The Secrets of Productivity for Early Childhood Educators

An issue of Fast Company featured the secrets of productive people. Since I always feel that there is often too much opportunity for the time I have, I wanted to explore what productivity means in the context of our daily practice as early childhood professionals.

The people interviewed for the magazine article have access to resources not available in early childhood education. Still, there were some great nuggets of wisdom we can apply in our lives. In past articles, I wrote about the importance of finding a career where what you enjoy doing and what you are good at intersect. 

Productive people do not engage in work that is not central to what they want to share in the world. Productive people choose work that is meaningful to them. When we choose work that is meaningful to us, success follows.

The measurement of success transpires in many ways other than money. Success is the quality of the work completed rather than the quantity. In early childhood education, we will always have some aspects of quantity because our work focuses on providing service for families based on time.

How do we increase the quality of our work in our classrooms when we are not with the children?

Productive people tend to.

Work undistracted for bursts of time on specific tasks or projects.

Schedule time to work on your projects. Try to work for the entire scheduled time without becoming distracted. Minimize disruptions because context switching takes away our focus and creativity. Block out time on your daily schedule for the most critical projects. Avoid email and social media until the most important tasks are complete. After experimentation with your schedule, you will understand what plan works for you and supports the needs of your practice.

Save email for limited durations at specific points of the day.

If you check email regularly, consider these tips for using it effectively. Never let email distract you from your work with children, co-workers, or parents. Email often creates a sense of urgency and the need to respond. Answering email as it arrives wastes time. A better practice is to respond to emails at designated times each day.

Interact with people daily.

Check in with each team member daily and use this time to answer questions or concerns in your program. Checking in with others creates community and limits surprises that can clog our inboxes or require longer meetings to unpack.

Keep short-term, low-cognitive tasks to times of high disruption.

Save small tasks that don't require high mental energy or time to the busiest parts of the day. Working on low cognitive tasks for a set time each day allows us to stop working when necessary to support others in person or by phone. Practice being fully present in the moment by putting aside our current project with grace and patience. Keep an inbox with small tasks and complete them as time allows during the high traffic times of the day. A vital practice when working with others is always to arrange your space facing away from the computer. Being away from a screen helps make conversations with others highly productive. Being available during low-cognitive tasks reinforces our protected blocks of work time set aside for high-cognitive activities.

Productivity is a muscle that we need to work to develop. It takes time, practice, intentionality, and experimentation.

How are your developing your productivity muscle?