The document discusses how rushing through tasks and doing many things simultaneously may seem productive but actually leads to a loss of focus and clarity. It recommends taking time to slow down, reflect, and re-evaluate goals in order to determine your ideal outcome, define success for yourself, identify any incongruences between your actions and goals, recognize your strengths, and develop those strengths so you can make progress toward your vision rather than staying in an endless cycle of task completion. A 5-step process is provided to guide this reflection and refocusing.

1. Leadership Lesson
Slow Down to Get Ahead—Reclaiming Focus
Adapted from www.mindful.org/slow-
down-to-get-ahead

2. : Rushing through our daily tasks and
projects, doing many simultaneously, gains us
time.
: Rushing results in loss of clarity and
focus on our vision and distracts us from being
cognitively and emotionally available.

3. Cost of Rushing
Make mistakes
Redo and redo
Reduce effectiveness
Lose purpose and direction
Stay in endless cycle of task
completion with no developmental
growth or progress

4. If you’re rushing and rushing
and not getting the results you
want, take a moment to reflect,
re-evaluate and re-direct your
energies…

5. 5 Steps Toward Focus
1. Determine your ideal outcome; clarify your
vision.
2. Define success for yourself.
3. Identify the incongruence between your
actions/behaviors and your ideal.
4. Identify the strengths needed for success.
5. Develop those strengths.

6. Get Ready to Reflect & Re-evaluate!

7. Determine your ideal outcome
(clarify your vision).
 What does your ideal life (both personally
and professionally) look like?
 What does it feel like?
 Do your actions align to your described ideal?
 What actions/behaviors if taken or adapted
would move you toward your ideal?
#1

8. Define success for yourself.
Complete the following:
 I am successful because I …
 I experience feeling successful when I…
#2

9. Identify your incongruence.
 Tune in to your daily routines and
behaviors—which of these, if any, do not
move you toward success?
 What actions if taken would yield better
results?
#3

11. Identify the strengths needed
for success.
 What skills are needed to achieve your
vision?
 What strengths do you already possess?
 How will enhancing these strengths help
move you toward your vision?
 What skills might you develop in order to
realize your vision?
#4

12. Develop those strengths.
 You have the content knowledge, skills, and
disposition to achieve your vision.
 Hone, cultivate, and expand them starting today!
(Perhaps the newProfessional Standards for
Educational Leaders would help you clarify your
vision and identify your strengths)
#5

13. FOCUS ON THE
PRESENT AND THE
PAST WILL TAKE
CARE OF ITSELF.