Why planning ahead can be a form of self-care

It’s a myth that “having a plan” means locking yourself into a rigid schedule from which you can’t deviate.

Knowing the things you want to experience and accomplish (and carving out time for them) is one of the most powerful ways to craft a fulfilling life!

Lisa Woodruff recently interviewed me for her Organize365 podcast, and I wanted to play an excerpt of that conversation for you here.

Listen in (or read the transcript) as we talk about how we each fell in love with planning and how our individual planning processes have changed throughout our various seasons of life.

We each share how we schedule our time and manage our to-do lists, and what our summer schedules look like. You’ll also hear us illuminate a few key truths we’ve uncovered through developing various productivity systems:

• Why working toward being “finally done” with tasks is not necessarily the goal
• How to enjoy the never-ending process of tending to your own life, needs, and healthy habits
• How planning ahead creates freedom and allows presence in whatever experiences arise
• Why the goal isn’t to execute your plan perfectly but to re-evaluate priorities

A quick little note about Lisa that will help you make more sense of this conversation if you don’t subscribe to her Organize365 podcast and know anything about her personally. Lisa is currently getting her Ph.D. to understand the science of organization so she can conduct her own research around this topic, so you’ll hear her reference the Ph.D. process here. She’ll also talk about Grayson, which is her grandson, as Lisa’s helping to care for her daughter and grandson who live with her and her husband.

And of course, she’s running her company on top of all of this. Lisa has a VERY busy and full life and is extremely high energy and productive. This is basically the opposite of me and the life I’ve created for myself — I’m much more chill and need a lot of alone time, so it’s always fun to talk with Lisa and see where we sync up and how we’re different. I think you’ll probably hear a little bit if yourself in both of us.

You can listen to the full conversation on the Organize365 podcast, or check out her organizational tools, such as the Education Friday workbox, which is a system that helps teachers get organized and reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. (Lisa is an affiliate for my 40 Hour Teacher Workweek programs, and I affiliate for her organizational systems.)

Listen to the audio below,
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LISA: So I want to know, Angela, when did you first fall in love with planning?

ANGELA: You know, I think planning is actually at the core of what I’ve always loved most about teaching because there’s so much to plan for, and organizing my ideas and just deciding what order I want to do things in has just always been something that has been a big passion of mine. It was something that I feel like I really got a lot of enjoyment from.

And I know that’s not the case for all people. I know for some people it’s really a struggle, and for many educators, it’s their least favorite part of teaching. But for me, coming up with these kinds of systems is just thrilling. I love to think of something that is not working particularly well and then create some sort of system to make it work better.

LISA: Well, and when you’re planning as a teacher, like when I would get done teaching a unit, I’d be like, “Oh, I could do this better. I could do this more, or I could add on this piece.” And so I’d write all of those notes and leave it in that folder for that unit so that when I taught that unit again, I’d be like, “Oh, that’s right. I want to trade out this experiment for that experiment. I wanna ask parents to come in and volunteer for this.”

And so that piece of continually learning and developing and never doing the same thing twice — I don’t think I’ve ever taught anything the same way twice. And I love that part of teaching in which I’m always continually learning and growing just like the students are learning and growing. And so that takes a lot of planning, but it also takes a lot of remembering the things that you wanted to make the improvements of a full year later or sometimes two or three years later when that circles around again.

ANGELA: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, being able to innovate and to extend what you were already doing only works if you had a good plan to begin with. That’s what really frees you up to be creative in the moment. And sometimes when people say, you know, I don’t like to plan or I don’t want to be boxed in, I think they’re thinking of this very rigid schedule that you must adhere to.

But I’ve found that when I have a really good plan, it actually frees me up to be more creative because I know I’ve got the basics covered and then I can sort of wing it. I can sort of go with how I’m feeling at the moment, how kids are feeling at the moment. And it really frees me up in so many ways that I know you’ve experienced too.

LISA: So what is your personal weekly planning process like? I know you’re not in the classroom anymore, but are you still using planning in your personal life and what is the cadence of that weekly planning for you?

ANGELA: So I set up quarterly goals for myself in terms of my business which is creating resources for teachers. I have a podcast for teachers. I write books for teachers, curriculum resources, and that sort of thing. So I break down my year into quarters and I think about what I want to have accomplished at the end of the quarter. Then I back up and think about, “Okay, so what will I do each month? And then what will I do each week?”

