My blogging has taken a bit of a back seat of late due to a whirlwind of activity at work, preparations for my upcoming hip surgery on the 20th, the usual holiday hoo-hah surrounding Hanukkah and Christmas (we get down both ways in my house), and struggling with my literature review on distributed leadership for grad school. In the interest of maintaining some semblance of normalcy among all the insanity, I did want to pop in for a quick reflective piece on how I’ve been doing with the first two of Costa & Kallick’s (2010) habits of mind: persisting and managing impulsivity.
Persisting: Stick to it! Persevering in a task through to completion; remaining focused.
This really isn’t much of a challenge for me when the tasks come one at a time, but it gets a bit more difficult when they start flying at me from all directions. My default mode is to start a task, notice that another one is undone and start working on that, notice a third that just needs one quick thing done to it, after which I see something else that needs… and so on, which ties in neatly with:
Impulsivity: Take your time! Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful, and deliberative.
Impulsivity is really only ever an issue for me when it comes to task completion, in that my focus tends to flit to whatever issue comes up next, regardless of how complete (or incomplete) the previous one is. As work has become predictably more hectic in the period between Thanksgiving and the New Year, I’ve been more conscientious about completing one task (or at least getting to a natural break) before starting the next. Without taking this deliberate approach to my work, it would be very easy for jobs and responsibilities to get buried and lost under the taskalanche. Happily, taking this deliberate approach has helped me to stay up to date on all my responsibilities, which was even more important to me than usual this year since my break started three days early due to my surgery.
I hope to get at least one more post up before 2012, but if I don’t, I wish you all a happy holiday season!
Reference
Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B. (2010). It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century. In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Have a great Christmas/Hanukkah, and best of luck to you on your pending surgery.
Thanks, Rick – happy holidays to you as well, and thanks for the well-wishes. Surgery was actually this past Tuesday (I started the post last weekend but put it aside til the 22nd); I am on crutches for the next 4-6 weeks, but am recuperating comfortably at home and feeling good!