Get Organized Digitally! The Educator’s Guide to Time Management

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program my good friend, Dr. Frank Buck. Frank is a veteran school leader with a career in education spanning almost 30 years. Today, he is a writer, speaker, and coach in the areas of organization, time management, and productivity. Global Guru's top 30 ranked Dr. Buck number one in the time management category, three years running.

[00:35]

And he's the author of several books on time management, including his newest, Get Organized Digitally, The Educator's Guide to Time Management.

[00:45] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:47] SPEAKER_01:

Frank, welcome back to Principal Center Radio. Justin, appreciate you having me. Looking forward to this. Well, I'm excited about the new book. You have, for a long time, been the go-to person on a very, very important topic for school leaders, and that is how to just deal with everything, how to stay organized, how to stay on top of just a huge volume of work and information. that we deal with.

[01:07]

And increasingly, much of that work is digital. So what did you see happening in the profession? What changes did you see happening? And what shifts did you see that leaders need to make that informed this new book, Get Organized Digitally?

[01:21] SPEAKER_00:

Going way back, I started to see so much stuff come to me digitally as a principle, email especially. Like so many people, my day timer, that paper planner and I were inseparable. But that system started to fall apart a little bit when more and more stuff started coming digitally. So like 2001, set aside the paper planner and have been digital ever since. But the thing that really sort of was the impetus for this book was the pandemic. If it hadn't been for technology in many places, we wouldn't have had school.

[02:01]

So whereas we've had teachers who have been very good with digital products, At the same time, we have had many teachers for whom technology was OK. If I've got it fine, if I don't have it fine. And still so many paper based teachers. Suddenly, everybody became a digital teacher and is looking for the how to do it. So what we tried to do here and I'm proud of the outcome of this book. I'm proud of what we've been able to do.

[02:33]

in order to put everything together where things, it's not a bunch of little tips, where everything builds on everything else. And as you implement more and more of the book, everything becomes easier because it all just builds on everything else you've done.

[02:50] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I love that kind of systems approach because I feel like one of the big challenges for us with technology is that everything feels so fragmented, right? You have your email. You have your messenger system, Remind, or whatever. You have your student information system. You have people. I was an elementary principal, and people would give me notes on scraps of construction paper.

[03:10]

We have all these things. different systems and the good old got a minute, grab you by the elbow in the hallway. So we have all these different systems that don't necessarily talk to one another. And I feel like we desperately need kind of one system to bring things together. So take us into that. What do you recommend that people do to set themselves up to deal with that fragmentation and to really get organized digitally?

[03:33] SPEAKER_00:

My first recommendation is get a good digital task list. There's so many of them out there. I use Remember the Milk now, which I know you had used at one time very successfully. There's some good ones out there. Todoist is very good. Asana is very good.

[03:48]

TickTick is very good. But it gives you that one place for everything. Back in the day when you had your paper planner, you thought about something you needed to do. You thought, when do I want to see this task? You flip the book open to that page. You jotted it down on that page.

[04:06]

And then the most glorious sound in the world was the sound of that book slamming shut. You had just earned the right to forget about that task. And on the appropriate day, you were going to automatically see it again. So it's like, how do we bring that elegance to a digital world? So now it's the same thing. I think about something I have to do.

[04:29]

I open Remember the Milk. I put it in there. I say, when do I want to see that again? Give it that due date. And I earned the right to forget about it. Only now I can even do it with my voice.

[04:41]

I can sit on the couch while I'm watching TV, turn to the little smart speakers sitting on top of the piano and just talk. And it goes on my list. And so many things that we're able to do so much with automation. For example, okay, I'm standing in the grocery store line, reading my Twitter feed, because that's a whole lot better to do than reading the tabloids on the radio. And so, you know, you're reading through your Twitter feed and here's a tweet with a link to a good article. You'll want to read the article and But you really don't have time to do that.

