Future Behaviour Blog

Testing 123

Apparently this is what Einstein’s mum used to ask him when he got home from school.

Before the main part of each of my geography lessons, I like to warm up minds with a question. The inspiration came from Tony Ryan’s Thinker’s Keys. I was running low on good questions so today I decided I’d ask the pupils for some questions. And here they are. All are designed to get students thinking. I’ll post again about how I use a structured conversation to hear answers from the class.

Don’t you love New Year? Traditionally, it’s the time of year when we’re feeling a bit full or a bit fat or a bit like a like drunken tramp in training. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be feeling at your super-duper best.  What many of us do right now is make promises to ourselves about how healthy and fit we’re going to be in the following year.

There’s one problem. Hardly ever, and please feel free to share your secret if this isn’t the case with you, do we actually keep many or any of these resolutions and if we do it’s only until about mid January. I have empirical evidence to support this. I used to have a gym membership and my good-lady wife and I used to go 2-3 times a week, every week. In January, we noticed something strange yet predictable. We couldn’t get in the car park. We saw people we’d never seen before. They wore brand new tracksuits. But they didn’t last. Much as these people wanted to, much as they knew their new lifestyle would make them happier and more energetic and less grumpy, for some reason in the third week of January lots of them stopped going to the gym. I could get back in the car park and could find a free cross-trainer. Bonus.

One of my theories about why we don’t follow through and do the stuff we’re pretty sure will improve our lives is to do with the bit of our brains that’s designed to keep us us. It’s the same bit of us that knows what we’re like so we are “ourselves” without having to think about it. The problem comes when we try to change ourselves- we then don’t recognise what we see, so we go back to the old “us”.

I’ve spoken about one of the methods for implementing change in previous posts- visualisation. You get your brain used to the new you by deliberately thinking about the new you before you become the new you. You bring about what you think about. You can take this a stage further and this might be the time of year to give this a try- write down what your behaviour will look like. Write it positively- (ie write what you want to do not what you don’t) and include words that let you know you’ll enjoy it.

Here’s one of mine for the new year:

“I enjoy eating healthy food and make preparations to do so.”

I’ve got about four or five of these going at any one time. I look at them as many times as I can each day. If that’s twice a day, that’s OK. If it’s five times a day, this is better. If it’s ten times a day and I spend a couple of minutes thinking about each one them then behaviour changes very quickly.

I’ve found that I need to return to some of my promises periodically. I like mulled wine and mince pies as much as the next mulled wine and mince pie lover but I don’t want my treats to become a lifestyle. They’re not really treats then are they?

A word about promises. Take the promises to yourself as seriously as you take the promises to others. It seems that easiest person in the world to let down is ourselves. My advice is not to make promises to yourself that you’re not going to keep. Every time you do you lose a bit of the power to change yourself. So choose your promises carefully. It doesn’t mean that because you didn’t promise yourself, you can’t have a go at the things you’re working on- but you take the pressure off yourself.

Enjoy the New Year everyone- no pressure.

A recent comment on one of my previous posts (many thanks to CM for the stimulus) and some of the conversations I had at a seminar on Friday reminded me of the real antagonism there is in some quarters to any interpretation of a behavioural approach to behaviour management. I thought it would be useful to clarify exactly where I stand.

What is behaviourism?

Behaviourism developed initially as a revolt against the then prevailing ways of doing psychology. It advocated (and still does) that psychology should be a science of behaviour, without reference to mental states that cannot be observed. It looks specifically at how behaviours can be learnt and unlearnt through reward and punishment, reinforcement and extinction.

The points raised so vociferously by opponents of this approach when it is applied to children, are pretty obvious. We can’t ignore what children are feeling or thinking, how much food or sleep they’ve had, whether they have just lost their bus money or fallen out with a friend. They’d say that we are humans and individuals who should be treated as such.

They’d be right. We can’t ignore personal circumstances but we also can’t give all children all the time they might need each day to talk through these issues. Targeted mental health initiatives and the role of learning mentors and inclusion managers have rightly moved the spotlight more directly on to addressing the specific needs of individuals. So what place does a behavioural approach have alongside these person/child-centred ways of working with pupils and young people?