And this is something that doesn’t take actually as long as it sounds, it sounds very detailed, but these are broad overviews. Like I just want this specific thing finished. I’m working on a set of resources right now called Finding Flow Solutions, which is bringing productivity practices to the classroom. And so I’ll say I want to have this unit for secondary students done by the end of this quarter, which means I need to have the marketing done by this piece. Or, I need to have the proofreading done by this date, and I can kind of work backwards.

So then when I’m planning out my week, I can just look to see, “Okay, what was the thing that I needed to have done by the end of the month and how do I start tackling that?” And so I can start scheduling that into my to-do list. So what I use is just the Notes app, which comes standard installed on iPhone and iMac. And I use both, so it syncs across the two.

I have my stuff that I want to finish by the end of the week, I have my business stuff, and I have my personal stuff — this time of year I’m doing a lot of things outside in the garden and in the yard, so I also have my goals for that. And then I can just look through each day and plug in what it is that I want to do, what I have time to do, what I have the energy to do, and make sure that that stuff is ticked off by the end of the week.

If it’s not, I can move to the next week, which is fine. But kind of knowing where I’m going and what I need to have accomplished by the end of the quarter really helps because it keeps me motivated. I know that like if I let something slip off my plate and I have something else already planned for the next month, then I’m not going to be able to meet my goals. So for me, that’s just the right amount of accountability and sort of external deadlines, but not so much that I feel like my days are super rigid and I can’t go with the flow and pay attention to my own needs, or pay attention to the needs of the people that I love.

LISA: I love that you understand yourself. I find the more that I plan, like you went through how you plan your week, which I love that you went through that, and as soon as you said, “I opened up the Notes app”, and I laughed because I’m not digital. I have an iPhone, but I use a desktop computer and it’s not a Mac. And so that’s not gonna sync.

I use everything Google, so I already knew as you were talking, I was like, “I’m not gonna glean anything from this that’s going to work in my personal productivity.” But other people are like, “Finallly Lisa has somebody that’s talking about something that’s not paper and pencil! Doesn’t she realize we’re out of the stone age?!” And so I view planning as part of my self-care. And, what I mean by that is I’m setting up my future self for what I want to have accomplished and the transformation I personally want to have and that I want to be a part of with the people that I’m in the community with in the world.

So in order to do that, I have a certain kind of flare tip pen that I like. I like a desktop computer with a huge monitor. I like paper notes. I like a bag that’ll hold a binder and slash pockets that aren’t going to get crumpled up. I like a certain kind of lunchbox, like we spend all this time thinking about instead of just dealing with things that are kind of irritating and frustrating, like get a better lunchbox, get a better backpack, you know, get the actual Organize365 work box. Go ahead and invest in the 40 Hour Workweek.

All of these investments, while they are financial investments, are not like a college degree. They’re not this price tag of an investment and they’re very personalized. I was thinking about developing a backpack in Organize365. I thought, Well this is logical. You move from the portable bag to a backpack. Everybody likes backpacks. We’ll partner with a company and we’ll make a backpack. So I had my whole team bring in their favorite backpacks. Every single one was different — everybody liked a different thing. I was like, “Forget it, I’m never ever making a backpack — I’m not a backpack-making company.”

Everyone has something they really, really like about their bag, purse, wallet, like we get minute down to the details of things that we really, really like about those. And the same is true with planning. Like one person’s planning is not going to fit your planning, but you need to have one because not having a plan does not make you feel more free.

ANGELA: Yeah. That is the worst feeling for most people. Even people who don’t think they like to plan, they also don’t like flying by the seat of their pants and not knowing what’s going on that day and feeling just constantly behind, feeling like you’re forgetting something all the time. It’s the worst feeling so figuring out that planning system that works for your personality is so important. Lisa, you’ve talked about when you think of something, you write it on an index card — you still do that, right? That’s still your system?

LISA: I do. I totally do!

ANGELA: And then you put it in your purse and then you put it in the Sunday basket, right?

LISA: Yes!

ANGELA: So then you get to it on Sunday. That’s something that again, I would rather just keep it on my phone. There’s not a right way to do this. And what I love is just listening to different people’s systems and thinking about what works for them. Because there are people that I talk to who like absolutely could not do this digitally and there’re people who don’t want to do it on paper, and kind of letting go of this idea that there’s this one-size-fits-all, and that if you don’t enjoy planning or you don’t do it effectively or you don’t stick to your plan, that there’s something wrong with you. I think it’s just that you haven’t found the right system for yourself yet.

