could this be? This would have to be the least efficient task management system in the history of todo lists!

Once my heart rate returned to normal, I took a deep breath. Here I was, the digital principal, mister productivity himself staring at a one-inch square piece of sticky note of a todo list. I calmly suggested that my colleague think about a more efficient system. Did she want me to help her come up something? She told me that she would take care of it, that she was still figuring things out. Ok. I moved on to talk of the coming year.

A few days later, once school was in session, I was in the hall talking with the staff member. I asked how she was doing? Could I help her at all? She pulled out her hand from her pocket and showed me an index card with her new todo list. Well, her list had grown from two items to about fourteen. That seemed reasonable for the second week of school.

Hold on a minute, this was just that same as the sticky note only enlarged. Holy moly! Again, I nearly fainted. I asked if she was keeping up with everything. Sheepishly, she said something about having a little trouble remembering everything she had to do. Really! Again, I offered help getting organized. She said yes this time.

I wish that could tell you about how this staff member has become a digital pioneer and a productivity trailblazer using Evernote and an Apple Watch or Google glass and a chip embedded in her brain.

It turns out that this staff member wasn't interested in any high tech task management. She settled on a good old fashioned notebook and pen system. Now, whereever she goes, so goes the notebook. What she writes down, she remembers to take care of. Nearly four months later, it still works. And that, after all, is what matters most in a todo list.


What do you use for managing your tasks? Digital or analog list maker? What works for you?

Posted with Blogsy

Time and Priority #SAVMP

Google Calendar is a contact- and time-management web application offered by Google. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Again as part of the SAVMP, George wrote:

As time management is a crucial part of leadership, I would love if others shared some advice on “time management.” I have some big beliefs on time management in schools:

1. If it is important (priority), you will make time for it.
2. You should never look at doing more, but doing things better.
3. For every thing you are willing to “add” to your plate, you need to take something off.

What are some of your thoughts/suggestions on effectively managing your time and the time of others in your school/organization?

Time management, who has time for that? Well, I guess that I do. You see, I have been refining my time management skills for years. Here are a few of my practices, in no particular order, that seem to reap the most benefits.

1. Everything goes into google calendar.
2. My administrative assistant does almost all of my scheduling.
3. Every appointment is set to give me an alert five minutes in advance. My phone beeps for each appointment (as long as I remembered to turn on the volume).
4. I am learning to say no.
5. I am learning to stay out of the things that I like, but are not Important. For example, when there is an exciting tech problem, I work hard to stay out of it. The IT/TI guy at school understands, when he starts to go into detail I give him the signal. Since we have talked about this at length, he understsands that this is not an insult - it is the opposite.
6. Trust others to do their jobs. (See #5 above)
7. Frequent reviews of my todo list. I can't follow GTD systems, but many of the precepts are helpful.
8. I schedule things like visiting classrooms so that they happen more. I usually do the things on my calendar.
9. I get tips and ideas about principal productivity from Justin Baeder at the Principal Center
10. I spend a fair amount of energy creating and tweaking systems so that I do not have to do everything myself. Fortunately, the admin assistant at my school is awesome. She gets it.

Well, that is all that I have time for on this topic (joke intended ;).

The Tools I Use #Summerblog12

#7 in the Summer 2012 Blogging Challenge, #Summerblog12

Every once in a while, I read a post from my PLN about what tools they use to do their work. Recently, Dan Callahan did just that.

So, my work consists of principaling, blogging, and reading. For almost everything, I use my iPad 3. I think it might be the best computer I have ever owned. I primarily use the following software: Blogsy, Echofon for twitter, Reeder for rss feeds, Kindle for reading, Toodledoo for todos, Evernote for note taking and storage, and Notability for handwriting notes and marking up PDFs. I tie everything together mostly with Dropbox. In fact, one of the main ways that I have been able to rely on my iPad is that most of my primary software tools connect with either the cloud or a desktop version. With a few small exceptions, all my stuff is available on any platform.

Speaking of platform, I do use a three other tools besides the iPad. At home, I have a 2009, 15" MacBookPro. Still works great because I loaded it with extra ram when I bought it. Since I started using an iPad, I rarely pick up the MBP; in one fell swoop it became way too heavy.

At school, instead of having the district buy me a new laptop when I started, I decided to go big with a 27" iMac. This has been one of the best tech decisions I've made. The giant screen makes working with data a breeze. It's like having two monitors, but way cooler looking. The full computer is still necessary for intensive work, more complex spreadsheets, and a few websites here and there.

To round out my tool collection, I carry an iPhone 3G that works great on wifi. I only get cell coverage in certain places here in rural Vermont, but I still find the iPhone useful.

That's it for tools. I'll write more about how I use the iPad as a principal and how I plan to use it as a classroom teacher in a future blog post.

