Teachers – A Day in the Life of a Teacher – Culling the Items You’ve Captured and Collected

29th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments

There are five phases to helping yourself get things under control: capturing, collecting, culling, consciously ordering, and then carrying out. This article focuses on phase 3, culling. During this phase you make decisions on the items that you have – and it’s the decision-making process that’s the key to being organized and productive.

‘Cull’ is a word you may or may not have heard lately but it describes perfectly what this phase entails. The word ‘cull’ originally meant “to put through a strainer.” Synonyms include select, choose, remove, winnow, sort, screen, and separate. In this phase, which occurs after you have captured and collected your incoming items, you will go through all of those items and make decisions about what to keep, what not to keep, and what to do with what you do keep.

This ‘cullling’ phase gives you the tools to convert your confusion about what to do with your incoming items into one of five sensible decisions. Although you make a multitude of decisions each day regarding your students, your curriculum, what grades students have earned, which committees to serve on, etc. you may never have thought about organization and productivity as decision-making.

Here are the decisions you can make during the culling process:

  1. Delete, dump, discard. This applies to mail, paper, and other physical items. It applies to emails, voice mails, and the like. It applies to ideas that pop into your head, and to request from others, e.g., “Would you mind loaning me $100 today?” Decide to delete.  
  2. Delegate to someone else. You can delegate by handing off the request, forwarding the email, setting up a conversation with a person or team, or in some other way involving someone else in the task or project. So your second possible choice – with those items you didn’t already delete, dump, or discard is ‘delegate.’ Decide to delegate.  
  3. Do the task. This is a wise decision if you have a few minutes of time and it’s a short task. Sign the form, add your name to a list, put away the books that were dropped off in your in-box, call the parent who called you back when you left a message this morning. Just take care of, i.e., ‘do’ the task. Decide to do.  
  4. Determine a time to do it later. Some tasks or projects are to big to undertake right now – or they are more connected to a future day, week, or month. This is where you’ll be so glad you have your 1-31 and January – December (tickler) files. You determine when you’re going to take care of whatever it is you’re culling and either put the entire item or a reminder about that item in your tickler file. Decide on doing the task later – and tickle it for that later date.  
  5. Define it as a reference item. Part of what you’ve captured and collected does not warrant and action, i.e., a “do.” However, you want to keep it for future reference. This is where your filing system comes into place. You file the item either in your file cabinet, in a carefully-labeled container, or on a bookshelf where it will be retrievable (key word!) later. So, the last decision during the culling process can be to define something as a reference item (and they put it in its retrievable location!)

Use these decisions to help you get your workspace (and home space) orderly – and so those spaces support you in your productivity quest.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

(c) 2009 Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D. | Emphasis on Excellence, Inc. | Receive more ideas like this by subscribing (free) to www.TopTenProductivityTips.com

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