If you’re reading this around the time I’m writing this, then you’re stuck in quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. As of right now, I have been in quarantine for 6 full weeks. That is truly crazy to think about!

During those 6 weeks, I have been teaching through distance learning and also continuing to create resources for other teachers, as part of Educate with Ease.

For the first week of distance learning and quarantine, I was pretty paralyzed with a mixture of not knowing what to do and knowing there were a lot of things to be done. It wasn’t pretty, y’all. After a week of allowing myself to be in total freak-out mode, I made myself get it together.

The tips in this post are a few of the productivity hacks that I’ve been using during distance learning and quarantine that have really worked for me. But I want to stress this: these tips can be used even during a normal time of year!

Set work hours and honor them

I’m lucky, in that my district has set specific office hours that parents know we are online and available to answer questions. If your district has not done so, I highly suggest doing it for yourself.

Setting specific hours to be available to students and parents and setting specific hours to get other tasks completed works wonders for multiple reasons:

1. Parents know when to expect a response from you. They might be emailing you at 9 PM because that’s when they had a moment to sit down. But they will know not to expect a response until your office hours the following day. There is comfort in knowing what to expect.
   
2. You don’t have to feel guilty about not responding to all emails right away. This is huge! A concern I’ve seen over and over from teachers in the last few weeks is that they feel like they always need to be available. Setting specific hours sets boundaries so that you know “this might not get done right now, but it will get done during XYZ time period, so I don’t need to worry about it right this second.”

Setting work hours helps everyone! You are, of course, always going to have one or two people who don’t quite respect those hours. But that’s their problem, not yours. They can wait. And get over it, for that matter.

But here’s the most important thing about work hours–you have to actually honor them as well.

If you don’t honor your work hours, no one else will.

You can’t set work hours from 9-5 pm, but randomly answer emails that come in 8 pm. Because, the one time you decide you’re not going to work at 8 pm, parents will get angry that you’re not immediately responding… because you have before.

Chunk your work hours into blocks

I am terrible at staying on task. Here is a common scenario that occurred daily at the beginning of “working from home”:

I have been guilty of doing this for an entire day. Here’s the issue with this way of working: I feel like I worked all day, but also feel like I got nothing accomplished.

Sound familiar?

At first, I just thought that maybe I have some serious focusing issues. But then I thought to myself “remember that time you went to grad school while teaching full time and you would pump out papers like a boss?”

I was clearly able to work for long periods of time during another (particularly stressful) point in my life… so why can’t I do it now?

Here’s the thing, saying that you’re going to work an entire day nonstop is nonsense. You have to take breaks. And it helps to know when those breaks are. Knowing when a break is going to take place provides kind of a “light at the end of tunnel” mindset. If you know that you have a break coming up in a few minutes, it’s easier to leave the Instagram or Pinterest scrolling for then.

Enter, the Pomodoro Technique. Here are the basics of this technique:

1. Decide on a task to accomplish.
2. Set a timer for 25 minutes and work for the entire time.
3. Take a short break (3-5 minutes).
4. Repeat.
5. Take a longer break after you have completed 4 “pomodoros” (25 minute work blocks).

I don’t follow the time limits of Pomodoro to a T, but I use the general method and it works. I change the time limit of my “work blocks” depending on the tasks that I am completing. I’ve found that, for me personally, I work best with these time blocks:

• Lesson planning, teaching resource creation, and data entry: 50 minutes on/10 minutes off
• Writing blog posts, grading written work, and reading: 25 minutes on/5-10 minutes off

Find what time limits work for you. It might depend on the tasks that you’re completing, how much sleep you got the night before, or even how long you’re able to keep your children entertained while you work.

If you break up your day into chunks, I promise it will make you so much more productive.

And if you’re able to get your work done faster, you can spend the rest of your day focusing on you.

Set Three “Must Dos” for the Day

Let’s face it–we are in a profession where we will always have a never-ending to-list. But here is something to think about: We only have a certain number of hours in the day. And not all of them should be dedicated to working.

That super long to-do list you’ve made for yourself? I hate to break it to you, but it’s not all going to get done.

And here’s the thing… if you KNOW you’re not going to get that whole list done, why write it? It’s going to lead to you feeling like you didn’t accomplish your goals for the day. That’s a terrible feeling to have every day.

I have a running master list of all of the tasks that need to get done at some point. But I only look at it once a day, when I’m determining if a task from that list needs to get done that day. Otherwise, I create a list of 3 non-negotiable things that have to get done that day.

You read that right–THREE things. When I get those 3 things done, IF I have extra time, I will look at my master list and complete a few things. But, as long as I got my 3 things completed, I have accomplished what I set out to do that day.

I hope that these three productivity tips will help you to get more done, but also save your sanity! Remember:

• Set work hours and honor them.
• Chunk your work hours into blocks.
• Get rid of the long to-do list and determine 3 “must-dos” each day.

Struggling with productivity during distance learning because you feel like you’re constantly having to come up with activities? Check out these freebies!