In any given day, my to-do list grows by two to three items for every one I mark off. I start with 10 items at 6:30 in the morning. By noon I’m lucky if one is marked off and certainly 3 more have been added. By 4pm, I’m struggling. I could stay at school all night and not be done with everything.
While reading The 4 Disciplines of Execution (McChesney, Covey, & Huling, 2016) I decided, this year, my Wildly Important Goal (WIG) is to get my master’s in Digital Learning and Leading. It’s a goal that requires a time commitment. The day-to-day whirlwind of work activities could easily swamp my goal if I let it. I must carve time out of my day and set it aside just for school. Not work school, my school.
Setting aside time to focus on the WIG is so very important. If the lead measures aren’t scheduled and considered as urgent as the daily whirlwind your plan will fail. If you don’t schedule time to move your lead measures, they won’t move, and your goal will never come to fruition.
Everything we do at school (work) is wildly important, too. If I don’t plan the lesson for tomorrow, what will the kids learn? If I don’t put in grades now, how will the students know how they’re doing? My whirlwind might be information for a student’s lead measure!
I must remind myself that those tasks will always be there. I have a goal, too and If I don’t carve out time to read and do my classwork, there’s no way I will succeed in this program. Time is an expensive commodity to give to a project, but if your goal is wildly important, it’s worth it.
McChesney, C., Covey, S., & Huling, J. (2016). The 4 disciplines of execution: Achieving your wildly important goals. New York: Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
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