The Principal's Handbook

Fixing Post-Work-After Four: Webinar Replay
===

[00:00:00] In today's episode, we're talking about why you're still working after four and how to fix it. That's all coming up next on the Principal's handbook.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority. I.

Welcome back, everyone to the podcast. Today what I'm doing is I am sharing a live webinar that I did, , just last Sunday, and I wanted to share this because I think that it was a great topic about [00:01:00] time management, and I know a lot of principals struggle with time management and what I'm talking about in the webinar.

Is why traditional time management advice fails. So I'm going to give you tips about why traditional time management doesn't work, but then some tips that are going to actually help you change your day. , I hope that you find this webinar helpful. I hope that you have some, , takeaways with you that you know, you take some tips away that you can actually apply in your leadership right away, because I think this will be super beneficial for you.

So I hope you enjoy okay.

Speaker: So today we're talking about why you're still working after four and how to fix it.

So this is meant to be an interactive session. I know, , people have, you know, cameras off, things like that. But feel free to unmute at any time if you have a question or feel like. You want, , maybe something specific to you and how it fits into your context, because I always, I just love helping people with time management, and it's always interesting to hear how other [00:02:00] people do things and, different, , struggles that we all deal with.

So, welcome. If you don't know me, I'm Barb. I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm an elementary principal. , I coach principals also. Last year I was coaching principals full-time and just went back to being an elementary principal because I actually missed it so much. And so, , I am coaching, , a few clients one-on-one, and then, , working full-time as a principal and host of the podcast, the principals handbook.

, That's really fun for me too, to have the podcast and get to meet a lot of people as their guest or just through talking to people who have listened. All right, so I just wanna start, if you're working nonstop, if you're staying at school late, you're taking school home every night. It's not that, it's a motivation problem.

That's not the problem. It's really a leadership structure problem because I know most school principals are very motivated. They're very hardworking, right? You didn't get to where you are [00:03:00] without being. . Without being hardworking. And so you can't beat yourself up if you're not getting everything done.

So that's really what we're talking about today, is the fact that if you're not leaving school, when you wanna leave school, it's not necessarily because you're not motivated or there's something wrong with you and your leadership or your time management. So I just wanted start by talking about why traditional time management advice fails principles.

And this is such an interesting topic to me. I actually coach, , I started with coaching time management to attorneys and other professionals, so I don't just coach principals. And so it's very interesting how time management fits into other jobs different than the role of the principal. Even last year when I was working for myself as a.

Coach full time, like my time. And, , scheduling my time looks very different than when I'm scheduling my time as a principal. Time blocking your entire day is something that is. , Time manage advice for many careers, and it sounds [00:04:00] great and it works because it promises you control, structure and focus.

But why time blocking doesn't work for your entire day, you can probably, you already know as a principal, schools are constantly interruption driven, environment. You're constantly being interrupted as a principal, , it's like you have something blocked off for the day, you get a disruption, and then it's just this domino effect it feels like.

When one behavior issue happens, your whole day might feel ruined. Or maybe the behavior issue is like one thing, but it can turn into this long investigation. I just had this last week where it's like one comment from a parent turned into so much investigating and talking to kids, and , talking to my superintendent, and that takes a lot of time then to make a decision.

So that can take up a lot of time. You have a plan and you have to abandon the plan instead of just adjusting it, because once you. If your whole day is time blocked and once you get off track, you feel like, oh, I can't do this. And so you abandon the whole plan [00:05:00] and then you end the day feeling behind because you had this whole day planned out and you didn't get everything you want to get done.

If you're like me, if I have a list, I want everything crossed off the list for me to feel like it was a productive day. So time blocking is great. Time management advice to time block, but. It doesn't work for principals to time block your entire day. Another traditional time management fail for principals is overscheduling.

This is one that I am so guilty of because I'm a productive person. I'm like, oh, I can get all these things done. , And it does not ever work out great. A full calendar for me feels very successful. But what happens when I over schedule myself, I'm creating stress for myself. I'm not giving myself time to just take a breath between meetings.

