How is class going this year?
If you’re like most mentors, one of two things tends to happen. Sometimes class prep takes over and pushes everything else aside, including your own homeschool. Other times everything happening at home fills your days so completely that there’s no room left to prepare, and you end up pulling a frantic all-nighter the evening before class.
I’ve done both. Eventually I learned two principles that helped me escape both outcomes:
- Structure Time, a foundational principle of Leadership Education
- The Container Concept, borrowed from decluttering expert Dana K. White
Principle 1: Structure Time
Rigid schedules don’t work for most of us. Neither does having no schedule at all. Structuring time is the Goldilocks option in between.
Instead of planning every hour, you divide your day into a few large blocks, each for a different kind of work or activity. What happens inside each block can change from day to day and may not even be planned out. But the start and end of each block are firm boundaries.
My weekdays look like this:
- Morning: Homeschooling my kids
- Afternoon: Work
- Evening: Family time
The morning block covers getting ready for the day, meals, daily chores, field trips, reading and listening to books, and whatever my kids need for school. It does not include dentist appointments, meetings, phone calls, bills, or errands. It’s time when I am 100% present with my kids.
The afternoon block is when I get things done: planning and prepping for my co-op class, Curriculum Square work, writing curriculum, bills, housework, errands, appointments, phone calls, and meetings.
The evening block is for family outings, dinner together, movies and shows, reading aloud, baking treats, and time with other families. Nothing from the work block goes here, though it sometimes overlaps with the homeschool block. I’ve made two carefully considered exceptions: my monthly board meeting and the Mentor Lab I lead on Tuesday evenings.
Principle 2: The Container Concept
Dana K. White teaches that a container (a shelf, a drawer, a closet) isn’t just a place to store things. It’s a limit. When the shelf is full, you don’t buy another shelf. You decide what matters most and let the rest go.
My time blocks work the same way. They’re containers, and they keep any one part of my life from swallowing the whole day. Any of them could, if I let it.
Treating time this way has shown me how much I can realistically get done in a week. It has also made it much easier to say no to things I know won’t fit.
Going one level deeper: structuring the work block
On the four weekdays that aren’t co-op days, I’ve found it helpful to give my afternoon work block a focus:
- Monday: Co-op work. I meet with my co-mentor to plan and prep, and before and after that meeting I do everything else class needs that week.
- Tuesday and Thursday: Curriculum Square work.
- Wednesday: Household management. Appointments, errands, bills, laundry, cleaning and decluttering, yard work, meal planning, and grocery shopping.
Because class prep has its own container, it doesn’t creep into my mornings with my kids or my evenings with my family. And because it has a guaranteed slot, it doesn’t get crowded out either.
Here’s the rule that holds it all together: if I can’t get it done in the block of time set aside for it, it probably isn’t happening.
That might sound harsh, but it’s actually freeing. Try sketching out your own three blocks this week and see what changes.