[05:15]

Stay in the grocery store line. So how do I get back to that thing later? Because of a little automation with if this and that, I just like the tweet. It's like the tweet and go on. A little automation in the background says, OK, if on Twitter, Frank likes a tweet, go over to remember the milk and create a new task that has a link back to that particular tweet. And now forget about it.

[05:44]

And so then I work in my list and there it is. So it's like I can be buried in things that I have to do, but I have the confidence that it's right there on the list and it's going to come back to me on the day that I need to see it. And if it's a repeating task and good gracious, I talk about how there is no more cyclic business in the world than education in terms of the things that we do. every year at the same time, every month at the same time, every week. So once you've done it once, you know, you throw it on the list and say repeat every July 14th, and you don't have to worry about what am I going to forget. It just comes back to you at the right time.

[06:29]

Since we're all adults here, is it okay if I use a four-letter word on the principal's center? No.

[06:35] SPEAKER_01:

Our producer will take care of it if not.

[06:39] SPEAKER_00:

All right. I'm going to use my favorite four-letter word, easy. I do what I do because it's easy.

[06:46] SPEAKER_01:

So a couple of things there that you highlighted that I think are really critical. Having a to-do app. And it's easy not to have one. I mean, I think probably most people don't have an app that they've chosen on purpose where they keep their tasks. I think email becomes the default because other people send us email whether we like it or not. You have to check it.

[07:04]

So that becomes kind of the default place. And I find a lot of people are not using a to-do app at all. Or perhaps this is more the camp that I fall into. You pick a new app. start using it, and then it starts to get full of stuff you don't want to do. And then you go think, I might need to go look for a different app.

[07:20]

I'll just leave all those tasks over there. So I feel like it has to be integrated into the habits. How do we get into the habit of actually following up? Because it's easy to put things in a system and then just kind of leave them there. Any advice for us on the actual follow-through? Because it's so easy to stay busy all day without even looking into your to-do list.

[07:45]

Other people would gladly prevent you from getting to your to-do list all day long. How do we make sure we actually get back to that stuff that we write down?

[07:52] SPEAKER_00:

For me, one of the big secrets is, again, going back to that word easy. I want to make that list so easy that I would rather work that list and check Facebook, check Twitter, look at what voicemail or email came in. So when you look at a task, and it's been sitting there on the list for a while, something like solve world hunger. Well, yeah, that's great. That's very grand, but But you tell me how. Where on the other hand, if one of your tasks was buy shoe strings, at the end of the day, shoe strings will be involved.

[08:30]

I know where to go to get them. I know how much they cost. I know what they look like. I know how to install them when I get them home. Solve world hunger, I'm not so sure. So it's going to sit on the list for a while.

[08:41]

So I think so much of it is taking a little bit of time to break those things down so that what's on your list is so easy to do that it is attractive. And I like to batch similar items on the list so that I can make a bunch of phone calls back to back, run errands back to back. Let me see all the things other people owe me back to back so that I can kind of, on a Friday afternoon, check up with a bunch of different folks on how are we coming with that? Are you ready to send this to me? That sort of thing. To me, that's a lot of it.

[09:15]

Also, because I do put everything in one place, then There's really only one place to look. It's like I'm either going to be in my list or I'm going to be just vegetating somewhere. And I think since I've been I've been doing it so, so long. Yeah. And going back to what you were saying about people not using the list. That's another reason that I start with that in the book.

[09:42]

And when I do live workshops that I really emphasize that if you get a room full of people and you ask them, how many of you, if you were going to look up an address or a phone number, you would look at something different. digital to do it. Every hand in the room goes up. They're all going to look at their phone. Nobody's going to pull out a pencil and paper address book anymore. When it comes to context, we're there.

[10:04]

And when you ask the same room full of people, if you were going to put something on your calendar or you were going to try to find something that's on your calendar, what would you look at it? How many of you would look at something digital? Over half the hands will go up, but far fewer hands than them. And then when you say your task, if you're going to add something to your task list or you're going to look at your, what are you looking at? How many of you are looking at something digital? Well, now the hands just drop, you know.

