The Ideal Week: The Secret to Getting Things Done (Without Burning Out) [#164]

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly putting out fires instead of making real progress in your teaching? Do you end the day feeling exhausted, wondering where all of your time went? This is the urgency effect at work. Our brains prioritize urgent tasks over what actually matters long term. But what if you could flip this? What if your week was designed to prioritize what’s truly important in teaching and your life outside of it? Welcome to educate and rejuvenate, the podcast.Welcome to educate and rejuvenate, the podcast to help you revitalize your teaching, renew your spirit, and reignite your passion for life. I’m your host, Kelsey Sorensen, a former teacher, current homeschool mom, published author, and certified life coach. Whether you are a teacher in a traditional classroom, homeschool from your kitchen table, or anywhere in between, I am on a mission to help you not only survive as an educator, but thrive. Get ready to up level your skills with incredible insights from guest experts and discover the missing piece, rejuvenating yourself. Are you ready to both educate and rejuvenate? Let’s go. I am so thrilled to be here. For regular listeners of the educate and rejuvenate podcast who are seeing a new episode pop into their feed on Apple or or Spotify, I bet you’re thrilled to see this because we’ve been on a short break, but you know I couldn’t leave you hanging for too long. So I am thrilled to be here in your podcast feed again. And for those people who are here live in the studio with me, I am so thrilled that you’re here. In fact, I am currently recording this episode live with teacher goals where I’m streaming onto the educate and rejuvenate and teacher goals platforms. So for those who don’t know me, because there are a lot of people here who probably don’t because you are following teacher goals, you maybe haven’t heard MB or educate and rejuvenate yet, I am a former third grade teacher, and then I subbed for k through six. Now I homeschool my kids since 2019, so I still teach in a different way now. And I am a certified life coach, so I also teach in my current job, in my current, like, professional realm. I am teaching teachers all the time. And what I do here at Educate and Rejuvenate is I am a certified life coach, and, also, we do my team and I, we do curriculum to help teachers not only educate, but also rejuvenate. We help with both pieces of that. We have tons of fun teaching ideas, but also what we really found as I was diving in, like, COVID, everybody’s burned out. It wasn’t just more printables that that we need. Right? It is also how do I not burn out? How do I set boundaries? So I’m not working, like, sixty hour weeks. Right? So that is why I certified as a life coach, and now I support teachers in really, like, holistic. We’re looking at teacher wellness as a whole. Like, yes, we are looking at resources, teaching ideas, but also how do we rejuvenate ourselves. And so I am a contributor here at teacher goals with these lives, some social media content, and I wrote this book. And I’m so thrilled that teacher goals trusted me to write this book and put it on their platform. I love their mission. And the reason I wrote this book is because, you know, everybody here, we don’t want to burn out. Right? We love what we do. We went into teaching for a reason, and so I want to make sure that we can hit that rejuvenate piece as well. Chris says my job has become dealing with the urgent all the time, it seems. And I feel you. And there is a time where you need to deal with urgent things. Right? I mean, I’ve had several urgent things pop up this week unexpectedly, and so we’ll talk about that. Like, creating this ideal week, as I explained it, you might at first think, wait, Kelsey. You might have little alarm bells going off in your head. Like, wait. This isn’t gonna be perfect or ideal all the time. That is not the point. And we’ll talk about what the point in the ideal week is and how you work in the urgent stuff too, but, really, we’re just making sure that we don’t miss out on what’s important, that we don’t burn ourselves out, that we don’t, like, never leave work because let’s be real. You could always keep doing something. Right? Always. No matter what. So there’s a time and a place where it’s like, okay. Right now, I need to close the door. I need to maybe not bring my teacher back home with me on the weekend, whatever it might be. Are you willing to speak for district professional development? Thank you, teacher goals. Yes. Yeah. Definitely reach out if if you are looking for that. Hannah says same, Chris. Okay. So, I wanted to mention the reason why today we are focusing specifically on time and the ideal week is because I just did a survey, and we had over 600 teachers take the survey, which actually ended up blowing my mind because I thought this would be a quick five minute survey. We left it open ended so people could just type what they want, but I thought I’d get, like, a few word answers. Our our people in our Educate Virginia community, we had them average twenty three minutes on their responses. So we just got, like, so much information about what is happening in the trenches right now with educators of all kinds. We had teachers. We had homeschool parents. We had administrators. We