Posted with Blogsy

Organization: Evernote Is Becoming My Brain (#14inFeb)

photo © 2010 flowcomm | more info (via: Wylio)
Back in June 2010, I wrote about how I use Evernote to stay organized. Here is how I organized my notebooks at the time:

My main notebooks are:

• !School (exclamation point puts on the top of the list),
• Archive (general and more that two years old),
• Clips (temporary storage of emailed items or those sent from web browser),
• FY09,
• FY10 (no longer needed items from this year),
• Personal,
• Principal Ideas (websites, tidbits, etc about leadership),
• Receipts (from the web),
• Staff,
• Students.

Months later, let me tell you how my use of Evernote had changed.

First of all, I am using Evernote way more than I ever did before. I decided a few months ago to consolidate as many different services as I could into Evernote. This way, I have far fewer places to look for my stuff. I stuck with Evernote even though so many folks have been singing the praises of simplenote because I already have so much invested in Evernote. Since I won an iPad, I use Evernote even more because it is so much easier to create on it than on the iPhone.

I also totally updated my notebook structure. At some point this fall, Evernote began to allow for nested notebooks on the Mac version. Cool. They do not yet support nested notebooks everywhere else (i.e. iPad, iPhone, or web). Anyway, although I love to organize my files and notes, I vacillate between lots of topical notebooks and fewer more general notebooks wth lots of tags and searches. Right now I am somewhere in between.

So, here is my current notebook structure ( '-' signifies a nested notebook)

• !Clips (default notebook, emptied regularly)
• !Drafts (all sorts of fragments and ideas for future writing)
• Blog (an archive of the articles in my blog)
• Bookmarks (relevant to personal interests)
• Shared bookmarks (to share with staff)

• Computer Stuff (tips, help files, product reviews)
• Ed Stuff (all manner of articles from RSS, conference notes, PDF scans)
• Bullying/Behavior
• Leadership (mostly theoretical stuff)
• Marshall Memo (my last school had a subscription. Very good resource.)
• Principal (mostly practical info and ideas)
• Teaching (pedagogy, assessment, instruction, learning)
• Web 2.0 Learning
• Spofford (all of the notebooks from that school)

• Personal
• Family
• Household
• Music (PDFs of trumpet sheet music)
• Receipts (mostly from web purchases, some scanned)
• Reference (i.e. Barber Shop schedule, a photo of the coffee can that I can never remember while in the store)

As you can see, I have greatly expanded the number of notebooks. Also, I got rid of the archive by moving the old information back into the notebooks from whence they came. In the fall, I will bring back the separate notebooks for staff and students.

If you are looking for a way to take notes and store all sorts of information, you can't go wrong with Evernote.

Do you use Evernote? What is your most unusual way to use Evernote? What do you like better and why? This is what the comments are for. Thanks.

Leadership Day 2010 #leadershipday10

A year ago, I wrote my very first blog post for Leadership Day 2009. Since then, I have begun picking up steam as an edu-blogger. For most of the school year, I used this blog to highlight the great work going on at school. Occasionally, I posted my opinions. I really got going in June when I took a challenge to write every day. July has been a month of vacation from most things school-related (except the a couple blog posts and virtual #ntcamp).

Now, Scott McLeod, has put out the call for Leadership Day 2010. Since I have vacation brain, I will shy away from deep, thoughtful missives about leadership. Instead, I will stick with a practical, concrete topic. One of Scott's prompts for those of us who like being prompted was this:
What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?

To start, I would refer you, dear reader, to my short series of posts about Organization for Principals that I spilled in June. Then, I wrote about using gMail to manage todos (I still do); Evernote as the most amazing note keeper; Dropbox, the one folder that rules them all; and our fledgling steps to use Google Docs.

Today, I will write about RSS.


RSS might be one of the most essential tools for a school principal. Although it will not help manage the flood of tasks, RSS will help a leader immeasurably.


RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (I have seen variants on that theme). Basically, RSS lets you keep track of many other websites. A classic use is to subscribe to the RSS feed from your favorite news organization. Instead of going to the news website, you go to your RSS reader (more on that in a moment) and read the headlines. Then, decide which to click on and read.

As a principal, I subscribe to the RSS feeds of many education bloggers from all over the world and the ideological spectrum (I can't prove that and suspect I may be reading a more heterogeneous set of viewpoints). I also follow several other topics of personal interest.


Google provides the standard for web-based RSS readers with Google Reader. Most of the desktop and mobile RSS readers will either sync with Google Reader or merely be a front for it. For many months, I used Reader. As my list of feeds grew, I found that it was getting hard to keep up with all of the articles that I wanted to follow. Now, I use an add-on called Feedly. I like the My Digest view because I can easily see what there is to read. Feedly is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

On my iPhone, I have been searching for the best way to read the feed. Again, I started with Google Reader for mobile (a website visited through mobile Safari). Good, but sometimes slow to launch Safari. I have tried several in the past month, and I think I will settle on MobileRSS. I am currently using the free version, but I might pay $1.99 to get rid of ads. MobileRSS seems the easiest and cleanest. It just updated to version 3 and is a great improvement.


