Stop Surviving. Start Thriving

Thanks to the Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association (TEPSA) and to host Todd Nesloney for having me as a guest on their podcast, TEPSA Talk.

What you hear above is slightly edited. You can hear the original here:

Here is the message I shared:

From the Band Room to the Principal’s Office: A Time Management Journey

I did not stumble into time management as a side interest. I must admit I grew up organized. As a middle school band director, I discovered early that putting on a junior high concert requires dozens of moving parts. So, I listed and refined the steps. Then I reused them year after year. When I moved into school administration, that same discipline served me well.

When it came time for the doctoral dissertation, I chose time management as the focus. What I found surprised me: a rich body of research existed for the business world, but almost nothing had been written specifically for school leaders. Filling that gap became the mission. That moment in time was the beginning of what has become books, workshops, numerous conference appearances, this blog, the YouTube channel, and a weekly newspaper column.

The Single Most Important Habit: Write It Down

When Todd asked me where a struggling administrator should start, the answer was immediate: write it down.

“Nothing stays in your head,” I explained. “As soon as you think of something that needs to be done, it goes in your system.”

That system could be a paper planner or a digital task list. I personally prefer digital. There are a number of reasons. One that is key for school leaders is simple and powerful: repeating tasks. When a task repeats on the same schedule each year, you set it up once, and the system brings it back to you automatically. You never have to recreate it from scratch: “You do it, you check it off, and a year from now, there it is again.”

Word Your Tasks So They Attract You, Not Repel You

Here is a detail that most productivity books overlook: how you write a task matters. Word every task clearly and compellingly, so that when you see it on your list, you want to do it, not dread it.

Todd Nesloney, the interviewer, connected this immediately to the experience of naming files in Google Drive. We have all saved something with a vague title and then spent ten minutes searching for it later. The same principle applies to tasks. A task that says “Email” tells you nothing. A task that says “Send an encouragement note to Mrs. Thompson about her reading data” pulls you forward.

I take this one step further. For tasks tied to documents, I hyperlink directly from the task to the file. One click. No searching. As I told Todd in the interview, “If it’s easy enough, I’ll actually do it.”

Treat Every Task as a Recurring Investment

Schools run on cycles. The same tasks show up every year: fire drills, parent nights, accreditation, budget submissions, end-of-year procedures. Recognize those cycles and treat every task as an investment in next year, not just a checkbox for today.

As you complete a project, capture what you did, how you did it, and what materials were involved. The next time that project comes around, the map is already drawn. In this way, you “leave tracks” for yourself and for the people who will come after you.

I recalled a beloved elementary school teacher who wore many “hats” in addition to her role as a classroom teacher. She kept everything “in her head.” The trouble was, when she retires, she took her head with her. Written systems prevent that loss.

You Cannot Delegate What You Cannot See

Principals are told to delegate constantly. But you can’t delegate something you don’t even know you have.

When everything is written down and clearly described, two things happen. First, you see the full picture of your workload and realize why you feel stretched thin. Second, you have ready-made instructions to hand to someone else. “Nobody can do it as well as I can,” is almost always a symptom of unclear instructions, not incompetent people. When you give people the full picture, they often rise to meet it.

Modeling Is the Best Professional Development

What happens when you have solid time management habits but your team does not? Let them watch you.

As a first-year elementary school principal in 1997, I carried my Day-Timer everywhere. Teachers noticed. What they really noticed was that when they brought something to my attention, and I wrote it in that little book, wrote it down, the thing got done. Every single time. That consistency builds trust and curiosity.

The mystery of the “little book” led to a half-day professional development session with the faculty where we walked through the system. The response was consistent: “This is so simple. Why hasn’t anyone told us about this before?”

That question is the heart of my work. Good time management does not have to be complicated. In fact, it should not be. One of my favorite quotes is a line from the Tim Ferriss book, Tribe of Mentors: “What would this look like if it were easy?” That question reframes everything.

Batch Your Work and Stay Ahead of Deadlines

To prevent list overwhelm, batch your work, and stay ahead of deadlines. The two work hand-in-hand.

First, batch similar tasks. Make all your phone calls in one block. Handle all your walk-through conversations on one pass through the building. Batching reduces the mental cost of switching between different kinds of work.

Second, work ahead of deadlines. As a principal, if I came to school facing several things that absolutely, positively had to be done that day, I felt I was in trouble. One thing a student says or does, one thing a parent says or does, or even one thing a teacher says or does can turn the day upside down.

I wanted to start the day without the tyranny of the urgent. That allowed me to stay on track with a plan that pushed projects towards completion and kept all the balls in the air. That buffer is critical.

The One Thing

Todd asked me for the one takeaway I hoped listeners would hold onto. The answer was easy: Write it down.

Not later. Not when you get a free moment. Now! Every task, every idea, every recurring obligation. Get it out of your head and into a system. That single discipline will change how you lead, how you feel at the end of the day, and how prepared you are for whatever comes next.

Your Next Step

You do not need a new app, or a new planner. Many tools will work. You need a system. And any good system has at its root putting everything in that system. Start today by putting in your system every loose task that is on some floating sticky note or the back of an envelope. Especially trap in your system the tasks floating around in your head. Word each one clearly. Decide which ones repeat, and set them to come back to you automatically. That’s the foundation.

Stop surviving the school day. Start leading it on purpose.

For further reading, some years ago, I wrote an article for TEPSA publication called “Instructional Leader.” Scroll to page 9 and enjoy reading “Keeping All the Balls in the Air.”

If you enjoyed this content, join the email list so you never miss a thing. You receive two gifts for joining. One gets your desk clean. The other puts everything you have to do in one digital place. It’s time to Get Organized! and make it look easy.

Want to see more videos? Visit the YouTube channel.

Want to listen instead? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or search for Get Organized! by Dr. Frank Buck wherever you listen to podcasts.