had we even had some yoga teachers. We had, like, all kinds of educators who took this survey. And, the biggest issue that came up was having enough time. Like, I don’t have time for this. I’m feeling overwhelmed because I don’t have time. And so that is why we’re like, okay. We we need to hone in on this for a little bit. Like, see, how can we help our relationship with time? How can we yeah. We still are going to have the same twenty four hours, and it’s never going to be perfect. But how can we make it better? How can we have better boundaries? How can we be a little bit more intentional with our time? So that is what we are talking about today, and it really does start with that word intentional. So what I want to know was and for those who are here live, I would love for you to answer that question this question in the chat. What does it mean to be intentional with your time? If you’re here live, I want you to put your answer in the chat. And, again, when you do that, you’ll also be in here doing the signed copy of educate and rejuvenate. If you’re here listening to this episode, you’re gonna going to definitely want the book because what we’re talking about today is literally only two pages of the book, two or three. And so we’re, like, diving a little deeper in those two to three pages, but, like, the whole framework, it’s in here. You’re gonna wanna copy. So, again, your comment gets you entered to win. So what does it mean to you to be intentional with your time? And if you are watching or listening to this later, maybe you’re watching on the Educate Moregiby app, or maybe you’re on Apple or Spotify, just think in your head to you. What does it mean to be intentional with your time? Vanessa says planning your time. Cynthia says planning with purpose. Jill says doing only the things that are meaningful and will move the needle for you and or your students. I am loving these responses so far. Kathleen says prioritizing what is truly, truly in caps, important, and following through. Yes. These are such great answers. And really and really we’re all kinda saying that same type of thing. Right? Grace says prioritizing what is important. Right? And, yes, and that is means we’re looking at the important things and not just the urgent. Right? The urgent are like those fires that come up, like, oh, this has to be done right now. But, like, two weeks or a month or a year from now, that’s not going to matter. I’m not moving the needle on the things that long term I need to happen for my career or for my students or for my own children or for again, we’re not just teachers. Right? We have all these other things in our lives. So for our marriage, for our family, for a volunteer work we do outside of school, whatever that might be for you. Right? So LinkedIn user said it is to prioritize quality over time spent with classroom duties while taking time for self care. I love this. Barbara says intentional with your time means you are using your time purposefully doing meaningful tasks. Melissa says doing the things that to prioritize what is best for kids. Love it. We all are like, what is best for the kids? Right? Not just our testing. Chris, I love that word intentional. Reminds me of Rhapsody Jordan Parisi. I may have spelled her name wrong, but she is so wise and offers such good counsel as well. I love that, and I love getting recommendations because I have not heard of her. Snowda says prioritize what is needed and meaningful. Hannah says being intentional with my time is deciding what is important to me and setting the boundaries needed in order to live a happy, healthy, balanced life. Jerry says intentional with time to work the best of to the best ability to teach with positive results. Kelly says planning what I need to prioritize, purposeful. Yes. And I feel like we’re all kind of on the same pattern. Right? And it really goes along with what I pulled up the dictionary definition. If you’re to look up the word intentional, it says done on purpose or deliberate. Right? So it means we are being deliberate with our actions, deliberate with our decisions, deliberate with what we are doing with our time versus it just happening, versus it just being thrust upon us, as Glinda would say. I I I love Wicked. Anybody else? But, again, we have things thrust upon us. Right? But we could let that happen all day long. If we don’t choose our priorities, like, they’re just gonna be given to us. Right? So we need to choose what is important as well. And, yes, we do have other things that come up. We do have requirements of our job. We do have responsibilities. We’re not negating any of that, but, also, we are looking at what we can control with our time. Okay. So the one thing that before we even get into the ideal week that I want to talk about that I didn’t even quite get into in the book, but was really kinda behind it. The reason why the ideal week, what we are about to dive into, really matters is because we have so much decision fatigue in our day to day as educators. I mean, I say that and you’re probably just nodding along. Right? Like, oh, yeah. Like, how many decisions do you think we make in a day? How many do you think? Tell me in the chat if you’re here live. And if you’re not, just think about it. How many do you think we make? Decisions from what to wear, what to have for breakfast, which activity on TPT to use. Right? So many decisions. 