Setting Your Future Self Up For Success

I don’t know about you, but on the eve of a big trip, I tidy up my house and I take time to put fresh, clean, crisp sheets on my bed just before I depart. The holiday break is coming up, and I will be traveling. I am cleaning up my flat and my fresh clean sheets are ready to be put on the bed just before I head to the airport later this week. 
I call this “setting my future self up for success.” 

Why? After a big trip, it is always nice to return home. But. It is even better to return to a clean house, and then tuck into a fresh, clean set of sheets in bed on that first night back. It makes the homecoming feel extra sweet. 

And as I tidied up my flat, I got to thinking… We have opportunities to set our future selves up for success in schools too. 

Many schools are closing out the academic year and heading out on summer holiday. Other schools, such as the one where I’m currently serving, are closing out the first half of the year and the long mid-year holiday break is about to begin. 

These extended breaks present a fabulous opportunity for us to “set our future selves up for success.”  

Most leaders and educators make travel plans and/or plans with their families and friends during these breaks.Those travels, family reunions, and fun events are much improved experiences when you don’t have unfinished business looming over your head. For leaders, that includes hiring, planning professional learning days, and organizing schedules. For teachers, it includes first-day-back lesson planning, classroom organization, and tidying up data entry. 

More years ago than I care to think about, a wise mentor taught me about setting my future self up for success as an educator, and I’m so grateful to them for this pearl of wisdom. They called it “being planful.”

As a leader, ensuring you are handling the day-to-day business of the school prior to an extended break AND balancing that with time to organize and plan is not just nice. Being planful is critical. Organizing your calendar to do both things is a necessary balancing act that helps ensure the mental health of your team and yourself. How so? 

Because paid vacation should be true vacation - it should not be unpaid work days labelled as “vacation” on the calendar. 

And so, I’ve collaborated with my leadership team on a number of fronts over the past few weeks to set our future selves up for success by being planful. We mapped out our hiring strategy, ensuring we have all positions hired or pipelined before departure. We have already built out our agenda and cadence for leadership team days, teacher pro-dev days, and our new family onboarding day. We have also already set up and calendared required safety/security training. There has been a lot planfulness going on beyond these things, obviously, but those are the highlights. 

The reward of our planfulness is that we can step off campus on Thursday this week, knowing we are “locked and loaded” for our return later in July. Our plans are thorough, we know who is responsible for what, and in most cases, we’ve even completed the presentation materials and supplemental tasks that pro-dev necessitates. Aside from an emergency, there will be no reason I need to interrupt their holiday vacation time. Vacation will actually be vacation. 

Planfulness serves two goals in this case. It helped us set our future selves up for success in that our back to school weeks will go well and be thoughtfully executed instead of being a last-minute rush of crazy. It also means that we can be authentically connected and present for our vacation time with family and friends, too. It’s a win-win.   

My hope is that my team has a well-earned vacation and that they are able to unplug from school life. It is an important gift to give them after a lot of hard work this past semester. And yes, I plan to also unplug from work and tune in to my family and friends during the holiday break. We need that recharge time to come back and pour our care into those whom we serve. 

Here’s to planfulness. 

Here’s to setting our future selves up for success. 

I hope that you too have set your future self up for success. And, I hope that all educators everywhere enjoy the holiday break, be it the end of a school year, or the midway point.