I have tried other systems in the past — I’ve done a paper planner and it just didn’t work for me. I feel like I would forget it at home and like, I don’t know, it just didn’t work for me. And rather than saying, “Okay, well I’m just not an organized person or I’m not gonna be able to plan,” or”I guess I’ll just have to kind of keep it all in my head,” which is the worst thing you can do is try to remember everything, right? Like no, I’m going to keep listening to other people’s ideas. I’m going to keep trying out different things until I find what works.

Being aware of what works I think will also change throughout different seasons of your life. It will change as your brain changes, as you get older, as your life changes, as your needs and preferences change, and as your tasks change. So again, this is why it’s so important to know yourself and to be able to figure out how to adapt things for you. And that really is just trial and error. Just being willing to try something out and say, “That didn’t work — that doesn’t mean I failed. It means that this system yes wasn’t right for me. Can I try something different?”

LISA: I think that if you have tried a couple of different ways to get organized, like you’ve tried the note cards or you tried the digital, maybe both didn’t work, you’re like, “Great, neither of those worked for me. So planning doesn’t work because it didn’t work for me?” Instead of continuing to iterate, planning is a never-ending thing. So it’s not like you can be like, okay, this is the way I plan and then I’m done and I’m done forever. Like planning changes based on your family dynamic. The state you live in, the grade you’re teaching, the age you are like they’re different ages where you’re just like, your brain functions differently. Oh my goodness.

A couple of years ago, I was forgetting my words. Like I was having a hard time talking. I was like, Oh no, I’m only 50 — this can’t happen this young. I’m going to be a hundred. I won’t even know what my name is. And it was hormonal; by the time I got my hormones balanced, my brain came back. I mean there are certain seasons in life where different things happen cognitively, physically, hormonally, and emotionally that really do impact every area of your life.

And so if you’re like, okay, I am going to get 1% better in my planning, I’m going to get 1% better in being proactive instead of reactive, instead of like, I’m going to scrap all of this and now I’m going to move to a Mac computer and I’m going to digitize my life. Like when you’ve been a paper/pencil person, that’s not going to work. It’s going to be a fun hobby. You’re going to have a nice Mac computer, which mine is a paperweight because I went right back to the old one. Don’t worry, my kids are taking the Mac computer.

You have to go with what is working for you and just make it a little bit better continually. This isn’t something you’re trying to get an A in or get done with or you can do perfectly. I think sometimes that’s what we’re trying to do and that’s why it’s not working.

ANGELA: Yeah. I agree. And I feel like that’s how life is in general. Nothing ever ends, you know, like exercise never ends. You don’t just like get in shape and now you’re done — you have to keep maintaining it. You have to keep stretching every day. You have to keep doing cardio and you have to keep eating healthy.

And I feel like I mentioned at the start of the episode that I do a lot of stuff out in the yard this time of year and gardening has taught me that like you don’t just plant a bunch of plants and then they just come back every year and everything is great. And you know, being someone who lived in condos and apartments most of my life, I didn’t realize that. I thought you could just plant it and you’re good. But you know, some things need extra tending, some things don’t come back. Some things are pervasive. You have to really keep checking in and seeing what’s working, what’s not, and what do I need to change?

And that to me is just such a good analogy for planning, and for life in general, to stop thinking about arriving at this successful destination where your life is perfectly in order. It is like a garden. It is always going to be changing throughout seasons and will change over the years. And the more you can just embrace that and make checking in and reevaluating and tending part of your normal daily habits rather than something like, “Oh here’s something I have to do again.” It’s like no, you’re really tending to yourself.

You mentioned that it’s like a form of self-care. It is! You’re tending to yourself, you’re paying attention to yourself. You’re paying attention to what you need in order to thrive and be your best. And I just think that’s such a much more inspiring and empowering way to look at planning and organization. It’s not just one more thing that I have to do, but it’s something that actually helps me be the best version of myself to live the kind of life that I want to live. And it does require ongoing thinking and maintenance and that’s not a bad thing.

LISA: So you could have just answered the other question that I was going to ask, but I’ll ask it anyway. The other thought that I have is we don’t like to be told what to do even if we’re telling ourselves.