20,000, Vanessa says. Yeah. Big number. Right? Christy says way too many. Jill says 3,000 or 30,000. Kathleen says too many to count. Kelly, a thousand. Teresa, one hundred. So, again, Google is my friend. Now now this isn’t good enough to be, like, a source in my book. I would have had to dive deeper. But what just came up on Google when I googled how many decisions do we make on average a day? It said the average adult makes 33,000 to 35,000 total decisions each day. Woah. Right? That’s kind of like a mind blowing thing to think about. Like, how many decisions we make? And some of them are tiny and don’t even really matter. But even if they’re tiny and they don’t really matter that much, like, oh, which shirt do I want to wear today? Like, doesn’t matter too much. Some of us might put a little more thought into it than others. But, again, every little thing takes a little bit of our brainpower. Right? And our and here’s kind of the science behind it. Our brains have a limited capacity for decision making each day. That’s why sometimes, like, I’ll even admit earlier this week at a day where I was just feeling so foggy, so much brain fog. And we’ve been doing a lot behind the scenes with educate and rejuvenate, and I’ve been doing some new things with teaching my kids. And, like, I was starting to feel I was like, why am I feeling so fuzzy? And I realized, like, okay. We’ve got a lot going on, and I noticed that. Right? Again, I’m not saying my life is perfect or I’m perfect at any of this stuff I’m teaching you, but I was able to because of all the tools that I have that I talk about in my book, kinda pull back and make, oh, I’m realizing I’m happy to make so many decisions right now. It makes sense that I’m feeling this way. And just notice that and be with it. Be with the feelings. Let it move through. And I actually was like, okay. I’m gonna take a little break, and I’ll come back to it tomorrow. And that was actually just yesterday. And now I’m feeling so much better, and I’m doing this podcast and got a lot done today, but I had to know when it was time to call it even though it was earlier than I was planning on. Right? Christy says I feel burnout around 3PM, and that makes sense. Right? Because if you think about by 3PM, and that’s about the time yesterday, I was feeling it. Think about how many decisions you’ve made up until that point. And then, you know, the bell rings, the students go, and you’re just like, oh, man. Like, all these decisions they had to make during the day. Chris says, some days my brain actually hurts. Yeah. Vanessa said we started planning dinner for two weeks at a time, so we don’t have to think about it. Yes. And this is exactly what we’re about to get into, is making decisions ahead of time. Because the more decisions we can do that, the more brainpower we have for what matters most or for what urgent things come up that actually do need to be done. We have more brainpower for it. I mean, when you even think about it, think of Steve Jobs and how he was always wearing a black turtleneck, like, all the time. And that’s something he actually intentionally did so he didn’t have to think about what he was wearing every day. And, I mean, he bought ridiculously expensive black turtlenecks, but he, like, made that decision. So now that’s one last thing, and I bet he did that with a ton of things. And that is what we are going to do with our ideal week that we’re going to create. So what it does, and I’m going we’re gonna going to go through the process here in a second, is it’s going to reduce our daily and weekly decision making on our time. So you’re not making you’re not doing your weekly planning, again, because I talk about, like, planning out each week and being intentional with our time, doing some time blocking. If you feel like that’s, you know, something you wanna do each week, right, I find that very helpful personally. But But then you’re not starting from scratch. You have kind of a template. Like, this is what my ideal week looks like. And then, again, when you’re creating this, you’re remembering the title of it, the ideal week. It doesn’t mean every week looks just like that because sometimes we have parent teacher conferences. Sometimes you might have additional IEP meetings. Sometimes you might have a dentist appointment or physical therapy, or you might have like, I had a few weeks ago, my daughter had a performance that had a dress rehearsal and, like, a million things. So that week was like, oh, yeah. We had a lot of extra stuff. Right? But it’s just kind of your template that you get to start with. Like, on a regular week, this is what I would like it to look like. This is when I’ll leave school on each day of the week, and maybe it’s not the same time. Maybe you know that you can’t leave right at contract time every day. Like, that would stress you out. Like, so you’re like, okay. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m going to stay longer. And then on the other days, I’m going to go home right on time or whatever. Again, it’s gonna be personal to you, and that is the beautiful thing about it. So I want to show you now, now that we’ve kinda talked about it, I’m actually going to pull up my section quick of the book. So here is I’ve got it pulled up on Kindle. I wanted you to see this visual example that I have right here before we get into the document. So the purpose of creating your ideal week is because each week when we’re trying to figure out all of the things that we need to do, it can feel daunting when we’re starting with a blank slate. But what if you didn’t have to start with a blank slate? What if you had something that you could pull out and be like, okay. Here’s kind of my template for the week, and then, oh, what needs to change now? Because then you kinda feel like you’re coming in. It’s almost like when I was writing this book even and had a blank page, and it was just like, oh, what do I write? And I found it a lot more fun that once I got a chapter down, even if it was super messy to go in and make, how do I fix this? Right? How do I make it even better? Or or, oh, this isn’t actually working. What do I need to do? It’s kind of like you’re going in and editing that ideal week, that schedule for your week each week. And, again, it’s going to look like whatever is going to work out for you. So here are the things that you might want to add your ideal week. Maybe your contract hours, or if you’re a homeschool parent, your current homeschool schedule. You can decide if you want your schedule in more detail or just put, like, these are my contract hours. Likely, you’re already doing your teaching planning somewhere else. You probably don’t need that in your ideal week. You could just put these are the hours I’m teaching because, again, this is a broad overview. It’s not about having every minute mapped out. It is just about kind of having a formula for your week. But things that you have every week, such as, like, weekly meetings, PLCs, if you’re a homeschooler, you might have co ops, if you have committees, after school activities, any extras in your teaching schedule that happen on a weekly basis, weekly classes, lessons, or activities for yourself. So, like, if you always go to Zumba or yoga or the gym, whatever it is, make sure you get that in there, like your regular schedule, volunteer work, side hustle time. So many of us teachers have a side hustle. Right? This is a great way to work it in and be like, oh, yeah. I actually do wanna build that TPT store, or I do wanna write my book, or I do wanna do the whatever. You add that in there too. If you have volunteer work you do or if you go to church or any of that, that can also go into your ideal week. So you’ll see here that we have this template where and maybe certain days, like, I go in early these days. Right? And then I’m gonna teach these hours. And this one, it does have you leaving the same time every day. It’s just an example. But you get to pick. Right? You get to decide. And I have a template for you, a free template that we’re going to put in the chat. I mean, it doesn’t even require email. It’s completely free. We’re just gonna drop the link in the chat for you. What if you have appointments weekly but at different days times? That is where you wouldn’t put it on your ideal week. That is where you do that adjusting each week. Like, I have things like that too. So that is where this is just the template for what it is, or it might be, like, online, which I’ll show. I usually coach in the club on Thursdays, but sometimes it’s Wednesdays. And, like, today, I did a podcast, but I don’t do that every week. But I just put, like, on Wednesday and Thursday, I put open for potentially this. Like, open for a potential podcast or coaching. So you could do something like that. Or, again, it could just be, like, you know, it’s not going to be things like dentist appointments or things that don’t happen every week. Those will be when you start with this as a template, and then you go in and edit it week to week because you’re doing your weekly planning. So it’s not the end all be all. Like, you have to follow this all the time, and it’s also the type of thing that might change as your seasons change. Right? But the reason why this is so helpful is because it can help you to have something to start with each week. I also like to have a little section, like, Wednesdays from two to four that is open for appointments. Yes. Exactly. That is like, you could be like, this is one, like, if I try to schedule dot like, for me, it’s Friday mornings. Because, again, it probably isn’t if you’re teaching in a classroom right now. For me, because I’m homeschooling and running this business, Friday mornings is currently in this season of life. When I was teaching, it was not Friday morning, so it was a different time. But, again, you might have your time where it’s like, yeah, Wednesdays, two to 4PM. That is when I schedule appointments. Okay. So I am going to stop sharing this one, and then I’m going to share that template. So Kinsey on team educate rejuvenate is going to pop that into the chat. I am going to switch my screens here. So give me just a moment to get that. So I’m going to share with you This is the document you’re getting. We’re giving you the full chapter 10 workbook pages. So when you purchase a copy of the book, Educate Remington oh, and I meant to have the meant to have my workbook here. I printed and bound it. It’s, like, a 30 pages of, like, all the exercises to help you apply what you do here. And don’t feel overwhelmed by that. You don’t have to do all of it. It’s just all available to you when you purchase the book. It’s like a free thing that’s included. Right now, in