I'm not giving myself time to just think and kind of calm down, reset. There's no time to follow through. , I feel rushed. There's no margin for actually like leadership work, for having a conversation with a teacher if they come [00:06:00] up. Up to you and ask you a question like you're rushing through it because you don't have any time in your day.

And so you're so busy responding because you're so overscheduled that you're not really leading in the way that you want to. So again, like that goes with time blocking, but if everything is overscheduled or scheduled to the minute in your day, that's going to be so stressful and then an emergency comes up, it's going to stress you out even more.

So that's why that doesn't work. And then the advice to just be more disciplined, right?, Be more disciplined with your time. It's putting responsibility back on you, but really this is where you're giving yourself self blame. You're almost shaming yourself. If you're thinking that, , you're not disciplined enough, then that's the problem.

You think I should be better at this. Other principals can handle this. Why can't I keep up with the busyness of the job? And, that's just not true. So discipline doesn't fix a broken structure. It doesn't fix the emergencies that you're constantly putting out, right? It just makes you [00:07:00] feel, , more burnt out.

It puts more pressure on you. So that doesn't work. And then another thing that, , I've heard a lot is like, get as much done as possible when you have the time. And that just helps you get more done in it, , overall. The problem with this advice is it assumes that time is the limiting factor.

So when I look at my week as a principal, it's not always that time is a limiting factor for me. It's about my energy levels. So if I'm dealing with discipline, like typically in every school I've been 11 to one, is your highest discipline because of lunch and recess. , If you're in an elementary, it might even be afternoon.

But then if you have any time to work after, usually you're feeling drained. So just having time doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be productive or getting things done. The other thing for me that's huge with my energy levels is if I look at a full work week, Monday, I come in, I have lots of energy, I'm ready to go, ready to get a lot of things done.

I'm excited for the week. By [00:08:00] Friday, if my whole day is open, it does not matter. I'm not going to get as much done on Friday as I did on Monday. I might only have an hour to work on Monday for myself, , between meetings and other things going on, and I'm probably going to be more productive on Monday than Friday because by the end of the week I've made so many decisions, right?

I've done so many things that I am just drained. So filling every open minute. It really ignores how emotionally demanding the work of a principal is. You're not thinking about your energy levels. You're not thinking about just what your day looks like week to week. And some people, I think most people have more energy in the morning, some people don't.

But knowing what that looks like for you is really important. All right, so now if you're able to share whether, if you could just share in the chat, what is your biggest setback with managing your time? I always like to hear what this is for people. So what is your biggest setback for managing your time?[00:09:00]

And I might have to escape to get, whoops.

There's the chat emails. Yes, emails is a big one. You can easily get caught up in emails,

meetings, yes. I feel like meetings are huge. I'm in a school with a high special ed population, so lots of special ed, , IEP meetings, unpredictable needs with parents, teachers, emails. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Behaviors. Yes, definitely behaviors. That is a big one. , I just talk to a principal who. She was like saying emergencies is another one.

How? Having kids in your office all the time, right? Like if you're helping teachers, giving them a break in your office, it's hard to get done. If you have kids [00:10:00] in your office, it's hard to get anything done if you have kids in your office all the time. So that can be a major setback. , All right, so when we're thinking about these emergencies, , emails, behaviors, parents, , that need to talk to you, all of those, we really have to differentiate like, what is a true emergency and what is just noise.

So true emergencies obviously are safety, immediate student crisis, legal or compliance deadlines. I always think about this with IEPs. Like if you have an IEP that's coming due, she's had a crazy, , with snow days right now, it's like. We're pushing back IEPs, so that fills my day because I'm trying to get them in before the deadlines and be part of those meetings.

And then there's noise that feels constant, , people asking, can I run this by you? Email adult emotions, people wanting to come talk to you. And those conversations are important. , And then things that feel urgent, but they aren't. And . The biggest thing here that's really important is to decide what a [00:11:00] true emergency is.

Like what does that look like? For example, when I think about behavior and what's a true emergency, I have really, when I was a new principal, I had a hard time with this and took everything on, but really determining, is this something I need to handle now? Like when I was, , in my, if I was in my office or doing something, kids would come in from recess and they'd be like, this happened.