What ever way you choose to look at your feeds, RSS is the best way to follow lots of thinkers and ideas with the minimum amount of work (of course, Twitter helps with this too, but that is a different story).

Updated: Here is my collection of Education Related Blogs and Feeds. You can also see this on the left side of my blog.

Thanks.

Organization: Google Docs (Day 14)

One organizational tool that I have shared with some of the staff at school is Google docs. I make the most use of it with the administrative office staff. We mostly share spreadsheets that are simple databases. Right now, we are tracking new registrations on a Google doc, and it is really easy for me to know the status of all of the new students.

I have also set up a form that adds discipline events into a spreadsheet. It is very simple to use and gives me an easy way to track discipline data.

There are many features of Google docs that we don’t use, but we are hooked.

update:
For a great set of tutorials about using Google services in education, check out Free Technology for Teachers http://www.freetech4teachers.com/p/google-tools-tutorials.html

Day 14 of my month of blog-a-day (Spilling Ink http://tinyurl.com/nc7gg3). 16 remaining.

Organization: Dropbox Rocks (Day 13)

Earlier today, @colonelb (part of my Twitter PLN) posted this simple idea “I love @Dropbox! So useful (and free too). http://db.tt/zzLOKa.“

Of course, this got me thinking about my effort to tell you all about the various ways that I stay organized as a principal.

While Dropbox isn’t strictly an organizational tool, it is an important part of my workflow. I have my most important files synchronized with Dropbox on my main computer. Of course, that is not all. I also have Dropbox on another computer that I use from time to time and on my iPhone. I can access my files through the web if I want.

Wherever I go, Dropbox has my files available for me. Very cool.



Day 13 of my month of blog-a-day (Spilling Ink http://tinyurl.com/nc7gg3). 17 remaining.

Organization: Evernote for notes everywhere (day 12)

I love Evernote. There I said it.

I use Evernote to take notes on a zillion different topics. I store scanned files. I get it from my computer, my iPhone, or any web browser.

Evernote is one of those tools that have become indispensable for my as a principal. There are other programs that do all sorts of things better than Evernote, but I have not found one that does the same combination. For example, I love that way that Microsoft OneNote works - very cool way to organize all sorts of info. However, I could not find a way to have OneNote on my iPhone. Evernote is there. I am eager to see the organizational structure of my notes and important people like I’ve done with PersonalBrain, but again, can’t take it with me.

Anyway, I have used Evernote for a couple of years now and am very pleased. My main notebooks are: !School (exclamation point puts on the top of the list), Archive (general and more that two years old), Clips (temporary storage of emailed items or those sent from web browser), FY09, FY10 (no longer needed items from this year), Personal, Principal Ideas (websites, tidbits, etc about leadership), Receipts (from the web), Staff, Students.

Each notebook is filled with notes of all sorts. Recent updates to the iPhone software allow me to edit on the phone, but with some restrictions.

The bottom line is that Evernote has proven to be a valuable tool in keeping track of large amounts of data.


Day 12 of my month of blog-a-day (Spilling Ink http://tinyurl.com/nc7gg3). 18 remaining.

Organization: Gmail for todos (Day 11)

The job of school principal is totally hectic and filled with an enormous list of things to do. There are many articles, books, and websites that give advice on how to stay organized in a job where information and tasks are somewhat like a busted, underwater well head.

Anyway, I’ve decided that it is high time that I share some of my tips and tricks for staying on top of the todos in my principal (and personal) life. Over the next several days, I will share write about some of my most useful tools. Most of what I use, I learned about from someone else, but I can no longer remember who or when. Suffice it to say, that my organizational system would be nothing without the work of several others.

My main tool for tracking tasks has been Google Mail. I don’t use Google Tasks even though it is integrated nicely. Instead, I use a Firefox/Chrome extension called ActiveInbox (nee GTDInbox). Even without ActiveInbox, my system works but with fewer bells and whistles.

Here are the basics of my todo system (I am not attempting to create a detailed, step-by-step guide to gmail).

1. Using Labs, enable multiple inboxes in gmail.
2. I set up my multiple inboxes as indicated in the second and third photos (click to enlarge).
3.  The main idea is that each email that comes in is really an action waiting for me.
4. For each email, I should decide to do it right away, make it a low or high priority todo, assign it to someone else, or archive it.
5. I use labels such as “Next” or “Action” or “Follow Up” the most. I assign one of those to each email if I can’t just act on it right away and in just a few minutes.
6. The multiple inboxes are set up so that the first one (below the normal inbox) shows all of my todos by displaying any email labeled with either Next or Action.
7. I leave items labeled Todo for as long as it takes to get it done.
8. Once the task is complete, I can remove the todo label.
9. Because this is in Gmail, I can access my emails/todos from any computer with an internet connecction.

This system has been working fairly well for me since 2007. In future articles, I will write about more of the details of using gmail; Evernote; and other Google tools to keep this busy principal on top of things.



Day 11 of my month of blog-a-day (Spilling Ink http://tinyurl.com/nc7gg3). 19 remaining.