Managing Your Teacher To Do List

Life as a teacher is busy, busy, busy! As a result, our ‘to do’ lists always end up a mile long. But mile-long to do lists can lead to overwhelm and burn out, so let’s get on top of it, before it gets to that!

We want to teach you how to get your to do list working for you (and not the other way around). Stick with us and we can work through this together.

What is the goal when it comes to a productive and efficient to do list?

- Ideally, we want to setup a to do list that suits you and allows you to prioritise top tasks. That way you are going to be able to keep on top of that list without it becoming completely overwhelming or paralysing (aka meet procrastination here).

- - Your to do list has to suit your style. Are you a paper person or more of a digital guy/gal?

- - - One of our favourite tips for managing a to do list is looking at your list and ranking the tasks according to importance, relevance, time limitations and impact on student outcomes.

- - - - Finally, our last secret to setting up a to do list that really works is creating a weekly list of all those recurring jobs that you can rinse and repeat.

But how do I go about doing this?

Now we are going to dive into some of our practical (real life) tips to help you achieve the above. We also have a free mini masterclass about this exact topic. So if you want more details, guidance or help, click here. In just 11 mins (or 6.5 mins if you watch on double speed) you will be a pro in getting on top of that to do list!

Some practical tips that we recommend to get your to do list working for you:

- - - - Rank Tasks – Try looking at your list and ranking the tasks. Priortising your ‘to dos’ will help you see where you need to invest your time to begin with (we have included a template to help you in our free masterclass).

- - - - The Five minute rule – If you can do a task in less than 5-minutes, do it immediately. This saves little items taking up precious real estate on your to do list.
        
        Set realistic goals – having a long to do list and hoping you will achieve it all in one day will not contribute towards being productive. Make a list of 3 priority areas instead and focus on getting those things done.
        
        Routine your to dos – Keep a list of weekly to dos to make things easy for yourself. It will also save time adding these items to your to do list week in, week out! We like to create our weekly to do list, laminate it and blutac it to our desk. As the week progresses, we mark off these tasks with a whiteboard marker and then we simply wipe clean at the beginning of the week, ready to start again.

“Change your mindset and look at your to do list as a WISHLIST” Rainbow Sky Creations

A lot is expected of us as teachers and that can result is a long list of things we need to action or get done. If you want more tips to becoming a pro in managing your teacher to do list, join our free masterclass.

Plus, inside we share the ultimate to-do list that allows you to put down all the things that are clogging up your brain and then prioritise what MUST get done (basically everything we have just told you about, it one pretty template).