It needs handled. I would take it right away. Well, I learned over time that I can just have the names written down and it's usually not something I need to handle right away unless I'm worried about a kid's safety. Right. So really thinking about what does discipline look like for you? So for me, it's typically making sure that I handle the incident before the end of the day, or calling the parent before the child goes home, but it doesn't have to be done right now.

So that was a mindset shift for me to think about, you know, what were the true things that had to be done right now? Versus giving myself time, email's. One of them I used to like, be obsessed with checking my email to make sure my inbox wasn't getting too full. , [00:12:00] And even now, like I've really set a boundary.

I don't have email on my phone because the other thing I would do with email is I would check it at home and look at it, but not do anything with it. And then I'd forget about it and then people wouldn't get responses to email. So I figured I was actually better to have it off of my phone. I'm not thinking about it at home.

And then I can, , give myself a block of time that I. Actually work on it at work and I can respond to it and I'm not thinking about email all the time. So really thinking through like what is a true emergency and then how do you quiet some of that noise, right? How do you help with the adult emotions, like for adult emotions?

Another thing is making sure that you're not taking that on. You're not taking that personal, right? There's a lot of different things that we can do in these different areas. To help think about what is a true emergency and then differentiate between , the noise. But what happens is this constant reaction loop.

And so you're working, or let's say, I always think about teacher evaluations, right? You need to do teacher evaluations, but those can [00:13:00] be hard. And sometimes I used to feel guilty about even working on them in my office, right after I observed a teacher, I thought,, I could just do this at home. But I changed my mindset around that because I want to get as much done as I can to be out the door by four, be home with my family and be present.

And so let's say I'm in my office, I'm working on an evaluation, and it doesn't mean I'm in my office all day. But what would happen is there's this constant reaction loop of an interruption pulling your attention. Maybe it's a behavior, maybe it's a teacher who needs to talk to you right now, and then your emotional pressure rises.

Maybe it's guilt for even being in your office, working on the rubric or being in your office, getting anything done when you should be out in the building. , Maybe it's fear of what that. Incident actually is, I used to have like a lot of anxiety and fear anytime, you know, I thought I had to handle student behavior or a parent because I, I just would go to the worst case scenario, like, oh my gosh, what's this going to be?

, So then you respond immediately because you [00:14:00] wanna ease the discomfort. You wanna know what it is, you want to just get it done. You figure it out, then this brief relief follows, but then there your leadership priorities gets pushed aside. Or maybe that evaluation you were working on gets pushed aside.

Then you have to do it at home and overload becomes the norm. So this is just a cycle. And so it's constant because it really comes from, and I'm gonna talk about this a little bit later. Your thoughts about what you're doing during the day, it comes from what you feel like you should be doing. It comes from, , right here we're talking about this emotional pressure, like this is driving everything right?

You having this emotional pressure that you need to respond right away, whether it is from that guilt, that responsibility, or that fear, or any other emotion that you're having. , Like I said, maybe it's even anxiety about what could be happening, but it is this constant reaction loop. So what I wanna do is give you three tip, , three tips to actually change the [00:15:00] day and to start thinking about this difference.

So we're gonna talk about deciding what to , not to respond to immediately anchor your day before the building does and end the day on purpose. So those are the three tips we're gonna go through. So the first one. Is deciding what not to respond to immediately. So I kind of talked about this briefly, but you have to have guidelines for delaying things.

You have to decide what is your guideline for handling behaviors. What if a teacher wants to come talk to you? What does that look like? , When I first started in my, , last building that I was principal, there would be a beat. They had a system that they, , would. Do a beep on the announcements.

And that was my cue when I was walking around and doing walkthroughs to come to the office. And what would happen is it just became a call for me, right? It wasn't an emergency, but I might be doing an evaluation or finally getting to have this good conversation with a teacher about math that I wanted to have, and I'm getting called to the office, or it's a parent who didn't have an appointment with [00:16:00] me, you know?

