If you're feeling the urge to plan everything right now, but your brain is fried and your

energy is low, then this episode is for you.

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Bright Morning podcast.

I'm your host, Elena Aguilar, and in each episode, you will learn how to lead conversations

that build connections and spark change. So today we're talking about something a little

countercultural in schools, not planning, or at least not over planning, because this time of year, the pressure to get ahead

can be overwhelming.

Draft the calendar, finalize the PD plan, redesign the agenda template.

And while those tasks might make us feel productive in the short term, they are not always

the best use of our end of your energy. So I want to offer you an alternative. Plan less.

Capture more. Let's get into it. I want to tell you about a leader I worked with last spring.

I'll call her Trina. She was a high school assistant principal in charge of professional learning.

By late May, Trina had three color-coded calendars going on, and a folder of future meeting agendas, and a full PD scope and sequence outlined for the fall.

And she was exhausted. She told me, I have planned all this stuff, but I don't know if it is actually what we need.

So I asked her, what if you learned this year that you want to remember in August?

And she blinked, she thought for a moment, and then she said that people need more time to talk to each other.

And that I don't have to fill every minute of a meeting.

And that we made way more progress when I started asking better questions.

We paused and we sat with those truths.

And then I asked,

what if your summer task isn't to build out more,

but to hold on to those insights

...