So I think sometimes when you plan or you have a to-do list, like it’s just one more thing to do and you can’t get it all done anyway. So why would I tell myself what to do when I can’t even get done all the to-dos other people are telling me to do so I’m just not going to do that. Or if, and I have rebel tendencies, so I’ll make my to-do list, but then I don’t wanna do the to-do list that I made for myself even though I’m the one that created it and then I get mad at myself. Then I made a list that I don’t even want to do. So now I do make the to-do list, but how I get it done when I get it done and the energy is fluid, which I already heard.

If you rewind and listen to when Angela talked about planning her week, you can hear the fluidity if things get moved around. So at first, I didn’t like telling myself what to do because I wasn’t meeting my own expectations. I couldn’t get it all checked off because I was putting too much on my plate. So part of it is understanding the capacity that you actually have and making better choices of what you put on your plate.

But also it’s like a running joke to everyone who has access to my calendar at Organize365 because I plan out my full week and then you can literally watch, it’s like a dance party watching me move around my blocks on my calendar all week because I never do it in the order that I have it planned. Right. Because I’m like, “I don’t feel like doing that. I’ll do this or this.” And I’m just constantly rearranging them.

ANGELA: And that’s freedom. That’s, that’s not a failed planner. There’s so many people who think, “Oh well, I thought I was gonna get it done today and I didn’t. I messed up, I didn’t do this.”

Productive people are always reevaluating priorities, and saying, “You know what? This other thing came up that was unexpected for me and this is more important,” or “You know, I have to get this thing done,” or “You know what, I’m really tired and if I try to do this task today, it’s gonna take me twice as long and the outcome is not going to be as good as if I just wake up early tomorrow and get it done.”

That’s not failure. That’s what productive people do. They constantly move things around and you don’t have to lock yourself into things. I prefer to not assign things to specific days unless they absolutely have to be. I would rather see a list of tasks for the week and then I get to pick and choose which one I feel like doing today. As long as they’re all done by the end of the week, I’m good. But having that kind of choice really makes a big difference if you’re a person who doesn’t like people telling you what to do, including yourself.

LISA: I do the same thing. I pick out what I want done for the week and then it doesn’t matter. Now I do have to put it on my Google calendar and calendar block for two reasons.

One, I overstuff the week. So when I put the things on the calendar, then I realize, okay well I can’t write an annotated bibliography, read the article, and write it in less than two hours. So I have to chunk out two-hour blocks. I’m like, “Oh darn it, I can only get five done this week. I can’t get X done or a podcast start to finish —  idea to recording — then uploading in two hours.”

So then I put in a two-hour chunk of time, if I had it just on a regular list, I would get 80% of that list done. But the other 20% needed to be done, I didn’t know I had time. So I have to put it on a calendar with the amount of time so that I don’t overstuff the week.

And then the second thing is these kids are really confounded. I’m just gonna tell you. In the last couple of days — and I will be doing a podcast on this — I had everything planned out but everything has gotten pushed aside because the baby had to go to the hospital for seven hours. He’s fine — he was dehydrated. Greg had cataract surgery. I thought you just drop him off at home. No, you have to stay with him for 68 hours. I was at the office this morning recording the podcast. I thought I was going to record yesterday when Greg was recovering on his own but he was recovering with me.

So I went into the office, recorded the podcast, and then I see everybody in the office running around. I don’t know what’s the matter with them. Oh yeah, we have no internet. So I’m recording this now. I’ve driven home, I’m back at home recording this with you because I didn’t want to reschedule this.

So I’m constantly reorganizing my calendar based on my family, my kids, the world, the environment, whatever. And so because I have it on my calendar dragging those blocks around, I’m like, “Okay, the journal article is due next Monday so the annotated bibliographies I want to get done are now going to get done three weeks from now.” Which means I’m still going to hit the school deadline. But I was trying to beat that deadline because of a trip I’m taking.

See what I’m saying? Like it varies constantly and it doesn’t all get done. Nobody’s getting their entire list done. Even if they do it the way Angela’s doing it or the way I do it, everybody is having to drop things because of life.

Life happens. I mean you can guarantee it —  it’s gonna happen. You’re not going to get everything done.

ANGELA: Yes, that’s right. I think that’s a really important thing to say and that doesn’t make planning not worthwhile because that’s the other thing people will think, well if I’m not going to get it all done, what was the point? The point is to remember that you don’t have to get it all done but to be aware of what needs to be done.

And I particularly like the point that you made about the blocks of time too and thinking about how long things will take because that is the biggest trap when it comes to putting too much on your plate. It’s not breaking the task down into smaller chunks and realizing how many of those are going to take.