[10:39]

And when you peel back the onion for those that are actually saying, yeah, I'm keeping my task digital. When you say how, it generally is two things. I put them all on my calendar along with my appointments because I just don't have any other place to put them. Or I use that little yellow legal pad looking thing on my iPhone, which is fine for the grocery list for this afternoon. But it's terrible for that task that you need to do two weeks from Thursday or that task that you need to do two months from now, and then once a year ever after that. So, so few people have that dedicated digital task manager.

[11:19]

So I think that is our greatest improvement opportunity. And those I find who do and do adopt it and really use it, it's life-changing.

[11:29] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, makes such a difference. And to go back to the cyclical idea, the idea that everything goes in cycles, whether it's the school year or even a quarter or a week, or even the day you know we have these these routines that those tools can can kind of plug right into and we can say all right what's what's on the list today and you made this point earlier and i think this is so crucial anything that's not for today is not in your way right it's out of sight out of mind until that right day rolls around and i know you're you're a big fan of particular file which i've been calling the the future file that sense of the future and out of sight out of mind yeah

[12:05] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, I was like eight years old when I saw my dad using that system. He was a lawyer in a one-man shop, and every morning he pulled out that one filing cabinet drawer, pulled out that one folder, and there was his whole day in that one folder. And as an eight-year-old kid, that intrigued me. I thought, that is so neat. And then to watch at the end of the day where he had all of these papers on his desk, and it was...

[12:32]

Okay, this little pack of papers goes in the 27th because this person's coming back to see me on the 27th and he finishes and his desk is clean again. So as a first year teacher, I was using that and using that religiously and still use it to this day. And it's the same thing. Here's a piece of paper. When do I want to see it again? Drop it in the tickler file.

[12:55]

It happens. Here's this task I need to do. When do I want to see it again? Put it in Remember the Milk with a date, and I see it on that date. It's like it's the exact same thing. If it's paper, I have a system.

[13:10]

If it's digital, I have a parallel system.

[13:13] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you use that word life-changing. This is the one thing that I've had people multiple times come up to me and say, Justin, I saw you talking about that tickler file or the future file at a conference presentation, and it changed my life like multiple people. have said that. And I think just the power of having a clean desk every day or an empty email inbox and just being able to see only what I need for today really takes a job that can be so overwhelming, right? Every day can be so overwhelming if we can clear off some of that.

[13:42] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. You know, look at the person who doesn't have the tickler file, the person who doesn't have the digital task list. There's stuff sitting everywhere. You know, the pile sitting on the back right hand corner of the desk. Well, that's my reminder next Thursday when I go to that meeting to take that stuff. And we got stuff taped on the wall and it's on the refrigerator.

[14:03]

And it's like it's all there. And then next Thursday, we walk off without that pile that we've been looking at. It has now blended into the background. And here's the pitiful part. We beat ourselves up and we call ourselves dumb. We call ourselves stupid because how could we be so forgetful?

[14:26]

We got to be kind to ourselves. There is so much going on in our world. We cannot just remember it all and we can't have things just sort of sitting around. It's not going to work. Make it go away and let the system bring it back to you when you need it. And then your gift is you can be 100% present.

[14:49]

You know, I know both you and I have 100 things we could be doing right now. But the only thing I'm thinking about is this interview right now. And I know it's exactly the same for you because I know how you operate.

[15:03] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's that idea of a system that we can trust, right? We've probably both gotten emails since we've been on this interview, but they're there. They're still going to be there. We're not going to miss them. We're going to be able to check them when they're there. And I think so often we're just worried that we're going to miss something if we don't pay attention to everything at once.

[15:21]

And that creates this just kind of feeling of overwhelm so much of the time. Let's talk a little bit about email if we could, because certainly that's something that I'm hearing from administrators that it's always been a problem, but it's probably worse than ever now. So how can you help with email?

[15:39] SPEAKER_00:

Mine is empty every day. It's a system. So here we go. Look at your email. How many of the things sitting there are there because they're reminders of things you need to do? You know, it's an email that says, we got this event.