And so. I really had to make decisions about what is important to me as a leader, and I always knew what is important to me as a leader was being an instructional leader. And it's easy to let that go. It's easy for all of that to be pushed to the side for email, for behaviors, for other emergencies. But if I have guidelines and standards for myself for delaying things.

That's the only way that I'm going to get things done. And again, I talk to principals all the time who get sucked up in things that are immediate. But when I think back on my career of how many things were super immediate and needed, me that second, there's not a lot. I just had an incident, for example, where someone's like, we need you immediately.

And I was filtering it and then I'm like, yep, they need me immediately. Like we had a student who was running. , So there are times that people need you immediately. And I was pulled from a parent meeting to go handle that, and I'm so glad I did because I needed to be there. But if I think about [00:17:00] that, that's probably the second or third time this school year that it was immediate, you know?

And that's almost a hundred days of school. So really thinking about what that's going to be and having conversations with secretaries about it. Because what I noticed a lot too is, you know, if your secretaries don't know what that, what an urgent thing is or what you need to be called on immediately, then they're not going to know.

Like they have a parent who wants to talk to you. They think it's immediate, but if you tell them no, you can have them wait for me or they can make an appointment. Like me being in classrooms is really important. Like I had a conversation. If I'm ever in an evaluation, you can't pull me out unless the school's on fire or someone's seriously hurt.

You know, like I need to be in that evaluation. Teachers take a lot of time for me, , take a lot of time preparing for them, and they need me in there to give them feedback and, and really give them the time that they deserve to be observed. So having that conversation, having the conversation with teachers about what's an emergency about.

If you're [00:18:00] needed right away, you know, helping them understand, because teachers don't always have that like bird's eye perspective of all the things that you're doing in the building. And so for them it feels like an emergency, but until you have that conversation, , they don't always know. So. Don't feel guilty about having that conversation and don't feel guilty about having that guideline and really breaking it down.

Think of all the scenarios that you've dealt with and where you need to have a boundary and, you know, help people understand what's immediate and what's not. Alright. The second thing is anchoring your day before the building does. So this is what I like to do, is I like to come in and I just like to think about what are my three priorities for each day that I wanna accomplish.

And I like to think of a block of time of where I'm going to get that done. . So that I know, like what are those priorities that aren't emergencies? You know, and I always like to think about this related to my leadership goals. We do Opez in Ohio, , the Ohio Principal Evaluation [00:19:00] system. So , what are the goals that I have for opez and what do I wanna get done with that?

So for me, if it's PBIS, reading and math, we have a new, , new math curriculum and you know, we're working on the science of reading, keeping those practices in place. Okay, so what does that look like? What's one or two priorities related to those goals that I could try to do? And usually it's getting into classrooms is a huge priority for me so that I can see what's happening.

, It might be looking at, I always like to go in and look at our M class, which is our dibble scores, and look at kids who are making progress, kids who aren't making progress to have conversations with teachers. We have a lot of conversations like that. , Another priority might be to meet with the math coach or, , if you have other coaches, but we have a math coach who comes like one time a week, you know, meet with her to talk about math and what we can do to help support teachers, whatever that is, but have those top priorities.

And like I said, usually those priorities are related to instructional leadership for me, , or PBIS. Like how do I need to be more proactive? I took over a new building this year. [00:20:00] We had to really work on PBIS so that I could focus on instructional leadership. And so what did I need to do for our PBIS, our PBIS team?

Like get those agendas ready. Thinking about that, but anchoring your day in what you wanna get done. Like what are the things that are important to you? Se , spending time in your office, creating agendas for your meetings are going to be super important. That's nothing that you should feel guilty about, , spending time to do that.

Because having productive meetings, I know for us, we have . 30 minutes to have A-P-B-I-S meeting in the morning. We don't have a lot of time, and so I have to make sure they're super productive and quick. So taking the time to make that agenda, scheduling your priorities into the day where you're able to get them done so that you're able to, you know, have this productive day that you're actually leading the building, not just putting out fires all day.

And then getting to go home at four o'clock. So that's the biggest thing, is making sure that you're anchoring your day before other people do. Because if you go in, and I've had days like this [00:21:00] with nothing really on my calendar, and then before you know it's filled up. So making sure that you know what those priorities are that you wanna get done, and then making sure that you end the day on purpose.

