It's Saturday morning and I'm surveying my weekend with awe and wonder. I'm all prepped for the first week of school. Didn't bring anything home. I still need to buy 25 more notebooks, but that's a subject for a different blog. On Monday, our nurse is on duty, which means I get a day-date with my husband. When was the last time we had a day-date on Labor Day? Oh yeah, never.
What made all the difference was having an ending point. There was never an ending point before. Never a definitive end to the workday. Never an end to what needed to (or so I thought) be done. There was only me hitting a wall everyday and succumbing to exhaustion. That was my indicator for when to go home.
Having an ending point changes how I approach work completely. It becomes a race, only I determine the course. It forces me to prioritize like never before. And become acutely aware of how I'm managing my time. If a task starts taking longer than I have set aside for it, the mental calculations start and I may drop it entirely or push something else to make room for it. I'm constantly reevaluating how important each item is on my list.
For my fellow speech-language pathologists reading this, I couldn't have beat the clock this week without my single-biggest timesaver: online scheduling. I've been using SignUpGenius to schedule my therapy groups for the last four years and it works like a dream! Here's how to do it:
1) Group all your kids.
2) Create a sign-up on SignUpGenius with all the times you have available. (Don't forget to leave off time for lunch, etc.)
3) Send an email to teachers telling them how many spots to pick and a deadline. (I send one big email with a link to the sign-up.)
4) Go do something else while your groups schedule themselves.
The best part is it gets easier each year because you can update last year's sign-up without starting from scratch, and the teachers know to expect it. By midday Friday, I had a complete schedule with minimal effort on my part.
The only drawback to my scrambling to get out of the building at 3:00 was that I left my phone on my desk. On a three-day weekend. Planned or unplanned, I guess a little digital detox before school starts might not be a bad thing.