One Fish, Two Fish, Let's Fix Your To-Do List!
If organizing your advocacy goals is getting in the way of accomplishing your advocacy goals, let's talk about ways to make your to-do list work for you instead of against you.
Hello Gifted Guides!
We’re so glad you’re here!
How are you doing?
As days are beginning to get longer, and hopefully a bit warmer or less snowy (depending on where you live), are you feeling the itch to start on your spring to-do list? Are you feeling the urge to jump into new projects and devote all your energy to them? Are you maybe also feeling a sense of dread or overwhelm as you look at your calendar and realize everything you want to get done between now and the end of the school year?
As the weight of winter starts to lift, it can feel like we’re racing toward spring, with too much to get done and not enough time. If this has been a good school year so far, maybe your focus is making sure the second half of the school year is just as good. If this school year has been tough, you might find yourself white-knuckling it, as you count down the days left until spring break or summer vacation.
No matter where you are with your advocacy efforts as we inch closer to spring, we’d like to take some time to help you make sure your Advocacy To-Do List is working for you.
In this issue of Guiding Gifted, we will be discussing how to reassess your to-do list in a way that sets you up to maximize your effort and impact, without maximizing your workload, as you pursue your advocacy goals.
I do. You do. We do.
To-do lists can be helpful for the gifted or twice-exceptional (2e) brain. They can help support executive functioning challenges, and they help us keep track of the eleventy-billion things we all have to do each day.
To-do lists become troublesome when they start to bloat. When today’s list gets added to tomorrow’s list—but also has items from yesterday or last week lingering on it—things can get muddled. Everything can start to seem emergent.
At the same time, too many items on your list for too long can turn your to-do list into a Wall of Awful. Suddenly, a tool that was supposed to help you stay organized and more easily track and complete your tasks has now become one of the biggest hurdles to your productivity.
Have you ever put off a task for weeks or months, only to eventually do it and have it only takes a few minutes to complete? We have too.
By setting up a to-do list that works for you and with you, instead of one you become overwhelmed by, you can help cut down on your procrasti-planning and actually move forward with your advocacy goals in a meaningful way.
Starting with your current to-do list, ask yourself:
What on this list can only I do?
What on this list is something someone else can do entirely on their own without my supervision or input?
What on this list is something I need to be involved in but I can benefit from some help on?
How many things did you put in the “Only I Can Do This” category? Is that category more full than the others?
For many of you, there is a good chance that, even after divvying up your list with the intent of redistributing tasks, you’re still holding onto more than you need to.
But, you might be thinking, it will take longer to explain this to someone else than it will take for me to do it myself.
That’s probably true—in the short term.
Let’s step back and look at the long term, big picture view.
We Do – Building Your Advocacy Community
Advocacy is the ultimate group project. It involves lots of different voices and perspectives. This means, everyone will have their own communication style and approach to accomplishing the tasks at hand. That can be frustrating.
When we find ourselves in this kind of frustrating situation, perhaps the impulse is to take on as much of the work and responsibility as we possibly can. If we have as much control over the situation as we can, we’ll be less frustrated, right?
That would be nice, but that probably won’t be the case.
If we take on all the work of the group project, we are probably going to end up with feelings of resentment and burnout. These feelings will make it harder to trust the group we’re working with, which will make it even more frustrating the next time we’re expected to rely on or trust someone else in the group to take on a task to move our advocacy goals forward. So, we’ll once again take on the bulk of the work, and this cycle will keep repeating itself until we’re completely burnt out, with relationships that have been damaged in the process.
So, let’s back up.
Let’s ask why we are getting frustrated in the first place.
When you’re advocating for your gifted or 2e student, you’re probably working with teachers, administrators, and depending on the situation, potentially other professionals or parents. You’re also navigating your student’s feelings, experiences, and goals, which have likely brought you into this advocacy situation in the first place. And on top of the perspectives and goals of all those people, you also have your own. You have your own perspective, experience, and knowledge. This is a lot to balance.
And when you are advocating for your child, the stakes often feel very high and very personal—understandably so.
