Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast for administrators brought to you by Magnify Learning, your customized PBL partner. From over a decade of experience with you in the trenches, we are bringing you this top rated educational podcast designed for visionary school administrators seeking to transform their schools with project-based learning. Launch your vision, live your why, and lead inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Stoyer. How do you start your PBL movement? How do you get a new initiative like this started? Are you ready? Do you have a leadership team ready? Are your initiatives aligned? Are they going to fight against this? You've likely got some things that are already going, some things that maybe you need some help with. The best way to find out is to go to pblscore.com. You'll get a score, a percentage point of how ready you are cuz there's likely some you've got some great assets that you can utilize.
The goal is to launch this new vision and you probably need some direction on where to go next. And that's exactly what our scorecard gives you. It shows you if you're high, medium, or low and six different indices and it'll tell you in each one. If you're high, it gives you some resources. Medium, low, wherever you're at, it gives you some resources so that you can be prepared to launch your vision. Go to pblscore.com. Welcome to PBL Simplified podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Stoyer. Super excited to be with you. If you are listening to this while it comes out, then it's real close to Christmas and maybe you've got an extra day you need to get in. Maybe you just came in in the morning. Um, but here we are and what kind of work do you do during this time? I thought it'd be fun to kind of share what top leaders do with these kind of oddball times where teachers aren't in session, you know, kids aren't in there either, but maybe you've got some administrative days that you are need to fulfill.
So, what do you do? I've got three things that I notice top leaders doing. Number one, done is long-term planning. They take these days where there's less noise, right? And really look for the signal. It's kind of like Steve Jobs uh terminology here, like be able to block out the noise to find the signal. What's the most important thing that you should be doing now? Not the second most important thing, not the third. Those things will move the ball forward. But what is one thing that would benefit your work the most? Like 5x, 10x type stuff. Not I get that your inbox is full, but your inbox is always full. So, don't take this time now to do that. Like, you've got systems that help you dig out of that. That's always going to be there. That's the noise. What's the thing that's going to help you move forward? It's typically long-range planning. So, there's some of it where you might need to get some other leaders together, maybe some of your team, and maybe they're not there.
Maybe it's not what you're doing with that time, but maybe you can meet with somebody like me, like I've got several meetings during this time where you're meeting with a coach or consultant to run these long-term plans by them because they've got time on their schedule, you've got time on your schedule right now and it's open. Like we could spend one to two hours just talking through what is your biggest challenge, what are your greatest assets and we map those out and give you true clarity on what this next steps moving forward are. I've got a lot of leaders that love to use this kind of time for that. So, I'd encourage you what is what are the long-term planning pieces you can do the strategic planning. You know, how does your strategic plan that you have to turn into your state, how does that align to what you're actually doing? Hopefully, they align. They don't always, uh, but maybe this is the time where you can figure out how to weave those together. So, take a look at that.
Take a look at what you're doing. Um, look for that the deep work. It might be personal work that you need to do like some deep like coaching of yourself or again getting a coach like I highly recommend you have some kind of a leadership coach. And you don't have to meet with them every week um or even every month. Have somebody that like a couple times a year. You can say, "Hey, I've got this day open. Can you coach me through what's working for me and what's not? What are the things that are kind of giving you some anxiety or some worry? I don't want to overdo it." Like you have a stressful job. Like that's part of the job. But having a coach kind of push on some of those things can be really helpful for you, right? Take a look at your weekend work. What's the work you're doing on the weekend? Do you really really have to do that work? Can somebody else do it? Can you schedule it during the week?
Like, can you make it like Tuesday mornings from 9 to 10, whatever it is you normally do on the weekend? Put it right there and just see what happens. See if your week, you know, works well. Maybe it won't fall apart. Maybe you don't have to do that on the weekends. And you can free that time up. So, that's what top leaders are doing. That top 10% leaders in these times where there's a break, but you're still going to be in the office, right? You still have these contractual days, but you don't have have a bunch of meetings. You don't have the typical noise of a school day and and those types of things. It's it's quiet and it's tempting to just take your foot off the gas. You're going to do that. That's actually going to be our third one is how how do you rest? How do you take your foot off the gas? But in some form, don't do that. Take a step forward because what you're really going to appreciate in the coming the next year, this new year, is that you did that planning.
