Worry Time: 1) Decide how long worry time is 2) Set a time in the day for your worrying 3) At the allotted time, sit down & worry 4) When your time is up, walk away 5) Any further worries that arise tell yourself “I’ll worry about that in Worry Time.” 6) Repeat each day

How did it get so late so soon? Gosh, where's the day gone? The week? The half term? The term? How is the end of January already? Time is flying partly because of the pace you're working at. Is this pace sustainable?

As a school senior leader, your laptop is in front of you a lot of the time. Which means so are your email notifications. And with each notification, your body reacts. You look. It can wait. But now you've lost your train of thought. Or you don’t look and it starts niggling away at you. What do they want now? Turn off your email notifications. Take back control. CHOOSE when to check your Inbox. Be intentional about how you manage your emails. What arrives in your Inbox, that’s not on you. How you deal with it when it gets there, that is on you. Experiment with it for a couple of weeks. See what you notice.

As a Deputy Head, your days are packed with back-to-back meetings, lessons, duties, covering someone else’s duties… That’s just how it is. There’s no space for the things that come up - and wow, do they come up. You don’t know WHAT'S going to come up, but you know something will. And when it does, this has a domino rally effect on rest of the day and week, pushing back one thing after another. But what if this isn’t just how it is? What if you could take back some control? Putting in some buffer time to absorb whatever it is that comes up puts a stop to the domino rally. Then you can spend less time and energy re-jigging your days, less time worrying about where you’re going to move that thing to, and spend more time doing what you’d planned to do in the first place.

Does it feel like you're hanging on by your fingernails? As a Deputy Head, the pace of your day can feel relentless. No pause or breathing space. Just keeping going until you stop…or drop. How about weaving yourself a safety rope instead? Short breaks in the day help you take a breath, recharge, and keep yourself healthy so you can keep doing all the good that you're doing. You don't need to practice working hard, you’re already really good at that. But perhaps it might help to practice resting and recovering? You could start small: A 90-second breather. A 10-minute lunch. A meeting cut short by 5 minutes so you can get a drink or go to the loo. What one small thing could you do every day? If you want to talk more about working differently, get in touch.

Leading a school is made harder by your unmanageable Inbox. In your position as Deputy Head, what strategies could you put in place to reduce email traffic? Limiting access to whole school email lists? Encouraging staff to email the person directly rather than cc-ing their Line Manager? Weekly newsletter instead of individual emails? And is email always the best method? Could it be a briefing instead? A notice board update? A phone call? A face-to-face conversation? What strategies is your school using to reduce email traffic? And what's actually working?

Hi, I'm Vanessa Wears, and I work with school senior leaders to help them manage an unmanageable workload so that they can do more than survive in work and life. What would doing more than surviving look like for you? If it’s time for you and your team to do more than survive, get in touch.

As a school senior leader, it might feel like responding to emails is your main job. It's not. Checking your emails feels like it keeps you in control, so you know what’s going on, what’s waiting for you. But relentless checking fuels more checking, leaving your brain scattered, heightening your stress levels. To get control over your Inbox requires intentional action. It’s not going to happen by accident. Staff won’t stop emailing. Parents won’t stop emailing. The rest of SLT won’t stop emailing. Putting some structure around your emails contains the intrusion on your time and your focus, freeing up your time and energy for other tasks. Here’s an experiment to change how you manage your Inbox: - Set some specific email times – try different times, see what works for you - Deal with whatever’s in there if you’ve time - If you don’t have time, decide when you'll deal with it This will feel uncomfortable. Wrong even. That’s OK; doing things differently usually does. Will it be any more uncomfortable than how it is now?

A sunflower is growing from the bits the birds drop...weird to see it flowering in October. One of the things I love about my garden is the constant movement, birds, needs, insects, flowers blowing in the breeze. Started my autumn plant moves today...not all the moves I want to make, just a couple. I'm practicing doing part of a task and then leaving it. Dialling down the urgency to "Get it finished".

My favourite tree is the cherry blossom. I’ve loved them ever since I "first" saw them when I lived in Japan. Strangely I don’t have any memories of seeing a cherry blossom before Japan, but that can’t possibly be true! I just mustn’t have noticed them. Now I see them everywhere, even if they don’t have flowers on. It’s amazing what we see, once we’ve really seen it.