[15:53]

It's this day. It's this time. Here are the driving directions. Here's the agenda. Blah, blah. So we leave it in our email because that's good information to have.

[16:00]

No, that needs to go on your calendar. And years ago, I realized I can take that email if I'm using Outlook. I can drag it to the calendar button. It creates the event. I can delete the email. If I'm in Gmail, I click the little three dots, it says create event.

[16:15]

It does the same thing. All those emails that are things to do, okay, my rule is if I can do it right now, just do it, be done with it, delete the email. If I can't do it right now, That's a to-do that needs to go on the to-do list. And remember the mail for a signer to do is any of those good task managers give you this little secret email address that you can just forward to that address and it's on your task list. Now I can get rid of the email and that to-do is over on my to-do list. Some of the other secrets you have, it's reference information.

[16:53]

Oh, it's a cookie recipe. Wonderful. But I don't want to save it in my email. All right, where do you keep reference information? Is it Evernote? If so, forward it to your secret Evernote email address.

[17:06]

Do you keep it in OneNote? Forward it to your OneNote email address. Is it something that you would keep in Google Drive? Well, there's a little Chrome extension called Save to Google Drive. Click. That recipe is now sitting over in Google Drive.

[17:22]

Delete the email. Or you can print a PDF and file it wherever you want to. Now your reference information is no longer sitting in email. And then here's the biggie. All of those emails that you're saving just in case. Documentation, which is great.

[17:40]

And here's where people start making all kind of little file folders over here and dragging an email to all these different file folders. Well, it's just 100 different places to look. You're losing stuff. Now, in Gmail...

[17:55]

put a check at the top, highlight them all, click Archive. And now they're sitting over there in All Mail. You can search All Mail. But now they're not sitting there in your inbox. I have literally worked with people with over 50,000 emails in an inbox. And when we got through in one sitting, they were empty for the first time in their life.

[18:19]

And it was simply having a sense of like, this is so easy. And now I know what to do with each kind of email and I can get back to empty so that every email that's in the inbox means one thing. This is a decision I have yet to make. It's all the new stuff that's come in since last time I checked. And yeah, there are times when I'm just fried. I don't want to deal with it.

[18:47]

But it's three emails I don't want to deal with instead of 30,000 emails of which there are these last three I don't want to deal with. But if it's in the inbox, it's a decision that I have yet to make.

[19:00] SPEAKER_01:

You mentioned the apps Evernote and OneNote. And we've talked a little bit about email. We've talked about having a task manager. What's this other category of app that we need to think about that we can maybe save things to, forward things to? It's not email. It's not really a task manager.

[19:15]

Tell us about that.

[19:16] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Evernote or OneNote. One thing I talk a lot about in the book is the difference between digital notes and digital documents. You know who would really understand this? our grandparents. Grandma, wonderful cook. And all those recipes, they were on note cards, a card for each recipe.

[19:40]

She could put them in any order she wanted to. In the corner, she might write things like dessert, salad, or Timmy, or, you know, the name, you know, this is this relative's favorite dish. Or, you know, that chili recipe, October. Yeah. And She didn't haul out the typewriter to do those kinds of things. Things that didn't need to be on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper.

[20:07]

Heck, they were on note cards. And then when the church says we're putting together a cookbook, that's when she hauled out the typewriter and made a document. Well, we've been making everything digital documents forever. Evernote gave us another way to do things, and it's Pal OneNote. If you're heavily invested in the Microsoft Office arena, it's the parallel of Evernote. A place to put reference information that doesn't need to be printed out on an 8.5 by 11 piece paper, because face it, most of our information, we're never going to print it out.

[20:46]

We need to be able to get stuff in there easily, find it when we need it, share it effortlessly when we need it, And Evernote does such a beautiful job of that. Like in the book, I talk about a scenario. Let's say that a student runs in your office and says, you got to come up to Ms. Smith's room where the sub is, you know, and you go up there and some disasters happen. You'd probably want to, once you've determined nobody's actually hurt, the science experiment's just kind of blown up everywhere. You'd probably want to maybe take a picture of what you saw.