Why do you say “Thank you”?

If I say, “Thanks for looking this way John”, am I cynically trying manipulate him? Am I trying to reinforce this behaviour for my own benefit or am I, perhaps, expressing my genuine gratitude to him for allowing me and the rest of the class get on with the great lesson I’ve got planned for them. Is there no humanity in that? When you thank someone for making a cup of tea, are you really only saying it so that they make you more cups of tea in the future? The intention is key. Students and adults alike can see what your intention is very easily. They know whether or not you have their best interests at heart, whether you care, whether the consequences you give are fair and consistent or simply punitive and designed only with retribution in mind.

The vast majority of the child-centred work I have undertaken in my career was facilitated by the fact that I started with a broadly behavioural approach. Circle time, philosophy for children, work around emotional intelligence, PSHE, SEAL and great relationships are all much easier when you have a calm and controlled basis from which to start. I gained control and then let the power go. I need to communicate my expectations because however we look at it, the classroom should be a benevolent dictatorship. We’re going to have to make unilateral decisions on a regular basis but like all good leaders we’ll share our reasons for doing things as fully as possible.

A behavioural approach should be seen as a foundation

It should not be seen as a means to an end. It can be used with incredible effectiveness as the foundation to build the ethos of a school upon- but it should not form the basis of the ethos. It can allow teachers and students the time and the space to explore more effective and much more person/child-centred approaches. We can do this with impunity if we are satisfied that our humanity underpins our behaviour.

Thanks for reading- and I mean that.

We are having some personalised professional development sessions at school. These are the slides I presented to the eighteen colleagues who hoped my hour long session about behaviour management would be the least taxing of the options available.

1. Know what you want it to look like.

Choose and use positive language that clearly and unambiguously describes your behavioural expectations and use the same language consistently. If you don’t know how you want behaviour to look, you can guarantee students won’t either.

2. Teach your expectations.

When you know exactly what you want behaviour to look like (see #1) make sure students know too. Taking the time to do this pays dividends.

3. Have a planned system for recognition and consequences.

Put consequences in a hierarchy and make them easy to implement (otherwise you won’t) and make them as instant as possible. For recognition, put your emphasis on class-wide rewards (see #4).

4. Use class-wide rewards.

This is a biggy. It’s not fair to give Johnny a Mars Bar for not throwing chairs, so it’s much better to set up a system where everyone benefits when he makes the right choice. This way the class support the challenging child instead of resenting them. NB Arrange in private, announce in public. (More on this next time.)

5. Have a laugh, talk about yourself and act like you’re calmly and confidently in charge (even when you’re not).

You will always be more confident if you’ve got a plan- it’s as simple as sorting mail. You’re just delivering a system.

6. Take the time to get behaviour right.

Reception teachers don’t start teaching reading the moment the children walk through the door in September. They spend lots of time teaching routines but they get the time back in the long run; you will too.

7. Ring home with good news first.

This makes ringing home with bad news (when/if necessary) much easier. You’ll know the list of students this may apply to.

8. Don’t counsel children just after they’ve made a bad choice.

Some kids don’t mind whether your attention is positive or negative- they just want attention. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk to children about their choices – but just after they’ve made a bad one is not sensible.

9. Never shout (unless you are trying to catch the attention of someone who is quite far away).

If we shout,  then we’re suggesting that raising our voice is an appropriate method of trying to get what we want. It isn’t.

10. Don’t investigate unless it’s too serious to ignore.

Has anyone, in the whole history of children, ever really got to the bottom of an incident that they didn’t actually see? I suppose we’ll never know. If children tell tales, use this phrase: “Make sure you’re following instructions,” remind all children involved of a specific and relevant instruction and then monitor the situation. This saves hours of time and is much more effective.

Have I missed any out? What would be your number one? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

So, in the UK, just 42% of students agreed with the statement that “teachers treat me no better or worse than other pupils”. There is other news about how students view the fairness and consistency of teachers in this country and it’s all bad. Is it ever the case where some students are reprimanded because they are “easier” to reprimand and that their reaction will be more agreeable? Could it be that some students get detentions and are sent out of class simply because they were the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back? (Don’t think, even for a second, that I would claim that this has never happened in my class.)

