I like to think of myself as a fairly adept manager of my time. I pomodoro (Kanban Flow is my site, since you asked), I use Google Tasks, and yet I've spent the past two months (since Spring Break, specifically) feeling several days and several dollars short, constantly.
I just gained some insight into why. It is currently after school, and I am in my office. I sat down with the intention of entering some (long-overdue) scores into the grade book. Here's what I did instead:
I know that this stuff matters. I learned to write well by reading exciting writing by adults I wanted to emulate. I never once found this writing in a textbook. But I loved writing since before I could write. Most people aren't like this. Most of the people I knew at school weren't like this. My students need a living, breathing mentor who can guide them towards the writers who can become their mentors.I spent a half an hour skimming the Slice Harvester blog (in which one man tries a slice from every pizza place in Manhattan) looking for a review that didn't include harsh profanity or references to past drug use, so I could share it with a student as a model for the piece he's writing comparing chicken wings from two different chains.
On the other hand, when I could have been checking that work is being done on our project, I was skimming blog posts about pizza. And now I'm blogging about it.
So, not quite the time manager I like to imagine I am.
Oh, and here's the blog post I eventually shared with the student. Yes, the comments are profane, but when are comments ever not?