[21:24]

Well, we've all got a camera on our phone. And then maybe a student says, I know what happened. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you what happened. They're talking so quick. You can't write anything down.

[21:33]

But you go, well, I've got a voice recorder on my phone. I'll just hit that. And there's some other little notes I want to take. Well, I've got some kind of little note taking. Every phone's got some kind of little note taking app. When you get back to your office and, well, the pictures are in the camera roll with the other pictures from your wild party last night.

[21:51]

The voice note is with your other voice notes. The things you typed out are in the little notes. They're in three different places. With Evernote, you create one note, hit the little camera icon, take all the pictures you want, hit the little voice, hit the little microphone, record whatever audio you need to record. hand type, anything you want to. And it's all saved in that single note.

[22:19]

Get back to your office. It's synced there on your computer. You need to alert the superintendent of what's happened. You can just email him the note. He can see the photos. He can hear the audio.

[22:30]

And again, going back to that four-letter word, it just makes life so easy. So Evernote, or if you're heavily involved in the Microsoft Office arena, OneNote, either one of those two, that's the place for your reference information that doesn't have to be typed out on eight and a half by 11 piece of paper.

[22:53] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I feel very fortunate to have found Evernote at the time I did, I think just prior to becoming a principal. And then every single thing that I ever documented in any way is probably in my Evernote account. Just having that kind of default place, I think is so powerful. And like you said, it's not in three different places, depending on whether it's a picture or text or a photo or audio recording. It's just all in one place. And I think that lends itself to so many good habits as far as documentation and knowing where did I put this and not letting things Sometimes we'll take paper notes and we'll think, oh, I need to type those up later.

[23:26]

And then, of course, we never get to it and forget which notebook they're in and so forth. So any meeting notes, any observations, all that stuff I just threw in there. And it's, you know, even 10 years later, it's easy to find.

[23:37] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And yeah, you mentioned observations. You know, for those of us that don't have a particular form that is mandated by the school system and state, that kind of thing. And maybe you just like to go in, say, with a blank piece of paper. Right. Well, the digital alternative, Evernote.

[23:55]

You walk into that teacher's class, create a new note, and you're able to enter text. But it's the core room. And boy, that wonderful voice that teaches, or the sound of the kids to just be able to hit the little microphone. And so the observation is more than text. It's a little recording of what you're hearing. And then maybe even a photo or two of that student that has that great posture and that mouth is just really open.

[24:25]

And you're thinking, wow, that's the textbook example of posture for a middle school choral student. And now all that rich information is in that note.

[24:39] SPEAKER_01:

Now, we should mention that you are a former band director, right? Yes. Lots of music experience. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that and how that kind of shaped your subsequent career as an administrator.

[24:50] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I thought I would be a junior high band director for 30 years. And early on, I realized about half of being a band director was organization. You wouldn't believe how many tasks are involved with putting on a junior high band concert. Everything from getting it on the calendar for how is the equipment going to get where it needs to be and get back and getting the programs printed and the tickets. And oh, my gosh, the list goes on and on and on. But I realized.

[25:25]

You know what? There are a lot of tasks, but every time you do the concert, it's the same task. If you can trap them all in one place, you got it made. And I started realizing, as others talked to me about administrations, One guy in particular, former band director, then a very, very prominent middle school principal, he said, Frank, running a school is just like running your band program, only on a larger scale. You have your band boosters, I have my PTA. You have to budget for purchase of instruments, I have to budget for my school.

[26:02]

It's the same thing. And he was so right. So one year when we got a new principal, And I saw the difference that one person could make in an already high performing middle school. I rethought being a band director for 30 years. I thought this is something that I can do. And it has been just a marvelous journey.