Now it could be that these things are happening or that many students are just imagining that teachers are not fair (well-spotted, I know) but either way, there are strategies to be more consistent and to be seen as more consistent.

Be consistently consistent rather than fairly fair

1. Clearly define your expectations.

Every instruction you give should be specific. It’s like drawing a chalk line down the middle of your classroom and asking your class to stand on a specified side of it. All instructions should be given in such a way that it is easy to see who is following the instruction and who is not. Most children want to follow instruction’s; they simply need the instructions to be clear enough.

It’s only when we’ve given instructions specifically that we can give consequences consistently.

2. Don’t let other factors influence whether you give a consequence. This means giving consequences:

• every time specific instructions are not followed.
• regardless of the time of day, the student involved, the possible reaction or where the student is in the consequence hierarchy.

3. Without emotion.

I’m not pleased to deliver consequences. I’m not disappointed. Angry? Not me. I’m just delivering a system. When I’ve delivered a consequence in class, I’ll tell the rest of the class that I’m going to be consistent in the delivery of consequences- otherwise it won’t be fair. The student who has just received the consequence is reassured that they weren’t picked on and the rest of the class get the message that whether they get a consequence or not is in their hands, not mine.

These are harder to do than they sound but they block most of the holes in the hull of the good ship Consistency where the lack of fairness gets in.

(NB No camel’s backs were injured in the production of this blog post.)

It’s hard to do, isn’t it? To not think of yellow, the best strategy is probably to think of another colour. So, if I really wanted you not to think of yellow, it would be better to ask you to think of green and get a big bit of green for you to look at instead. Simple really.

So why then, would so many adults use the first method when giving children instructions? For example:

“Don’t run!”

Now I may have graduated from the School of Stating the Bloomin’ Obvious but I reckon it has got to be better to say:

“Walk”.

This is especially true with very young children. Saying “Don’t throw your food on the floor” is even more pointless with little ones. I’m not entirely convinced many of them fully understand the concept of the negative contraction. All they hear is, “… throw your food on the floor”. A much better phrase would be, “Keep your food on the tray”.

Now using positive language by itself does not make children behave but this simple exercise shows the undeniable power of framing instructions in such a way that a description of what you want is included.

When we give instructions positively, we present an image of success in the child’s mind. In my last post, I talked about the importance of planning in achieving my personal goals. In giving positive instructions, we are sharing a plan. We are describing the future as we’d like it to look, not the present scenario that we don’t like.

Now I must apologise in advance. Everytime you hear yourself, partners, other parents or fellow teachers use negative language you’ll notice it. I have deliberately programmed your reticular activating system (RAS)- that’s the same bit of your brain that, without being asked, listens out for your name at parties and your flight number at the airport. You won’t be able stop yourself noticing- sorry.

Let’s try again using the power of positive language:

(By the way, if I haven’t successfully programmed your RAS, you won’t remember I haven’t, so I can’t lose.)

How productive are blog posts about productivity? Let’s find out.

I haven’t done much else for the past fortnight but collect and tag tasks in my efforts to become a task-management ninja. It got me reflecting on how important it is, in every area of my life, to have a clear vision of the future. I’ve blogged recently about the necessity to have a plan and the quest to get super-organised has focussed my mind on focus. Not for nothing, the app I’ve been using to collect *all* of my tasks is the GTD-based OmniFocus, a Mac OS X only, project management tool.  (A whole new post on this on the way soon- it’s in my list of things to do.)

I was thinking about our recently installed new kitchen and the processes involved in it’s completion. I needed to imagine my new, not-yet installed kitchen in intricate detail focussing on each of the areas in turn and identifying tasks that needed to be ticked off.