This is my third tip, so feeling done doesn't always mean that everything's finished, right? It could be on a list for tomorrow. Um, but it means that the right things were handled. That's, for me, what always feels good is to know that I'm doing something each day to move the building forward, whether it is with behavior or social emotional learning, or academics, whatever that is, I just wanna feel like I have actually made progress towards that, and I will.

I mean, there are days that that doesn't happen. Don't get me wrong, but. The way that I do this and end the day on purpose is finding three things that went well. So I like to keep a notebook. I have the eight to four principle planner too. It's free, , that you can download. And I, that's actually where I created this, where I write three things.

I actually do it in a notebook just by my desk. But thinking about just three things [00:22:00] that went well, and it might be a conversation with a teacher. It could be something I saw in a classroom. It could be a good conversation with a student or a parent. It's really anchoring my day in something that went well.

Okay, and that's really going to help you. Be more appreciative for the things that, , go well. 'cause sometimes I talk to principals too, who are doing amazing things in their building and they don't even realize it because they're always thinking about the next thing that they need to be doing. Like, I should be doing this, I should be doing this.

And they're not just stopping and thinking about, like, look at the amazing work that we're doing. You know, in my current building there's so many things we could continue working on. We just had intervention meetings and our reading scores, the kids are growing like crazy. Their dibble scores improve so much.

And so I am just like right now trying to, you know, let myself be present in that. And all of the things going well in our reading interventions and in the hard work that teachers are doing and reading because it's easy to think about, well, we could be doing this, this, and this. But we're doing really good things, [00:23:00] and so I need to just stay there and I need to anchor myself in that.

So that's something each day, if you can find three things that went well, that's going to set you up, you know, for success when you go home. Because a lot of times we take whatever we had during that day home, and so if we can anchor it in at the end in what went well. That's going to help it end in a positive note.

Alright, so now after I give those three tips, I wanna address, you know, why are you working after 4:00 PM And really what it comes down to is no decision rules or urgency filters, right? It's really just feeling like you want to get everything done. And I can say this because I had all of these systems in place in my last building.

I was eight to four every day at my last building. I had it all in place. Then I started in this new school. , And it was very hard. I had so much on my to-do list every day, and one of the things I just had to tell myself is it will all get done eventually. I can't do everything at once. You know, I was taking over a [00:24:00] building where we were combining two schools, and so we were putting all the systems in place and doing all the things, and I just had to keep reminding myself, I can't do it all at once.

It's not sustainable. If I am working every day till five o'clock, six o'clock, it's not sustainable. I was, you know, and even honestly leaving at four, I was like mentally tired from the day, but just really telling myself like, I have to have that time at night so I can come back tomorrow. And be a better version of myself.

Now obviously if you're a middle school or high school and you have sports that you have to do, that's different. There are times, you know, I had to do, go to a football game or something to help, , supervise conferences, things like that. Those are things we can't control. But on the days that you're able to leave on time.

It's really important that you try to leave on time , and give yourself a cutoff of like, this does not need to be done today because it's so easy to think, I just need to stay and get this done. Just one more thing, one more thing, but there's always going to be one more thing. [00:25:00] And the thing about being a principal that I always talk about with people is the goal is to really make it sustainable, right?

Like you can work every day till seven o'clock and you are not going to sustain that. You are not going to be able to keep that up. And so. You have to have that structure. You have to take these tips I'm talking about and really protect your leadership time because if you have no protected leadership time, you're going to be working all the time.

If you have no structure to shut down the day, you're going to be working all the time. You know, I didn't talk about this in the last slide, but one way I shut down my day too. Is we get done with buses at 3 45, 3 50 ish. I go check my email and then I shut down my computer and I'm done for the day because I know I just checked it right before four o'clock and then I'm leaving.

I don't need to check it again. Nobody needs me after four. If anybody needs me, they have my cell phone number, right? If it's a teacher or my superintendent, they can call me, so I don't need to be checking my email all night. So that's really important that you have these structures in place. [00:26:00] So again, solutions for the long term, you need non-negotiables for yourself.