You did the deep work on yourself, on the work to clarify some things that tends to take away stress and anxiety more than anything is to bring clarity to the work because you've got hard work. You're going to have stress in your job. So, take those time, use it wisely. Don't just, you know, undo your inbox. Like, you're going to you're going to have time to do that. That has to be in your schedule anyway. All right. The second thing that top leaders do is they catch up on relationships. If you've got some relationships that you I I don't want to say neglected, but you've got those people that you connect with, they're high-flyers just like you, they're busy, you can connect once or twice a year and have meaningful conversations because you both get it, right? So, schedule those days right now and those those times where it's quiet and you're not going to be interrupted by something else because a lot of times these relationships are ones that are not crucial to your day-to-day.
So, when a new meeting pops up, you have to cancel. When something happens with a student or a teacher, you have to cancel. And everybody gets it. Like, that's fine. That's part of the job. But how do you get back to that relationship? Find times like right now, these somewhat random days where it's quiet and it's quiet on their end, it's quiet on your end. So, literally schedule those days cuz I get it. A lot of times you hit maybe even like right now you hit, let's just say you hit December 7th, December 10th, and now every meeting you have, you said, "Let's put that to the new year." Let's put that to the new year because the end of the year is crazy. True, right? True story. You know, working with assistant superintendents that are, you know, they're reading books to the kindergarten class, right? There's uh a choir recital and like everybody has to go to that and those things are good and they're important.
But then you get to these days December 22nd, December 23rd where you still might be in the office, but none of those things are happening. That's true for the other person you want to connect with probably too, the other high-flyer that's in education and you can actually schedule that day. And it feels a little weird because it's like, well, I thought I was booked here. Kind of, but also not really. Right? So, just go ahead and schedule that time. Like, it's really refreshing. Meet with that person and just have that conversation. Catch up, but also talk about some deep stuff. Let it be personal. Let it be work. Where you're really changing and innovating some of those ideas where people think you're crazy. Run that by this person, right? That person that you need to connect with, that person that challenges you, that other high-flyier that is also super busy. Neither one of you has a ton of time. So, find the time right now in these little pockets of of opportunity really.
So long-term planning, catching up on relationships, and then the third one of course is rest. Like these are times where you do need to rest. That's true. Uh just make sure you're doing that well and define that for yourself, right? A lot of you uh you know, type a you're running hard. Doing nothing is not necessarily rest for you. Just sleeping not necessarily rest for you. You might need to go run a race. You might need to uh do your own triathlon, right? Like some of you are doing some extreme sports. Uh you might need to go out and golf with a buddy. Uh you might need to be in the southern part of the country for that right now, but uh you could do that. If you're up north, it's probably not working for you because there's six inches of snow on the ground. So, you have to find the thing. But define it for yourself, though. What does rest really mean for you? Maybe it is time to read a book. Maybe it's time for you to read a book that's not an education. That's what weird.
We don't we don't do that. For rest, you might, right? Define rest for you, it's likely just not doing any like if you do nothing, is that really restful? Like, oh, I need it. Like, maybe. That's why I push towards long-term planning and relationships because those things energize us. Those will fill your cup. Some of you, some of us, cuz I'm in this bucket, if you're just doing nothing, you might just be thinking about what you could be doing, and that's not any fun. So find the thing that truly gives you rest, right? And you know that once you're not at school, you are going to have that time to rest and be with family. And that's super important time. How do you use these these kind of oddball times in between? Here's a couple suggestions. It's be it's some things that you know the highflyers that we work with do. So long-term planning because it usually gets pushed to the side. Relationships that get pushed to the side and find rest that truly truly fills your cup.
You might to sit down and write a little bit and journal and or talk it out, however you do it, to figure out what really gives you rest, what really brings you joy because it might not be super obvious. It might not be to what others go to. Likely not because if you're a top 10center, you're doing things different than the other 90%. So, you have to find out what it is for you. All right, it's been a great year. You've done an awesome job. You should be proud of yourself. Go lead inspired.
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