Something happens on Friday afternoons, as I prepare my desk at school for the next week and lock my office door before heading home.
I feel a sense of accomplishment at tasks I've been able to complete through the week and a sense of relief at the idea of a few days "off". The week's end is a time of reflection and a time of looking forward to the future. I've developed a routine for Friday afternoons that has helped me to leave the school with a sense of peace and contentment. It hasn't always been this way though. I used to stay at school late into the evenings playing catch up from the previous week and organizing my post-it notes of tasks that I needed to accomplish the following Monday. Thanks to Google Calendar and a few books, like The 12-Week Year, I have figured out a better system.
I began to wonder if the same concept could work at school.
First semester of the next school year, I decided to try it out. When I got back to work in August, I made a 12-week plan for first quarter. I made a list of all the things that needed to be accomplished between the beginning of August & the end of October. I started to divide them out based on what dates I needed to meet certain deadlines and then I took it a step deeper and divided the tasks by days during that week. This was working fine, but I found myself writing and re-writing my lists for each day and it started to become a disorganized paper mess. Yes, the tasks were getting finished, but it was exhausting to keep up with my paper system and I hated the "cluttered feeling" that my desk had at the end of each work day. That is...until I found Reminders. One of the things that Google has added over the last year is the integration of "Reminders" into the Google Calendar platform. Essentially, I can make my "to do" list using Reminders. The difference in using this platform is that I can give my "Reminders" a date and time!
The magic of Google Reminders is that the tasks AUTOMATICALLY MIGRATE when you don't mark them complete!
Each morning, I open my calendar when I get to work and look at any tasks that have migrated over to the current date. I check for a few things. First, I love to see if I completed the tasks and just forgot to mark them complete. Next, I see if the tasks are still relevant. If not, I delete them. If they are, I assign a time later the same day or later in the week to work on these tasks. On Friday afternoon, when I start to prepare my office and desk for the next week, I now open up my Google calendar and look at the tasks I was unable to complete during the week. I look at my upcoming weekend and the next week's calendar and I fill in any tasks that I need to complete. I collect any resources or materials I might need to complete these tasks and I put them in folders I have labeled with the days of the week. Then I clean off my desk, turn off my lamps, and head out the door. Feeling good at this week's end, Hannah ❤️?❤️
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