the chat, click that link. You’re gonna have all of chapter 10 because chapter 10 is where I really talk about time and intentional scheduling. Again, before we plan our week or do our ideal week, we wanna look at, like, what in general is urgent, important, nonurgent, or nonimportant. I’m not going to dive deep into this right now because, again, today, I have talked about this on educate, rejuvenate the podcast before. It is in the book. Today, we are, for the first time ever, really honing in on the ideal week because I feel like because I usually teach it in this full full length here that I teach in chapter 10, which, again, you’re going to want a copy of the book so you can really dive into the full process. But today, I really wanted to hone in on the ideal week because I feel like it kinda tends to get glossed over a little bit sometimes when really, for me, it has been such a powerful tool. And it can change seasons in your life change. Right? You can, like, maybe even quarterly, like, look at it. And, obviously, for summer, you’re going to probably need a different schedule too. Right? So what it is is we have we have from 5AM until 11PM here. You’re hopefully gonna have sleep on some of these hours, but we’re just you know, depending on if you’re an early bird or a night owl, we want to have you fully covered. So what you’re going to do is you’re literally going to think of everything you do on a week to week basis, write it out, write it down, and then figure out where in your calendar it goes. And I like to really again, because Rejuvenate is such an important piece of what we tend not to do as teachers. What is it you’re going to do to Rejuvenate? Do you go to the gym? Do you listen to podcasts you love? Do you come to educate Rejuvenate coaching calls? Do you have your own coaching or therapy, or do you go to yoga, or do you go to church, or what is it for you that you do for yourself? Do you go out with girlfriends on the weekend or guy friends or whatever friends? So, again, you can get all of that into your ideal week. Like, maybe and, again, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It could just be, like, oh, open for fun plans or whatever or gym time or self care. It can even just be self care, and you decide what that self care is that you need it to be at that time. So I really do like to say put in self care first. And then Wendy says counseling. Yes. That’s always great. Paul says awesome. LinkedIn says phenomenal. Oh, you guys are all so kind. So what you can do from here is just kinda fill it in. And, again, in that example, I’m I’m not sure if I actually walked over as well as I intended to. Do you want more of an example? Do you want me to go back to that? I got a little ahead of myself with showing you the template. But, really, you’re gonna just map it out on here. And I have my example here I could actually show super quick. So, again, you have it there’s two pages here. There’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You’d kinda lay it out so as, like, spread out. Right? So you see the times going on each. Vanessa says no. How do I link the template? So the template is linked in the comments. So whatever platform you’re on, it should just be in the chat. But if you have trouble finding it, you can always email us, especially if you’re watching this later and there are, like, a zillion comments. You can email us at hello@educateamrejuvenate.com, and we can send you this template. It’s completely free, so you’ll fill that out. It’s so simple. Like, I mean, it really is that simple, but it is so helpful. I’ll show you mine here really quick. Okay. So you have this, and then you can, like, reflect on your week and all that. So, again, what you do is at the beginning of each week and I talk about this in the educate and rejuvenate book. This ideal week is so you have the template. So then whenever it is on Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday morning, whenever it is you kind of map out your week and plan it, you have this to start with. So then it’s less decision fatigue. Right? There are certain decisions you’ve already made or, when you need to change things such as, like, when Hannah said, well, what if they have appointments that change week to week? That’s totally fine. That’s when then you just kinda you have a starting point, which then reduces the amount of decisions. And, again, it just helps so you’re not staring at a completely blank slate each week. Like, if you work with a planner or a Google Calendar and you look at it and it’s just blank and you’re like, oh, like, you feel that, like, that dread. I have to figure all of this out. Instead, you can have this. You can have it on paper, print it out like I do here, and you’re like, oh, I have this to refer to, or you might even start to kind of know it. Like, you kinda know your ideal week once you’ve done it. Like, I do right now. I already know when I’m working out. I know when I’m working. I know when I’m coaching. I know when I’m doing all these different things. In general, now there are changes. Right? Like, this podcast isn’t something I do every week. I do wanna start doing it more often. Wendy says I need something like that. Yeah. So let me show you my example quick. I don’t know why it keeps defaulting to that square. Is it backwards? No. So you’ll see here see how I just kinda