So, when you don’t know if others feel the same way as you do and will take the actions you’re hoping for, it makes sense that you’d feel uneasy. And when you’re in that place of unease and uncertainty, it makes sense that you’d be seeking as much control and as many known factors as you can find. This may lead you to try to take over the entire Advocacy To-Do List yourself.
This may seem like it is making less work for you. However, it is likely cutting yourself short and limiting your options.
When we draw on the experiences, knowledge, and skills of others in our advocacy community, we benefit from that communal knowledge and support.
Advocating for a gifted or 2e learner is not easy. Advocacy—of any kind—tends to be slow, thoughtful, deliberate work. You’re in it for the long haul, and it is worth looking around you to see who can do some of this work with you.
Last month, we talked about the importance of creating a more effective advocacy practice by moving through the steps: Reflect, Reassess, Reprioritize, Regroup, Reach out.
When you regroup and reach out, you are giving others an opportunity to support you, your child, and your advocacy work.
Giving others the opportunity to support you expands your resources base. Now, you’re not only drawing on your skills, knowledge, and experience. You’re being supported by the skills, knowledge, and experience of those in your advocacy community. This expanded resource base can allow you to build rhythms and systems to help increase the efficiency and efficacy of your advocacy efforts, without necessarily increasing your mental load or your workload.
Is your partner or co-parent amazing at keeping track of meeting details and school deadlines? Maybe they take the lead with keeping records related to your child’s IEP meetings and parent-teacher conferences.
Is there an administrator or teacher at your child’s school who is a complete whiz at navigating the paperwork your district requires for a specific advocacy action? Maybe schedule a meeting with them to chat about the paperwork before you find yourself up at 2 am doing battle with a PDF.
Is your child interested in a new hobby and you have no idea where to start in supporting them or getting them access to new classes or materials related to this new topic? Maybe there is already someone in your child’s support network who might have experience in this area. Even if you’re not sure, it doesn’t hurt to check with coaches, mentors, teachers, or even the parents of your child’s friends to see if they have any experience or ideas in this area. If your child is interested in it, they are probably talking about it to the people important to them. Those people might have ideas or resources to share with you.
Instead of doing all the research or work on your own, you can loop in your community. The more perspectives you have on a problem or challenge, the more likely you are to find a path forward.
Let’s Head Back to Your To-Do List
We started by asking you to look at your current to-do list and consider the following questions:
What on this list can only I do?
What on this list is something someone else can do entirely on their own without my supervision or input?
What on this list is something I need to be involved in but I can benefit from some help on?
Looking at these questions now, do you see more opportunities to collaborate with others in your advocacy community? Are there tasks you can ask others to handle or to work on with you?
No one will ever do everything exactly as you would. However, when you view your to-do list and your advocacy work through a community lens, you can start to see the opportunities to bring in the voices and ideas of others. By drawing on the support and community around you, you can use your energy in different ways and be a more effective advocate.
Still Looking for Your Community?
If you read this and thought, I’m not sure I have this kind of advocacy community to draw on. I’m not sure who to ask for help or who to brainstorm with, don’t worry.
You’re not alone.
You have your Guiding Gifted community. Have a question? Leave it in the comments!
Looking for more support? Check out the Davidson Institute’s Resource Library. Our Gifted Resources & Guides are a great place to start when you’re not sure where to start.
We also have curated lists of resources to listen, watch, and read. These lists make it easy for you to keep track of the gifted and 2e resources and topics that are important to you no matter where you are. Whether you’re waiting in the carpool lane, in the grocery store, on your nightly walk around the neighborhood, grading papers, or putting in yet another load of laundry, we’re here to support you as you continue to guide the gifted and 2e learners in your life.
Thanks for reading and subscribing. If you’d like even more curated resources from the Davidson Institute, click here. To learn more about our Young Scholars program, consider attending our next virtual Young Scholars Application Q&A on Monday, April 8, at 10 am (Pacific).
Are you looking for a summer program for your 13-16 year old? The Davidson Institute's THINK Summer Institute application is open through March 29. Need testing in order to finish your THINK application? Check out the upcoming testing opportunities we’re hosting.
We’ll see you next month. Stay well, Gifted Guides!