Getting round to starting the kitchen project was delayed by something I think we all do. I had spent far too much time thinking about my old, worn kitchen and the things I didn’t like about it but I eventually realised that I wasn’t going to get my new kitchen by thinking about my present one. I needed, instead, to imagine my new kitchen in intricate detail, right down to the handles on the cupboards. Once the clear vision for the future kitchen was established, it was amazing how many opportunities I seemed to spot to move the project forward. Similarly, have you ever noticed that when you’re in the process of choosing a new car, you spot every single car of the type you are considering?

I’m not sure why we don’t utilise the method we use naturally for planning a little more often. Take for example, classroom management. Many teachers will complain about the behaviour of the children in their class/classes. My question is always- how do you want them to behave? Often teachers don’t know how they want their classrooms to look in terms of behaviour. They just know, in the most intricate levels of detail, how they don’t want it to look. But just like complaining about the dated and decrepit state of my present kitchen was not the right way to get a new one, deep analysis of what is wrong in my classroom does not help me improve things. Plus, unsurprisingly, if I don’t know how I want behaviour to look, then my classes definitely won’t either.

I have found this during the last couple of weeks as I attempt (so far successfully) to get more organised. Firstly, I needed to imagine myself dealing with and completing tasks in an organised and focussed way. I also needed to imagine myself feeling calmer and more organised, handling tasks as they come towards me or as I see them with a robust system that allows me to get them off my mind and in to a place where I can come back to them later. Not only this but I had to take the process a step further and imagine exactly how I would do this. I’ve found that this element is an essential ingredient to making change. The desire to do it isn’t enough. It’s the reason that when we “decide” we’re going to lose weight, do more exercise, drink less red wine or relax more, we often don’t, even though we know it would be of real and lasting benefit to us if we did. We know we’d be happier but we still don’t do it. There’s a part of our brains designed to keep us who we are. This is handy because we don’t need to remember what we’re like- we just do it unthinkingly. Obviously though, there is a downside. It makes change more difficult.

So, in my experience, the very first step to improving classroom behaviour or your task management skills or just about any change really, is to imagine exactly how you’d like it to look. If you have the same experience as me, you’ll then be surprised at the ideas and levels of motivation you have when you imagine your future in the present tense.

Testing 123

Apparently this is what Einstein’s mum used to ask him when he got home from school.

Before the main part of each of my geography lessons, I like to warm up minds with a question. The inspiration came from Tony Ryan’s Thinker’s Keys. I was running low on good questions so today I decided I’d ask the pupils for some questions. And here they are. All are designed to get students thinking. I’ll post again about how I use a structured conversation to hear answers from the class.

Don’t you love New Year? Traditionally, it’s the time of year when we’re feeling a bit full or a bit fat or a bit like a like drunken tramp in training. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be feeling at your super-duper best.  What many of us do right now is make promises to ourselves about how healthy and fit we’re going to be in the following year.

There’s one problem. Hardly ever, and please feel free to share your secret if this isn’t the case with you, do we actually keep many or any of these resolutions and if we do it’s only until about mid January. I have empirical evidence to support this. I used to have a gym membership and my good-lady wife and I used to go 2-3 times a week, every week. In January, we noticed something strange yet predictable. We couldn’t get in the car park. We saw people we’d never seen before. They wore brand new tracksuits. But they didn’t last. Much as these people wanted to, much as they knew their new lifestyle would make them happier and more energetic and less grumpy, for some reason in the third week of January lots of them stopped going to the gym. I could get back in the car park and could find a free cross-trainer. Bonus.

One of my theories about why we don’t follow through and do the stuff we’re pretty sure will improve our lives is to do with the bit of our brains that’s designed to keep us us. It’s the same bit of us that knows what we’re like so we are “ourselves” without having to think about it. The problem comes when we try to change ourselves- we then don’t recognise what we see, so we go back to the old “us”.

I’ve spoken about one of the methods for implementing change in previous posts- visualisation. You get your brain used to the new you by deliberately thinking about the new you before you become the new you. You bring about what you think about. You can take this a stage further and this might be the time of year to give this a try- write down what your behaviour will look like. Write it positively- (ie write what you want to do not what you don’t) and include words that let you know you’ll enjoy it.