marked it up and, like, have these and it’s not like you have to have every minute plan. Like, see, like, I have quite a bit open here. Then here, I just have open for potential club coaching. And and, again, mine looks different because I’m homeschooling and working on this company right now versus teaching. But if I were teaching, I would have had, like, what time I was going in, the hours I was going to work. I wouldn’t do by, like I taught third grade. Right? So I wouldn’t put, like, my breaking down, like, oh, I’m doing language arts here and math here. I wouldn’t worry about that on the ideal week template. Literally, I would just put these are the hours I’m teaching. This is when I get in. This is when I leave. Like, this is your overarching schedule for the week. And then, again, you have the second page for the rest of the week. Right? And I just kind of do blocks I like again, mine’s messy. Right? It’s not, like, perfect, but it’s not meant to be. So you have that template. It is free for you to use so you can put together your own ideal week. Then once you’ve created it, I need you that weekly planning. You’re just asking what else is happening this week. Oh, I have a doctor’s appointment, so I need to move this, or I need to get out of school a little bit early for that. Or, oh, I have this IEP meeting, so I’m not gonna leave at contract time. I’m gonna be leaving at this time. Like, you just make those adjustments, and you have it open for that. But what it helps with is you kinda make that decision ahead of time. So you’re like, if it you don’t have that additional IEP meeting or you don’t have that doctor’s appointment. You made that decision of I am leaving at this time. And so you get to you just, you know, kinda stick to that as best as you can. You’ve already made that decision. It’s not, oh, when am I going to leave? You just know. You know that I planned on leaving at this time. And you’ll create your first one, and then you’ll notice what works and what doesn’t, and that’s when you can change it. You can change it up. Right? You can be like, okay. I thought I could leave at 4PM every day, but that’s just not feasible for me. On these days, I’m going to stay later, or I’m actually going to make it my goal to leave at five, and I’m happy with that. And that’s when I can stick to. Whatever it is for you. Any questions so far? Wendy says, I feel burnout at 10AM. We get up at 04:30AM. Yeah. I feel that. I feel that. 04:30 is very early, Wendy. So Linda says, gotta jump off. Thank you for all you do. No worries. We’re we’re we’re glad you’re here for whatever time you’re here. She’s probably already gone, though. So, Chris says, love these ideas. Cynthia says, this is great. I heard you talk about this before, but having the visual is so helpful. I am so glad that that helped. So I do wanna talk about a few mistakes that people commonly make when they do this template. And we’re going to talk even more about this. I am doing a workshop in the educate and redo make club where I hope to have some of the people come on. It’s kind of like during our event. We had like, I taught the process of goal setting that I teach. And then on day two of the event, we had people come on, and they either already had it ready and we, like, improved it or we did it together. And everybody, whether they’re the person who came on or the person just watching, learned so much. You’re not going to just hear, like, oh, here’s this template, and here’s how you can fill it out. But you’re going to see the actual process of someone putting it together. So if you purchase a copy of the book, you get a full month of the club as a bonus. When you go to teachergoals.com/educatebonuses, you just have to put your order ID from Amazon or wherever you purchase the book, and you’ll get a free month. So you can join us on that workshop next week if you’re like, wait, Kelsey. I love the idea of this. I need a little bit more support. So that is happening. Or if you’re already a member, I see some of you here, some of our awesome educate and rejuvenate club members. We’ve got that for you. But I wanna let you all know here just a few mistakes that I see people tend to make. One is over scheduling. Right? Like, you make every single like, you don’t have any white space. Like, that’s a problem. Right? Because we all know that stuff does come up. Right? Oh, yeah. That’s what Chris says just now. I love time blocking, but I have a tendency to not allow enough time for my tasks. So I need to be better at allowing enough time. Yeah. I always try to allow more time than I think something will take. And then I make sure to have some white space in there too. And that means one thing, naturally, with that I’ve been getting better at is putting fewer things on my to do list, which sounded impossible to me for so long. But there are a lot of things that we think we have to do that when we really dig in deep about it, like, does my bulletin board need to be perfect? Oh, no. It doesn’t. I could spend a lot less time on that. So when we really take that time to dive in deep and we have our ideal week, we’re like, okay. I wanna leave by this time. How can I make that happen? It can really help. But, again, that’s where over scheduling, like, packing every minute and setting yourself up for burnout. Yeah. Embrace the white space like Chris says. So the next