[26:27]

I've kind of been pegged, at least statewide, as that administrator with the music background. So when it comes time to write the course of study for arts education, well, who do we want to have? Well, he's got administrative experience and he was a very successful band director. Let's get Frank and band directors. Frank, you were a principal. How would you approach this problem?

[26:55]

And administrators who would say, Frank, you were a band director. How would you approach this problem that I'm having with my with my band? So it has really been a. a neat meshing of those two worlds.

[27:08] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Thank you for speaking to that. Cause I, you know, I hear from a lot of people who are maybe considering moving into administration and thinking to themselves, well, I'm not a core academic teacher, right? Like I'm not a language arts teacher. And if you're going to be a principal, you have to be a core academic teacher, whatever that means. Right.

[27:25]

But I see so many great leaders come from, yeah, the arts from band. Absolutely.

[27:30] SPEAKER_00:

Earl Franks. The executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals was a band director and a very, very fine one. And there's so many people in different walks of life who, you know, music was there in their background. I know we just lost a great one as far as college football very recently before this interview, Bobby Bowden. Bobby Bowden called me on the phone about a year ago when I was nominating someone, a very old, much older band director, in deceits many, many decades ago, for a particular award, who had been a neighbor of Bobby Bowden. And to hear Bobby Bowden talk to me about his background, his own background as a trombone player, how much it meant to him, how much he loved the band.

[28:23]

I think all of us who are in administration We all have that unique background and those unique things that we did coming up that other people may not even know about that makes us who we are. So no, I don't think you have to be a member of the core four to be a good principal. No, I think you need to be good at whatever it is that you were doing. I think excellence breeds excellence. If you were an excellent choral director, you're going to be an excellent principal.

[28:57] SPEAKER_01:

And I'll say, on the other hand, for people for whom organization is not maybe their primary skill set, but find that they're very strong instructionally as maybe a math teacher or an instructional coach and find themselves in an administrative role through that route, they can get your book. They can learn from you. Yeah.

[29:16] SPEAKER_00:

You know, get the book, get better yourself, or find the things that you do well and you do poorly and surround yourself with people that compliment you. If you're not a very organized principal, when it comes time to hire an assistant principal, get someone who is or hire that administrative assistant who is and who can give the book to those people so that that person can manage your email and come to you and say, okay, Here are the five things you really need to get done today. Starting with this one, I put together a little list for you and, you know, and let you go with it.

[29:55] SPEAKER_01:

Love it. And I definitely want to encourage admin teams to study this book together and figure out, you know, there are probably opportunities where they can use the same tool, where they can use the same system and really get on the same page.

[30:06] SPEAKER_00:

You know, just like back in the days where a whole administrative team would go to a workshop and they had all learned how to use the Franklin planner together. You remember those days? And, you know, these days, again, if everybody's using the same tool, you don't have to use the same tool, but using the same tool makes it even stronger. Where I can put something in Remember the Milk and then...

[30:28]

within that app, delegate that task to someone else. I can put something in the comments. They see it. They can do likewise. They check it off. It's done.

[30:37]

I see that it's been checked off. It's done. It just, again, going back to that four-letter word, easy.

[30:43] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Get Organized Digitally, The Educator's Guide to Time Management. Frank, if people want to learn more about your work, where's the best place for them to go online?

[30:53] SPEAKER_00:

Come to my website, frankbuck.org. I've been blogging since like 2005, so if there's something you're interested in related to organization time management, I've probably written quite a few blog posts about it. And if you choose to get on my email list, which will be very obvious once you get there, how to do two free gifts right off the bat, you get the first chapter of my last book, Get Organized, Time Management for School Leaders, second edition. You get the first chapter of that, which talks all about the particular file, paper-based thing, get your desk clean. And then a few days later, you get my ebook on how to set up and use Remember the Milk so that you can really Get that system going.

[31:38] SPEAKER_01:

So frankbuck.org is the place to go. And again, the book is Get Organized Digitally, The Educator's Guide to Time Management. Frank, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. It was a pleasure.

[31:50]

Thanks, Justin.

[31:51] Announcer:

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