Schools are busy places. There is always another email, meeting, deadline, initiative or problem waiting to be dealt with and, as educators, we are very good at responding.
We get things done, we take things on and we step in when something needs doing. However, doing more is not necessarily the same as having more impact.
That was the starting point for a recent CPD session I co-hosted with a colleague who is an assistant head in primary. It started with a fairly simple question: what actually deserves our time and attention?
When everything feels important, everything can start to feel urgent. The quick job gets ticked off, the email gets answered because it is sitting in front of us, and the immediate problem takes priority over the piece of work that might have a greater impact in the longer term.
I know I have fallen into this trap myself. There are days when I have achieved an enormous amount but still finish the day feeling I have not done the thing that mattered most.
That was why we wanted the session to be practical rather than simply another conversation about workload.
Deciding on priorities
To begin with, we reminded staff of the Eisenhower Matrix as a way of helping leaders think about their tasks in terms of urgency and importance.
Rather than simply explaining the model, we asked leaders to apply it to their own workload and consider what needed immediate attention, what should be scheduled, what could be delegated and what could potentially be dropped altogether.
When we are busy, it is very easy to move from one task to the next without stopping to question whether it really deserves our attention.
We can also find ourselves procrastinating over the more difficult or uncomfortable tasks while filling our time with smaller, easier jobs because they give us the satisfaction of feeling productive.
The matrix gave us a reason to stop, step back and look at our workload differently.
Doing less and achieving more
What I found particularly interesting was the wider conversation that came from this. The session was not about pretending that the workload is going to disappear.
But by thinking more carefully about when we do certain tasks, how we compartmentalise them and which things genuinely need our attention straightaway, we can start to feel more in control of what can sometimes feel overwhelming.
For me, that was the real value of the session. It was less about finding a way to do less and more about changing our mindset towards the work that is already there.
Sometimes, having a clearer way of organising the demands on us can make the workload feel much more manageable, and being more deliberate about where we put our time and energy will ensure it is directed towards the things that will make the greatest difference.
For leaders, I think this is particularly important. People naturally look to us to solve problems and keep things moving, but sometimes leadership means stepping back, delegating properly and giving other people the opportunity to take ownership.
Not every idea is a good idea
It also means accepting that not every problem requires our personal intervention and that not every good idea needs to become another task on someone else’s list.
That is probably the biggest reflection I took from the session.
As we continue to develop our CPD programme, I want to make sure that our sessions do not always leave staff with a long list of things they now need to do.
There will always be more to do in schools.
The challenge is not finding ways to do everything. It is about becoming better at deciding what genuinely matters, and sometimes the most valuable CPD we can offer is simply giving people the time, space and tools to work that out.
Maddy Jones is deputy head of secondary at The International School @ ParkCity in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
