+++ title = “12” date = 2018 +++ In college, I remember making a New Years resolution to work out more at the gym. On Jan 2nd, I went to my university’s gym to find that not a single machine was vacant. “Resolutions,” the front desk attendant muttered. “They’ll all be gone by February. Just watch.” They were. So was I. When I was a young professional, I joined a gym in mid-January again, remembering my previous experience.

Over the course of my life, I’ve written a few letters to myself. The first was for my college application. It asked the question: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” It was a very typical question, so I made sure give an atypical response. I wrote a letter to my past self from my future self, which allowed me to imagine what I would be like, what I might be thinking, or at least what I hoped to be thinking.

For the last decade or so, I’ve use a productivity system called GTD. It’s a framework rather than an app or an instructive system, so my system has looked different over the years. The idea behind the system, at a basic level, is that you capture to-dos as they come, but process them later into appropriate lists that are then broken down into step-by-step tasks. Lists are then connected to “contexts” which are places/locations/tools needed to do work, so that when you sit down to work, you have a short list of items, all of which can be completed in one sitting.

One of the most overlooked things that new teachers forget about when they start teaching is how often kids cry. The instinct that arises when a new teacher sees a kid cry is to immediately figure out the cause so that they can help. But I was in a training once where this instinct was challenged. The presenter said: “before you try to support or help someone, try asking them what kind of support they need.

In the summers of my youth, when my sister and I were off from school, with no summer camps going on or any activities really, we used to accompany my mom to the grocery store. I remember quite vividly how frigid it was. How I wanted to leave the moment I got there. It was a unique feeling because while I generally disliked doing errands with my mom, the grocery store was a particular kind of hell for me.