What does that boundary look like? And maybe yours isn't four o'clock, maybe it's five o'clock. I've also talked to principals whose school, , kids are in sports at their school or you know, things or, or they go to their kids' sports and they wanna work for an hour. That's fine. Whatever your non-negotiables are, it has to work for you and your lifestyle.

You make the rules on that, but pick what it is and then stick to that. You have to have those boundaries that stick. And I will tell you, you know, in my old school and even coming into a new school, teachers are so funny, but. They will say like, oh yeah, we wanna respect your boundaries, but they know that I respect theirs.

So at the end of the day, they appreciate that I am not emailing them after four o'clock. I'm not calling them, I'm not texting them. I am really shutting things down. , And so making sure that I have those boundaries. I always say boundaries, , protect everyone. You know, boundaries benefit everyone. And it is, it's because they benefit me as the principal, but they also benefit the staff.

They benefit [00:27:00] parents because parents learn there's a boundary. I'm not available all the time. So it's really important that. You know, you have those boundaries. And then having systems in place that reduce urgency in the building. So again, if you're in a new building or, you know, these things take time.

But to have PBIS to have, , decision rules to tell people what's urgent, what's not, um, what's urgent, what's not urgent, you know, helping people understand that is going to help so much. And then the last piece of this is a new mindset around your time. You know, you have to have that new mindset because why Tips don't typically stick.

You can know what to do and still not do it because it's all about your identity. If you identify as a person who goes to work at six o'clock and works till five o'clock, you know, I worked with a principal just recently. He worked like seven to six every day. It just was not sustainable for him, but it just became part of like his identity.

[00:28:00] And so what then happens is he really struggled with the belief that's, that it's even possible to have an eight to four job as a principal. , And so time problems are usually around your identity of who you are as a person, your work ethic, things like that. That the principal has to be the last one there.

And then it's usually a belief problem as well. So think about this, if you have the beliefs that a good principal's always available, a good principal's the last one to leave the parking lot. Leadership means responding immediately. Leaving on time means that you're falling behind. Your calendar is going to always reflect those beliefs.

And a solution for you in the long term is a new mindset around your time. I just wanna take a second if you can put in the chat any belief that you currently deal with like this around time. You know, a good principle's always available. Leadership means responding immediately. You have to be the last one in the parking lot.

There's no way [00:29:00] you could ever leave at four o'clock. Like what are the beliefs that you are struggling with as a principal? Sorry, I'm trying to get my.

Principals leave last. Yeah. If I'm buried an email, tomorrow's going to be hard. Yeah. I mean, it's nice to come in with everything cleaned up. Right. But it just doesn't always happen. There's never enough time in eight to four to get it done. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Those are all mindset shifts that I really challenge you to think about, and I always like to say, flip the thought.

So if [00:30:00] you have the mindset, like for example, the principal has to be the last one to leave, flip it. Like, what's the opposite? What if the opposite were true? What if the principal could be the first one to leave and still be the most productive? Or what if the principal could be the first person to leave and still be very effective in their job?

Or if you can't get everything done from eight to four, what if you could get everything you needed to get done from eight to four, like what could that look like? And really just taking some time to flip that thought, write it down, and explore how that could look. Or maybe if you have such a hard time believing you could never work eight to four.

Maybe if you work eight to six right now. I, I'm just throwing this out there. Maybe it's like, okay, you pick one day to work eight to six. When I was a teacher, I liked to work in my classroom. After school, I picked one day Friday nights because I would go meet my friends for dinner. I would stay after and clean up my classroom.

I just liked that before I had kids. And I would choose that day to work like eight to six. You could do that as a principal, right? Pick [00:31:00] your one or two days. Um, but then change your thoughts like, how could I get everything done during that time? Or maybe it starts with eight to five and then you back that away, whatever that you know is for you to make that feel like that could actually work for you.

So again, it is not just a schedule problem when we think about time management, it really is. A mindset problem. This thought that a good principal is always available. If I don't handle it now, I'm not doing my job. Leadership means carrying it all. I just heard this from , actually a survey I just sent out.

