The to-do list when working in schools is never-ending. It can feel particularly overwhelming when we are already tired and are juggling family and personal priorities as well as school work.
Between teaching a heavy timetable, having meetings and being responsive to other staff and student issues, it can feel like there is barely a moment to get stuff done. The pressure on our time mounts and it can feel like we are being pulled in 10 different directions at once.
In the first article of this series, I challenged you to reflect more closely on your personal situation and consider what else (other than a mounting to-do list) might be contributing to your (or a colleague’s you are supporting) inability to gain a reasonable work/life balance.
I encouraged you to rethink how you can tackle those challenges by considering which elements of that challenge are in your control, what is not within your control but which you can influence, and what is completely outside of your control.
In the second article, I shared a simple exercise to help deal with overwhelm and detailed a tried and tested weekly planning strategy for managing your time and setting realistic expectations.
However, sometimes that to-do list is just too long, and everything can feel important. The strategies in this article therefore are to help you to think more critically about the things that are pulling at our precious time. This will help you to complete the exercises in article two more efficiently and effectively.
Creating a sustainable work/life balance: A four-part SecEd series
- Part 1: Breaking bad habits: Published November 11, 2025.
- Part 2: Overwhelm and time-management: Published November 20, 2025.
- Part 3: How to set your workload priorities: This article
- Part 4: Delegating effectively and confidently: Published December 2, 2025.
The bigger picture: What are your life priorities?
Let’s start with the bigger picture, before we look at managing your work “to-do” list. We are all human and work is just one piece in the jigsaw of our lives.
When I am supporting staff in schools, I find that for most members of staff work issues are rarely left behind the moment you sign out at the end of the day, and your personal life doesn’t disappear as you step through the school gates in the morning.
It is not uncommon for the demands of work to impact our personal life and at the same time our health, wellbeing and personal life can have a huge impact on our effectiveness at work.
Here we will look at what matters most to you. Without a clear sense of what our personal priorities are, everything becomes important, and we end up stretched – and the actual things that matter drown in a swamp of “stuff”.
Staff with a clear sense of who they are and what is important to them are generally the most satisfied. They have a strong sense of perspective that guides them through decision-making. Try this useful exercise, as described in Matthew Kelly’s book Off Balance (2011):
- Make a list of all the many aspects of your life (write them in any order). For example, health, children, work/career, social life, extended family, financial security, relationship, faith, travel, hobbies, pets, etc.
- Reduce that list to the five that you consider to be the most important.
- Prioritise this list. Compare whatever is first on your list to the other four and ask yourself which is more important. Place a mark beside the “winner” each time. Repeat this with the second priority and so on.
- Review your list when making decisions.
Health and children can often be difficult priorities to navigate. For most parents, very little takes precedence over their children – however if you are not healthy (physically or mentally) you are no good to your children and family. However important your career and work priorities are, little gets achieved if you are burnt-out or off sick.
So, spoiler alert: taking care of our health and wellbeing usually ends up being most people’s highest priority.
It may seem obvious, but it is useful to come back to your list periodically and reassess your priorities as these can change either by choice or by life circumstance.
What is important and urgent?
Let’s now return our focus to work and dealing with your “to-do” list. One strategy you can use is to categorise items in your list using the Pomodoro technique, which you will probably be aware of. It involves organising your tasks thus:
- Important and urgent
- Important and not urgent
- Not important and urgent
- Not important and not urgent
Focus on your important and urgent tasks first, then schedule time for the important but not urgent tasks. On reflection, you may even be able to ditch some of the not important or non-urgent tasks as priorities change.
A common issue I find working with middle and senior leaders is that they are so busy being responsive to daily student and staff issues that the important faculty or school improvement priorities that take greater thought, planning and execution can often get side-lined and don’t get the strategic thinking and implementation time that they need.
This is where using the weekly scheduler as described in article two of this series can be invaluable, ensuring you have strategic planning and implementation time protected every week.
Consider holding yourself accountable by ensuring that the important priorities feature on the agenda of line-management or review meetings.
Get support
Don’t forget if you need support, consider who in your school can help – a line manager, mentor, induction tutor, senior leadership team member, or experienced colleague perhaps.
It helps to remember that we all have our own strengths, areas of expertise, and areas of development. A great team is not only supportive but ideally should have a range of skills and knowledge, and experience. Don’t underutilise the collaborative powers of your team. Most of the time, people are more than happy to help you if they can.
The I-C-E Method
One prioritisation exercise that I love is the I-C-E framework. It was originally used as a scoring mechanism for growth marketing teams, although I have adjusted some of the terminology to suit schools.
I-C-E is widely considered to have been invented by entrepreneur and start-up advisor Sean Ellis and is now championed by entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu. I-C-E addresses the age-old issue that: “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
It is a particularly useful strategy for ranking the best use of your limited time using three criteria so that you don’t waste time and effort on low-impact tasks.
In schools it can help you to refine your faculty and school improvement priorities and help you to decide on suitable steps for achieving them. It works thus:
- Impact: What impact will implementing this have on the outcomes you are hoping to achieve? Be realistic here and consider what the measurable outcomes are likely to be. The impact of each task should be reviewed before determining the specifics or a timeline. If the impact is low, are you better off using your limited time to focus on something else?
- Confidence: How confident are you that this will work as expected? This is also a reflection of the capability and capacity of you or your team. If the impact is high, your timeline may need adjusting if you need to up-skill and train members of staff. An honest appraisal of competency is key to not over-inflating confidence scores.
- Ease: How easy do you think it will be to implement? Is this task straightforward and do you have the right resources, adequate time, budget, and staffing in place ready to go? More complex goals may benefit from interim milestones.
Organising I-C-E
The best way to organise this assessment is in a table. List your potential ideas, current tasks, or priorities on the left, with columns to the right for recording the I, C and E.
Score each idea in your table out of 10 – one being for lowest impact, lowest confidence and hardest to implement and 10 being the opposite. Use this framework to rank which ideas are likely to be most successful by calculating the average score for each. Reserve a larger final column to record notes on your desired measurable outcome or hypothesised impact.
How do you eat an elephant?
Don’t forget if your to-do list seems unsurmountable or you have a “mammoth” task to do, break it down into smaller more manageable tasks, using SMART targets (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) to support the process.
Review your progress regularly and don’t forget to acknowledge your achievements and celebrate your successes as you progress.
You eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
Next time
In the final article of this series next week (see above for the link), I will discuss how we can delegate more effectively and confidently.
- Helen Webb is an accredited executive coach based in Leicester. She supports and develops school leaders so they can avoid burn-out, drive school improvement and get the best out of their team and themselves. Helen has more than 20 years’ experience in education as a science teacher, lead practitioner, PGCE and ECT mentor, ECF Lead and ECT induction tutor. She is a regular contributor to SecEd – find her previous articles via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/helen-webb. You can follow her @helenfwebb or find out more about her coaching services at https://helenwebbcoaching.co.uk/