thing is not leaving buffer time. So, like, if you put things like, maybe, like, it was realistic, like, the amount of time, but you didn’t have any buffer in between. So that just made it so you burn out. Right? Where there’s no, like, oh, there’s no chance to breathe. Like, that can be hard too. And also being too rigid, like, taking this as gospel that you have to follow through completely, and it’s not. Right? It’s just something to help you. Like, nobody else is going to see it. It’s just to help you. So don’t be too rigid with it. So, again, those would be my tips for as you’re filling it out and as you’re utilizing it. And, again, I would say your first one you do is your rough draft, your first draft. And then as you live it for a few weeks, even one week maybe, you might see, oh, this is where I need to adjust it. And that’s why I mean, write in pencil so you can, edit it as needed or print another copy if there are a ton of changes you need to make. Hannah says, this week, I stepped down from leading something. I explained that I needed to focus on my mental health. They were so supportive and under and understanding. I love that, Hannah. And, yes, that’s an example of what I was just talking about. Like, probably at a certain point, you were like, no. There’s no way I could possibly get rid of that. But, really, maybe you can. It’s just kind of asking yourself. Right? Or, like, if you don’t, what are your reasons for it? Like, do you like your reasons for, like, yeah, I’m gonna keep this. And if you do, then that kind of makes you realize, okay. I I did have a choice. Right? I chose that I do want I do want a really nice bulletin board. That’s actually a priority to me. Right? Wendy said, I have five kids and lots of my own doctor’s appointments. Our calendar is crazy. I feel you, Wendy. Like, yeah, when you’ve got kids, like I mean, all of us, whether we’ve got our own kids or we’re teaching a class of 30 of our kids. Right? We’ve got so much going on, and I’m not arguing that. I’m not saying you don’t. Like, let’s be real. We do. Right? But it’s really just about, like, our relationship with time and getting to where, like, it’s okay if not everything gets done. I think a lot of it is about like, we talk a lot in educate and rejuvenate about, self, like, acceptance. And a lot of that we talk about towards the beginning of the book, like chapter one of the book, the things of just being an observer and noticing what’s going on. And really all the tools we talk about in the book will help when the time doesn’t go according to plan. So, again, the book is called educate and rejuvenate. I mean, there is the little one in the corner that’s been here the whole time, but all the all the concepts I talk about in there are really helpful. Okay. So let’s see. I have, like, a bunch of notes, but it really didn’t stick to them. So now I’ve I just really had a more of a conversation with all of you. So now I’m looking at my notes to seeing what I might have missed. If anybody has any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat. Vanessa said I would love an editable copy so I can plug in all the weekly things on top of it and change it every week. Oh, that is a great idea. We might have to think about that in the future. Chris says not feeling the plan is flexible. Life happens, but we can keep intentionality in mind. Yes. And the thing is, like, while you might create your ideal week and you don’t stick to it perfectly, you’re probably still doing way better than if you hadn’t have done it to begin with. Right? You’re still being a lot more intentional. I mean, the fact that you even have something to compare it to because for so long, so many of us have just, like, again, let everything just happen. Right? Like, all the things are just happening to us. And this is where we can be like, okay. These things I do need to do. These things, yeah. Like, I mean, there are meetings that come up we don’t have control over, and there are things that we don’t have control over. But we can focus on what we can. Right? Okay. So today was all about learning this ideal week and how you can apply it. So key take takeaways from today, we are talked about all the decision fatigue we have. Right? All the decisions we have to make every day. And the ideal week when we do that is helping to limit the amount of decisions we have to make while we’re doing our weekly planning. But the point of the ideal week is just to have a template that we use each week. It’s not to be the end all be all of your schedule. You will have things that change week to week that you’ll adjust, but it is a tool that you have to help you start off your week on the right track. Okay. I had so much fun being on the podcast with all of you today. Cannot wait to chat with you soon. I plan on doing another podcast with teacher goals here next month if I don’t see you before then. But I would love to see you at the workshop next week. Purchase a copy of the book if you haven’t yet, and you’ll get to join us. Alright. Take care, everybody. Thank you for joining me If you’re ready to make Educate and Rejuvenate not just a podcast you passively listen to, but a lifestyle that you put into action, it’s time to grab your copy on Amazon today. Or head to educateyourmergemate.com/book to read the first chapter and the introduction today. | 00:00:00.000 – 00:33:32.500