Like people, this is a huge one. People feel like they have to carry it all. So , what if we didn't have to carry it all? What if we could think about it differently? So really changing our mindset is a huge part of fixing our time management. And one activity that I really encourage people to do, , is the 1.0 and 2.0 self, and I have a podcast episode about this.

But thinking about your old identity versus your new identity, [00:32:00] and you, . You wanna think like, who were you and who you wanna be? So again, maybe your 1.0 self is I prove my value by always being available to people. , I respond fast to people so that I look responsible, so that I look like I'm doing everything right.

I leave when everything's done. Whatever your old identity is, whatever you're doing now that you wanna change basically is your old identity. Then your new identity is your future self to you being more intentional. Like I lead through decisions, not through reactions. I'm going to be more proactive versus reactive.

I protect my energy to protect my school. I leave when the right work is done, so thinking about that, taking care of yourself after school, having time to take care of yourself. Is really benefiting your building for me, like I love working out in the morning and I know I'm going to be better for everybody else.

If I've had enough sleep at night, like I have to be in bed by nine o'clock 'cause I get up at five, had enough sleep and I work out in the morning, I'm so much [00:33:00] better if I don't do that, if I didn't get enough sleep. So I sleep in a little bit, don't get my workout in, I'm just off all day. I have brain fog, like I'm not the same.

What is your identity now? What do you think now as a leader and what do you need to think for your 2.0? Identity is huge for that. So I just wanna talk about, a little bit about traditional coaching and then coaching with me. , Traditional coaching, like I said, there's tools, there's tips, there's schedules, there's accountability.

But when you coach with me, this is the huge part. This is where the shift happens. There's identity changes. You change your mindset. You actually create, , intentional decisions and rules around your lifestyle that are going to reduce. You know all of the work that you're doing, it's going to reduce urgency.

It's going to reduce all the things you feel like you have to do. You're going to have better emotional boundaries and systems that work because of the change. And if you don't listen to my podcast, check out the principal's handbook. 'cause I try to root everything in this idea of [00:34:00] identity and mindset and how we think.

I talk a lot about the T cycle. Your thoughts create your emotions, which create your actions. So if you have. Thoughts around time management that are not helpful. It's going to create unhelpful emotions, unhelpful actions. If you're always thinking I have to be the last one out of the building, then you have emotions of guilt.

Anytime you leave earlier than that time, five or six, whatever. And then the action is you're staying late every night. So you have to really think about that. But I did wanna share next steps. So if you want next steps. For what this looks like to go deeper into time, , management, February 8th, we are starting the eight to four principal group, coaching intensive.

So this is going to be a four week program. We're going to do group coaching. We're going to be talking on these topics, cutting through urgency, designing a workday that works, prioritizing and delegating without guilt, and ending the day without taking work home. You're [00:35:00] going to have assignments between, , around identity.

We're gonna talk about saboteurs, things that are sabotaging your time management. That's going to be a theme. But all of this, it's going to be practical tips, but it's all going to be related to mindset and what are you doing that you're actually sabotaging yourself in the work that you're doing.

Four weeks of group coaching for 2 97 and week two, I'm also gonna do a q and a session, so I'll send out the link to this. , But this eight to four principal group coaching intensive could be really helpful if you've wanted to try coaching, , but don't want to invest in one-on-one coaching.

This is a great way to go where you can be with other people, to talk about time management weekly and get more tips, more personalized things that you could actually use in your building to start thinking about how you want, your week to look to really design your ideal day. Even when emergencies come up, what would that look like?

Well, I hope that you found that webinar helpful. I hope you have some tips that you took away that you're going to try in your [00:36:00] leadership in the next couple of weeks. Again, if you wanna join us in the eight to four principal group Coaching intensive, I'm going to put the link in the show notes. Feel free, click that.

Check it out. Learn more. If you have any questions, you can always email me I am offering a special incentive. If you sign up before February 1st, you'll get a free one-on-one coaching session within that program as well. So check that out with the link below. I hope everybody has a great week, and I will see you on the podcast next week.