School senior leaders often speak to themselves as though they're their own really harsh boss. They don't speak to or treat anyone else that way. Senior leaders I work with start to speak to themselves differently. They stop being so hard on themselves. The internal voice that says "you should be doing more" gets quieter. They start valuing what they do, not just what's left on the list. They learn to be in charge of themselves and their day, rather than being controlled by themselves and their day. They're kinder to themselves. Not softer or less driven. But kinder. They still care deeply about their school and workreally hard. But they stop treating themselves like the harshest of bosses. That shift changes things; not just at work, but at home. In how they feel about themselves. If this resonates, get in touch. I help school senior leaders manage an unmanageable workload so that they can do more than survive in work and life.

As a school senior leader have you done your quota of work already this week? How do you decide how long you’re going to work each day? Each week? Is it a decision you make consciously? Or do you work till you can’t possibly work anymore? It can feel hard to choose not to do things on your list, It can feel easier to write an optimistic list, and then do whatever you can do on the list until you’ve no energy left. Either way, everything doesn’t get done. Could you choose something to take off your list this week?

An email experiment for school senior leaders: Emails are the bane of school leaders’ lives. They multiply like Gremlins who've been fed after midnight. It's completely normal to need a strategy to manage them, they're not going to manage themselves. It's just not very normal to actually have one. Here's a strategy that my coachees report having the most success with, and will keep your Inbox as empty as you want it. To get started – clear the decks Create a holding folder. Drag all of your Inbox into a folder with today’s date on (it can be less stressful if you drag it a bit at a time - if you do it as one job lot it can look like it's disappearing!) Don't panic! It just means you can “start again” without it all staring at you. It’s still there for reference if you need it and if there are things to deal with, you can do it bit by bit. You'll likely get follow up emails, so there's a chance you won't need it as much as you think. Try the 4Ds approach This reduces the time you spend dealing with emails because it applies the "Only Handle It Once" philosophy. It will stop you scanning and rescanning the same set of emails, using unnecessary time, energy and brain power. And it makes going into your Inbox infinitely less stressful. Check your Inbox and decide which of the Ds you need to apply: Delete - You don't need it, press the button, get rid of it! Delegate - Get it to the person who needs to do it. Drag it to a “Delegated” folder &/or put it on a list so you know what you’ve delegated. Defer - This is something that can't be done now due to more time needed on it, thinking required or action required. Put it on a list or put in your calendar/planner so that you know that it's to do. Do - Do it immediately, there’s time for this one now.

Wonderful feedback from a school senior leader: "My coaching sessions with Vanessa were brilliant and have made a significant difference both professionally and personally. Initially, I was skeptical about how effective this approach could be, but the transformation in my perspective on work and time management is truly remarkable compared to how I felt before the sessions." Is it time for a transformation of your perspective and time management?

Taking a break sounds simple. As a deputy head, it's anything but. It feels counter-intuitive. Unproductive. Selfish, even. It’s so uncomfortable that it's genuinely easier to just keep going. That discomfort isn’t a sign that it's wrong; it's a sign you're learning something new. You've spent years teaching yourself to power through, so the habit is deeply embedded. Undoing it is going to take practice. You won't 'get it right' straight away. Some days you'll forget (how could you remind yourself?). Some days you'll fill the break with emails. That's fine. That’s how creating change is. It's not going to feel like 'it's working' instantly. If there were instant fixes, you would have already fixed it. It's not too late to start. Get used to the discomfort now, and next week, next half term, it feels a little less strange. You're already really good at working hard, you don't need to practise that. But you're not yet good at taking breaks. And how are you going to learn how if you don't practise?

As a school senior leader, you control the length of meetings you lead. Use that. Finish 10 minutes early. On purpose. Then actually take those 10 minutes. Don't check your email. Don't squeeze in one more task. That's not a break, that's just different work. Where could you go for 10 minutes of quiet? Or 10 minutes of company? This is intentional energy management. You're learning to create space in a day that has none. It will feel wrong. It will feel unproductive. You'll want to fill it. Don't. Teach yourself that 10 minutes of nothing is more productive than 10 minutes of running on empty. If you want to talk about creating more space, get in touch.

I love crisps. I can easily eat a share bag to myself. I can’t be trusted with them. But I know it. So my husband and I weigh them out, to make sure he gets some. Otherwise, when he comes to the bag there are just crumbs in the bottom…if he’s lucky. What treat can’t you be trusted near?