Here’s one of mine for the new year:

“I enjoy eating healthy food and make preparations to do so.”

I’ve got about four or five of these going at any one time. I look at them as many times as I can each day. If that’s twice a day, that’s OK. If it’s five times a day, this is better. If it’s ten times a day and I spend a couple of minutes thinking about each one them then behaviour changes very quickly.

I’ve found that I need to return to some of my promises periodically. I like mulled wine and mince pies as much as the next mulled wine and mince pie lover but I don’t want my treats to become a lifestyle. They’re not really treats then are they?

A word about promises. Take the promises to yourself as seriously as you take the promises to others. It seems that easiest person in the world to let down is ourselves. My advice is not to make promises to yourself that you’re not going to keep. Every time you do you lose a bit of the power to change yourself. So choose your promises carefully. It doesn’t mean that because you didn’t promise yourself, you can’t have a go at the things you’re working on- but you take the pressure off yourself.

Enjoy the New Year everyone- no pressure.

A recent comment on one of my previous posts (many thanks to CM for the stimulus) and some of the conversations I had at a seminar on Friday reminded me of the real antagonism there is in some quarters to any interpretation of a behavioural approach to behaviour management. I thought it would be useful to clarify exactly where I stand.

What is behaviourism?

Behaviourism developed initially as a revolt against the then prevailing ways of doing psychology. It advocated (and still does) that psychology should be a science of behaviour, without reference to mental states that cannot be observed. It looks specifically at how behaviours can be learnt and unlearnt through reward and punishment, reinforcement and extinction.

The points raised so vociferously by opponents of this approach when it is applied to children, are pretty obvious. We can’t ignore what children are feeling or thinking, how much food or sleep they’ve had, whether they have just lost their bus money or fallen out with a friend. They’d say that we are humans and individuals who should be treated as such.

They’d be right. We can’t ignore personal circumstances but we also can’t give all children all the time they might need each day to talk through these issues. Targeted mental health initiatives and the role of learning mentors and inclusion managers have rightly moved the spotlight more directly on to addressing the specific needs of individuals. So what place does a behavioural approach have alongside these person/child-centred ways of working with pupils and young people?

Why do you say “Thank you”?

If I say, “Thanks for looking this way John”, am I cynically trying manipulate him? Am I trying to reinforce this behaviour for my own benefit or am I, perhaps, expressing my genuine gratitude to him for allowing me and the rest of the class get on with the great lesson I’ve got planned for them. Is there no humanity in that? When you thank someone for making a cup of tea, are you really only saying it so that they make you more cups of tea in the future? The intention is key. Students and adults alike can see what your intention is very easily. They know whether or not you have their best interests at heart, whether you care, whether the consequences you give are fair and consistent or simply punitive and designed only with retribution in mind.

The vast majority of the child-centred work I have undertaken in my career was facilitated by the fact that I started with a broadly behavioural approach. Circle time, philosophy for children, work around emotional intelligence, PSHE, SEAL and great relationships are all much easier when you have a calm and controlled basis from which to start. I gained control and then let the power go. I need to communicate my expectations because however we look at it, the classroom should be a benevolent dictatorship. We’re going to have to make unilateral decisions on a regular basis but like all good leaders we’ll share our reasons for doing things as fully as possible.

A behavioural approach should be seen as a foundation

It should not be seen as a means to an end. It can be used with incredible effectiveness as the foundation to build the ethos of a school upon- but it should not form the basis of the ethos. It can allow teachers and students the time and the space to explore more effective and much more person/child-centred approaches. We can do this with impunity if we are satisfied that our humanity underpins our behaviour.

Thanks for reading- and I mean that.

We are having some personalised professional development sessions at school. These are the slides I presented to the eighteen colleagues who hoped my hour long session about behaviour management would be the least taxing of the options available.

1. Know what you want it to look like.

Choose and use positive language that clearly and unambiguously describes your behavioural expectations and use the same language consistently. If you don’t know how you want behaviour to look, you can guarantee students won’t either.

2. Teach your expectations.

When you know exactly what you want behaviour to look like (see #1) make sure students know too. Taking the time to do this pays dividends.

