One. More. Thing.
As an educator, the phrase, “one more thing” resonates deeply with me. This is a profession that, for the better part of the last two decades, we’ve been asked to do more with less. The pandemic made it all the more challenging. So, when I hear the phrase, I really get it. I believe many of you do, too.
Here’s the rub: There’s always going to be “one more thing.”
Whether we recognize it or not, we are living in the most rapidly changing era of human history, a fact that was first shared with me in a talk by Jon Landis, a Faculty Member at Apple University, and that I was reminded of when I attended the EF Tours National Symposium in Boston last fall. Until 1900, the collective knowledge of all humanity doubled once every 100 years. By 1945, our collective knowledge was doubling every 24 years. Today, the entire body of human knowledge doubles every 12 hours. So, by 7:00pm tonight, all the knowledge we have in this world will double.
Given this, I hope you’ll agree that there’s always going to be one more thing. How can there not be? We are learning new and better ways of doing everything every single day.
As educational leaders, we have a responsibility to move this conversation from “one more thing” to “What’s worth doing?” You see, we get in trouble when we add “one more thing” on top of the mountain of what’s already being done. Little by little, we suffocate ourselves and our peers under this weight.
There’s a better way and that is thinking strategically about what is worth spending our time on, pursuing those things, and then, thoughtfully and surgically, removing so many of the things we’re doing that no longer maximally benefit the process of teaching and learning.
We can’t do it all. That’s an unfair ask of anyone in any profession.
But, we can, and should, always be in pursuit of doing better work, and that involves accepting the fact that there will always be one more thing.
Choose to be Great!
Angelo
CHOOSE TO BE GREAT 