So you know, you can put something on your to-do list like you know, reorganize the garage. Well is that a 30-minute job or is that a 10-day job? It depends on what exactly you want to do. You need to break down exactly what needs to happen. Do you need to clean out the attic? Are you reorganizing all the shelves? What specifically needs to be done? And think about the length of time for that.

And if you’re not a person who likes to plan and that feels really overwhelming, then try to overestimate rather than underestimate. Give yourself extra time. Think okay, I probably will not be able to reorganize the whole garage in one day. Let me just set aside this two-hour block. I’ll get as far as I can and then I’ll reevaluate from there and see what else absolutely has to be done and when in my calendar, do I want to do it? Maybe in this coming week, I have something else coming up and this is just not gonna be a priority.

So I can put it on a list for the next week and think then okay, what’s another block and what specifically do I want to get done? Maybe at the end of that block I just want to clean out the extra freezer that’s out there or something — be a little specific about what you want to accomplish and you’re much more likely to get it done and then you won’t feel bad if other stuff doesn’t get done because you can see all the stuff that you did accomplish.

LISA: And that’s why I put it on my calendar because now you can backwards. I can tell you what I did on October 13th. I know everything — even in my personal life. So this weekend I had to power wash the deck. This is the second year I power washed the deck and I was like, I’d really like to get this done in an hour but it could take four. I can’t remember how long power washing the deck takes. It takes 90 minutes and I put it in my calendar so that next year, I know last year when I was mulching the yard I thought it was going to take all weekend. Start to finish from ordering, delivery, mulching, everything — it took four hours. So now I know mulching takes four hours.

Decorating the Christmas tree feels like it’s gonna take forever. It takes two hours from dragging everything up, putting it all up, putting everything back in the basement. So now I know how long these things take and now I can task stack things on the weekend just like I do during my work week.

But when you don’t know how long things take, you either think everything takes an hour or everything takes all day and there’s no in-between. But once you time track on your calendar, like you don’t even have to time track it anywhere. I just put it on my calendar. Then I want to know how long it takes to power wash. I can literally just Google search power wash on my calendar and it’ll show me how long it took me last year. And so next summer, I will know it takes 90 minutes to power wash.

ANGELA: I think that is so brilliant Lisa, because a lot of times when we have trouble estimating time, you think, oh I have to like get out a timer and actually time myself. Right? And then what happens when I need to answer a phone call or something. Well if there was a phone call interrupting you this time this year, there will probably be a phone call interrupting you next year too. So go ahead and build that in and just say it took you about 90 minutes.

I love the idea of just typing that into the calendar takes two seconds, and then you have that for your reference and then you can estimate your time better the next time you do that task. So smart!

LISA: I didn’t use to like to see where my time goes, but now I’m obsessed. Like I know how much time I’ve spent watching TV with Greg, how much time I spend taking care of Grayson. And the other reason I really like doing that is because no one’s checking but me and my team doesn’t see the personal calendar. I have a work calendar where I have meetings —  like this podcast is on that. I have a work calendar where I plan my work and I have a personal calendar where I spend my time and when I see all three I could see where all of my time has gone.

I want to prioritize my husband and my spouse, my kids, my grandkids, and so I want to be able to look back on my calendar and make sure that I’ve been spending enough time in the business, enough time in the household, enough time with my husband, enough time with the kids, enough time in my Ph.D. So when I was done, I actually added up every single hour that I spent in the first trimester of doing a Ph.D. and how it fell throughout the cycle so I can make a plan for what was going to happen in every term following.

I’m such a nerd, but also I realize that you think there’s gonna be a lot of work at the end. I had no work at the end because I front-loaded my term. And I’m doing it again. So I do the opposite of what most people do —  I don’t put anything off that way. I have time for the unexpected. So my question to you Angela is do you plan more or less now, and how much time are you spending planning do you think?

ANGELA: I think I probably plan a little more now for the same reason that you were saying — I just enjoy it now. I also started using a habit tracker app, which helps me with some things; this is a very new development just in the last couple of weeks because there are little things like my dentist is like, you need to be flossing every single day. And I’ve been hearing that for how many years — do I floss every single day? I do not. And I don’t know why that is. It’s a two-minute task. It’s so easy. I can do it when I’m sitting on the couch watching TV. Why am I not doing this? So I move the floss next to the couch, right? So it’s right there and I can see it.