3. Have a planned system for recognition and consequences.

Put consequences in a hierarchy and make them easy to implement (otherwise you won’t) and make them as instant as possible. For recognition, put your emphasis on class-wide rewards (see #4).

4. Use class-wide rewards.

This is a biggy. It’s not fair to give Johnny a Mars Bar for not throwing chairs, so it’s much better to set up a system where everyone benefits when he makes the right choice. This way the class support the challenging child instead of resenting them. NB Arrange in private, announce in public. (More on this next time.)

5. Have a laugh, talk about yourself and act like you’re calmly and confidently in charge (even when you’re not).

You will always be more confident if you’ve got a plan- it’s as simple as sorting mail. You’re just delivering a system.

6. Take the time to get behaviour right.

Reception teachers don’t start teaching reading the moment the children walk through the door in September. They spend lots of time teaching routines but they get the time back in the long run; you will too.

7. Ring home with good news first.

This makes ringing home with bad news (when/if necessary) much easier. You’ll know the list of students this may apply to.

8. Don’t counsel children just after they’ve made a bad choice.

Some kids don’t mind whether your attention is positive or negative- they just want attention. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk to children about their choices – but just after they’ve made a bad one is not sensible.

9. Never shout (unless you are trying to catch the attention of someone who is quite far away).

If we shout,  then we’re suggesting that raising our voice is an appropriate method of trying to get what we want. It isn’t.

10. Don’t investigate unless it’s too serious to ignore.

Has anyone, in the whole history of children, ever really got to the bottom of an incident that they didn’t actually see? I suppose we’ll never know. If children tell tales, use this phrase: “Make sure you’re following instructions,” remind all children involved of a specific and relevant instruction and then monitor the situation. This saves hours of time and is much more effective.

Have I missed any out? What would be your number one? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

So, in the UK, just 42% of students agreed with the statement that “teachers treat me no better or worse than other pupils”. There is other news about how students view the fairness and consistency of teachers in this country and it’s all bad. Is it ever the case where some students are reprimanded because they are “easier” to reprimand and that their reaction will be more agreeable? Could it be that some students get detentions and are sent out of class simply because they were the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back? (Don’t think, even for a second, that I would claim that this has never happened in my class.)

Now it could be that these things are happening or that many students are just imagining that teachers are not fair (well-spotted, I know) but either way, there are strategies to be more consistent and to be seen as more consistent.

Be consistently consistent rather than fairly fair

1. Clearly define your expectations.

Every instruction you give should be specific. It’s like drawing a chalk line down the middle of your classroom and asking your class to stand on a specified side of it. All instructions should be given in such a way that it is easy to see who is following the instruction and who is not. Most children want to follow instruction’s; they simply need the instructions to be clear enough.

It’s only when we’ve given instructions specifically that we can give consequences consistently.

2. Don’t let other factors influence whether you give a consequence. This means giving consequences:

• every time specific instructions are not followed.
• regardless of the time of day, the student involved, the possible reaction or where the student is in the consequence hierarchy.

3. Without emotion.

I’m not pleased to deliver consequences. I’m not disappointed. Angry? Not me. I’m just delivering a system. When I’ve delivered a consequence in class, I’ll tell the rest of the class that I’m going to be consistent in the delivery of consequences- otherwise it won’t be fair. The student who has just received the consequence is reassured that they weren’t picked on and the rest of the class get the message that whether they get a consequence or not is in their hands, not mine.

These are harder to do than they sound but they block most of the holes in the hull of the good ship Consistency where the lack of fairness gets in.

(NB No camel’s backs were injured in the production of this blog post.)

It’s hard to do, isn’t it? To not think of yellow, the best strategy is probably to think of another colour. So, if I really wanted you not to think of yellow, it would be better to ask you to think of green and get a big bit of green for you to look at instead. Simple really.

So why then, would so many adults use the first method when giving children instructions? For example:

“Don’t run!”

Now I may have graduated from the School of Stating the Bloomin’ Obvious but I reckon it has got to be better to say:

“Walk”.

