Reclaiming Your Life(RYL) 3 The 333 Method of Time Management

Life hack cultivated from an article written in Inc.com by Jessica Stillman on a different way to look at managing your time.

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Welcome back to education matters. I'm your host, Wayne Ackles. And I just want to welcome everybody on a somewhat dreary March 26. It's nice that we're not shoveling snow, but it is still a little dreary out there this morning. So today's episode is a reclaiming your life episode. And I had originally intended to take this in a different direction. But there were a couple things that came together at the same time, that convinced me to go in a different direction. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that, and then get into the life hack. So what happened was the article that I want to speak of today, I had read earlier in the week, and then proceeded to have to drive somewhere for work and happen to catch an episode of part of an episode I should say, of hidden brain that's on NPR. And it's a always a fascinating topic on there. And one of the topics that they had was they were talking about the idea of competing issues for your time, and how that, especially during the pandemic has led to, when you have multiple, multiple priorities, how that becomes, you know, incredibly stressful for some folks. And the pandemic kind of was a force multiplier for that. So that's what convinced me to go forward with this particular hack that I wanted to share with you. And it combines one of the earlier hacks that I talked about when it comes to your own professional development. So in my Flipboard, newsfeed, if you will, there was this article from and it was called steal this bestselling authors 333 method for the managing of your time. And this is by Jessica Stillman from inc.com. And again, Inc is one of the magazines that I suggested before. And what this article goes on to talk about is that, that our normal understanding of making lists and trying to get things done, there could be another way. And there's a book by the title slack by Tom DeMarco. And he argues in that book that, you know, those of us and I've done this, you have a list of you know, five or six things on a post it note that you're trying to make your way through, and you try to get as many things on there. But he argues that to quote, this article from Inc is that when you jam pack those days, they quote, that quote makes you brittle. And it doesn't leave you flexibility to adapt to some of the different challenges that can happen during the day. And that was one of the things that was difficult. And after you explained it to people they understood, especially those of us that are former or current administrators, especially building administrators, you know that all it takes is, you know, I call them fires. You know, one issue whether it was a student issue or a parent issue or something that suddenly became the focus of your day, and that list went right out the window. Jessica Stillman goes on to write about something called the 333 that she has stolen from an Oliver Berkman. And he has a book called the imperfection, earnest, and Berkman calls this 333 method, something that helps again, give you the flexibility in your scheduling. And here's what he suggests is spend three hours on your most important current project. Complete three shorter tasks, usually urgent to dues or quote sticky tasks that I've been avoiding. And then dedicate time to three maintenance activities, things that need daily attention in order to keep life running smoothly. And he goes on to explain that maintenance activities are intentionally broad, but includes things like journaling, clearing out his inbox, and even throws exercise in there. He says that he does not dogmatically hold to that. But it becomes a structure for him to organize and structure his day and I found it a fascinating way of looking at this. One of the things I tried to do as much as possible is not to over schedule my calendar so that I had time in my day to make sure that if I wanted to do a round of, you know, popping in on classes, or just to meet with colleagues on issues that may be taken a backseat or in general just to be around the building. Just, you know kind of managing by walking around. It's, it's a good way thing to keep in mind that as you're scheduling your day, again, not to try to pack it so tight that you can't breathe, but to give yourself that flexibility, so that was this week's life hack. Again, I would recommend that article from Jessica Stillman in Ink Magazine about the 333 method and have a great week. Next week. We will have a guest coming in and next actually, probably the next two weeks we'll have guests which are exciting. And toward the end of April. We'll be going on a little hiatus as the school year wraps up. Have a great rest of the day and a great weekend.