And then I got this app where I get to have a goal of five days a week because I would rather go over how I did seven days than go under and have these negative feelings associated with this app. So I have the flossing in there and all I have to do is just tap the little button and then it keeps track of when I’m flossing and when I’m not. And it’s so easy and it’s so rewarding. I added other stuff on there too like am I doing some sort of yoga or stretching every day? All these little things that just help me to enjoy my life more that kind of make the other things possible that keep me in good health and keep me in good mental health, as well.

Putting those in there and tracking them is something that I didn’t think I wanted to do because I didn’t want to feel like it was one more thing. I didn’t want to feel like I was failing at something else. Like here’s one more standard I have to uphold, but I’m just loose and easy with it. And tracking that data has really been cool and it definitely gives me incentive. Like I find that like I’m now flossing at least five times a week because I want to see it on that TAPA tracker app. I can’t believe it took me all these years to figure out it could have been that simple.

LISA: Well you were ready for it. And like, again, I won’t keep track of the app. Hah! I already am out on the habit tracker app. When I want a new habit, I have to put it in with something like you’re saying — on the couch, something I’m already doing, it has to go in my morning, afternoon, or evening routine because I can’t create another pocket. There will be no other pocket of time.

ANGELA: Pairing habits, super scheduled, is another powerful way to do it. And again, this is about knowing yourself. For me, yes. If I’m pairing habits, sometimes that does work, but then other times I need some kind of other accountability or some other kind of prompt. So again, knowing yourself and having lots of different options so that you can kind of pick and choose what works for you.

And I think you can find some joy in planning and yes, finding joy in pairing up these things of saying, okay, this is my routine for the morning or this is my routine in the evenings and getting to add in something else. And again, thinking of that as self-care as something that you’re doing to tend to yourself or to look after yourself and to make sure that your needs are being met and your goals are being met. This is all just a very holistic form of self-care and thinking about planning your habits in that way is just so much more motivating.

Living an organized life as a teacher (with Lisa Woodruff)

LISA: Yes. So I know summer is supposed to be for resting and relaxing. I’m always like, “What’s next? What’s next until July”? And then my brain gets sucked out of my head and like the sun comes in and I can’t think anymore! So while it’s still June, I still have somewhat of a coherence to myself. I know that we definitely need to rest and relax in the summer, but also there is extra time in the summer, extra daylight time, extra energy time, extra time just for ourselves without other obligations because people are on vacation or doing whatever.

It’s kind of like when I was teaching kids and I had them in preschool and kindergarten and they got an extra half day of school with me because they were behind their peers. But we would give them that extra half day of kindergarten and help shore up their skills so that when they got to first grade they would be where their peers are and they would catch up. So I look at summer as catch-up time.

I always catch up on everything and kind of get ahead because when the fall comes, we’re gonna enter our most 10 productive weeks of the year from Labor Day until the second week in November. Like, everybody runs hard in everything that they do. And so I look at what can we do in the summer that will help us run harder in the fall without as much effort. So what are you looking forward to in this back-to-school blitz time where you’re getting ready for the next school year? Like what are you looking forward to this summer?

ANGELA: So last summer I did a lot of traveling. I led a group of teachers on a trip to Egypt and another group to Switzerland. It was an incredible experience. But you know, being gone for that long out of the country, like the days leading up to it, all I’m thinking about is rechecking the date on my passport and what I packed and researching, Googling, and then coming home, I’m jet-lagged. A lot of my time was gone.

So this summer I’m like, “You know what? I think I want to be at home and I think I want to really use this summer to kind of get ahead on different projects,” because I feel the same way that you do. Like, this is the time for me. I like to prepare for that big run-up in back-to-school season. So I’m going to be working on the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Online Summit. I’m working on Finding Flow Curriculum Solutions, all of which are just designed to help bring productivity practices in the classroom.

And I feel like summer is a great time to get ahead on these kinds of projects because like you said, so many people are not working, so many people are offline that it’s a chance for me to really focus and concentrate without feeling like there’s all these other demands coming at me.

LISA: Yes! Angela, I love connecting with you. I love just touching base with you on a regular basis. I love how teachers are getting support from both of these things that we developed.

You can hear more of this conversation with Lisa on her Organize365 podcast, and check out her Education Friday workbox which is a system that helps teachers get organized and reduce the amount of time you spend on administrative tasks.