This is especially true with very young children. Saying “Don’t throw your food on the floor” is even more pointless with little ones. I’m not entirely convinced many of them fully understand the concept of the negative contraction. All they hear is, “… throw your food on the floor”. A much better phrase would be, “Keep your food on the tray”.

Now using positive language by itself does not make children behave but this simple exercise shows the undeniable power of framing instructions in such a way that a description of what you want is included.

When we give instructions positively, we present an image of success in the child’s mind. In my last post, I talked about the importance of planning in achieving my personal goals. In giving positive instructions, we are sharing a plan. We are describing the future as we’d like it to look, not the present scenario that we don’t like.

Now I must apologise in advance. Everytime you hear yourself, partners, other parents or fellow teachers use negative language you’ll notice it. I have deliberately programmed your reticular activating system (RAS)- that’s the same bit of your brain that, without being asked, listens out for your name at parties and your flight number at the airport. You won’t be able stop yourself noticing- sorry.

Let’s try again using the power of positive language:

(By the way, if I haven’t successfully programmed your RAS, you won’t remember I haven’t, so I can’t lose.)

How productive are blog posts about productivity? Let’s find out.

I haven’t done much else for the past fortnight but collect and tag tasks in my efforts to become a task-management ninja. It got me reflecting on how important it is, in every area of my life, to have a clear vision of the future. I’ve blogged recently about the necessity to have a plan and the quest to get super-organised has focussed my mind on focus. Not for nothing, the app I’ve been using to collect *all* of my tasks is the GTD-based OmniFocus, a Mac OS X only, project management tool.  (A whole new post on this on the way soon- it’s in my list of things to do.)

I was thinking about our recently installed new kitchen and the processes involved in it’s completion. I needed to imagine my new, not-yet installed kitchen in intricate detail focussing on each of the areas in turn and identifying tasks that needed to be ticked off.

Getting round to starting the kitchen project was delayed by something I think we all do. I had spent far too much time thinking about my old, worn kitchen and the things I didn’t like about it but I eventually realised that I wasn’t going to get my new kitchen by thinking about my present one. I needed, instead, to imagine my new kitchen in intricate detail, right down to the handles on the cupboards. Once the clear vision for the future kitchen was established, it was amazing how many opportunities I seemed to spot to move the project forward. Similarly, have you ever noticed that when you’re in the process of choosing a new car, you spot every single car of the type you are considering?

I’m not sure why we don’t utilise the method we use naturally for planning a little more often. Take for example, classroom management. Many teachers will complain about the behaviour of the children in their class/classes. My question is always- how do you want them to behave? Often teachers don’t know how they want their classrooms to look in terms of behaviour. They just know, in the most intricate levels of detail, how they don’t want it to look. But just like complaining about the dated and decrepit state of my present kitchen was not the right way to get a new one, deep analysis of what is wrong in my classroom does not help me improve things. Plus, unsurprisingly, if I don’t know how I want behaviour to look, then my classes definitely won’t either.

I have found this during the last couple of weeks as I attempt (so far successfully) to get more organised. Firstly, I needed to imagine myself dealing with and completing tasks in an organised and focussed way. I also needed to imagine myself feeling calmer and more organised, handling tasks as they come towards me or as I see them with a robust system that allows me to get them off my mind and in to a place where I can come back to them later. Not only this but I had to take the process a step further and imagine exactly how I would do this. I’ve found that this element is an essential ingredient to making change. The desire to do it isn’t enough. It’s the reason that when we “decide” we’re going to lose weight, do more exercise, drink less red wine or relax more, we often don’t, even though we know it would be of real and lasting benefit to us if we did. We know we’d be happier but we still don’t do it. There’s a part of our brains designed to keep us who we are. This is handy because we don’t need to remember what we’re like- we just do it unthinkingly. Obviously though, there is a downside. It makes change more difficult.

So, in my experience, the very first step to improving classroom behaviour or your task management skills or just about any change really, is to imagine exactly how you’d like it to look. If you have the same experience as me, you’ll then be surprised at the ideas and levels of motivation you have when you imagine your future in the present tense.