This past Sunday I traveled to Phoenix in order to present at a national conference for school business officials. When my teenagers found out where I was going, my trip quickly took on new meaning. To them, the conference was really only a means to a loftier purpose, which was to shop at a local clearance store called Last Chance.

For the uninitiated (which included this author until very recently), Last Chance is Nordstrom’s only true clearance store in the country (as opposed to Nordstrom Rack, which offers savings when compared to Nordstrom stores but not to this degree). Clothes, shoes and accessories that end up here are sometimes new, sometimes used, and often damaged. This merchandise comes to Phoenix because it was accepted as a return somewhere along the way and could not be sold in any other Nordstrom store. Last Chance sells it at steep discount, and offers shoppers hope that they might to get their hands on high-end Italian and other products that would otherwise be cost prohibitive for them. As you might imagine, shopping at this store has the feeling of being part Marshall’s, part Grand Central Station, and part Black Friday.

For me, it was quite the experience. Shopping for my children with my outdated sense of style is hard enough (especially as one is a girl, for whom I was told that I have no sense of fashion). To do so while navigating through the bustling store made matters all the more interesting. Suffice it to say that any return trip to Phoenix will go unmentioned to my kids.

Tips for a Successful School Year (For Parents and Teachers)

Children and young adults will soon be heading back to the classroom for another year of schooling, if they haven’t already. The excitement is palpable. Children and parents are busy purchasing and labeling school supplies, clothing, lunchboxes, and other related items. Teachers have been working diligently to ready their classrooms, organize materials, and foster an engaging, productive learning environment. Administrators have toiled throughout the summer to have everything in place for day one, including back-to-school programming for students and professional development for teachers.

Think Big. Do Bigger!

I grew up in a home that was poor

Not materially poor (we were “middle class,” but on the lower end,) as much as mentally poor

While we never went hungry, we also never had the luxuries many others enjoyed

But that wasn’t what made us “poor”

Schedule tasks and block out time

The reason why time-blocking works is simple. When a task is jotted down on a list, odds are that it will take a while for it to be completed (many listed tasks never get done at all.) Or you may choose to work on the list “top down” even when items that are further below will deliver stronger benefits.

When a task gets scheduled, however, you are committing to getting that specific thing completed at a particular time and expect to have it finished when the period has ended. In effect, you’re telling yourself, “This one task is of great importance to me, and I will devote time and singular focus to it, to the exclusion of everything else.” It is as if you’ve created a meeting with yourself that cannot be interrupted. You prepare yourself mentally for the task and go all in.

Are You Taking a Workplace Lonely?

For many, selfie taking is the product of being alone. Lead researcher Dr Peerayuth Charoensukmongkol, of the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Bangkok, said: ‘Not only do individuals who become obsessed with taking selfies tend to feel that their personal lives and psychological well-being are damaged, but they may feel that relationship qualities with others are also impaired.

NIDA researchers also found that a vast majority of those studied spent more than 50 per cent of their spare time on either their mobile phone or scouring the internet. Moreover, experts believe that both men and women who have lonely personalities tend to take more selfies for approval from other people.

You can do this! You just have to believe.

For three years, I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into being the best head of school I could be.

And then, one day, it all ended.

Eight years and one month ago, I was out of work and needed to start again.

Thousands of miles away from where I grew up and where all of my family and friends lived.

Entering a field that I knew little about and had no reputation to speak of.

Relocating my family to a small, grungy house that had "potential," because that was all that we could afford in our new, more expensive community.

It was a dark time in my life.

But, I had promised myself then that I would never again be beholden to others for my income.

So, I hung a shingle and got to work.

How to remove distractors from your workday

When people transition their attention away from an unfinished task to attend to a distraction, they lose time, and their subsequent task performance suffers. For example, if you interrupt writing an email to reply to a text message, you will need to refocus when you turn your attention back to finishing your email. That little bit of time of adjusting your focus compounds throughout the day. As we fragment our attention, fatigue and stress increases, which negatively affects performance.

So, not surprisingly, the first component of this “do it” step is to remove distractors.

Do you know what your values are?

We noted in a recent post how important our values are in helping us to make decisions. As leaders, we have many opportunities each day to choose between possible actions and reactions. Oftentimes, we tap into our core set of principles to make those selections. Though the choices that we make are typically not of the life-altering variety, we can use the example set by Sousa Mendes to decide how we will align ourselves in the event of conflict. Such selections may include:

Preserving character and integrity over the company’s bottom line.
Prioritizing the needs of an individual employee above company policy.
Maintaining a collaborative approach despite our personal agenda.

6 R's of Summer School

While school administrators are typically not “off” from school to the same extent as teachers (there is still plenty of planning, ordering, interviewing and the like that occurs over the summer months,) the relaxed days of June, July and August present school leaders with a special opportunity that is unique to this time of year. I like to think of them as a principal’s own set of summertime “R’s.”

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