To Do List: A School Psychologist's #1 Tool

If you have ever walked the halls of any building as a School Psychologist, you have most likely experienced this scene. You quickly go to grab your lunch out of the fridge (at 2 pm), or run to the bathroom between counseling sessions, and you are immediately intercepted by a teacher who need you to come take a look at Johnny. When you finally make it back to your room an hour later (an intercom call and student in crisis to blame), you completely forget about Johnny, until a week later, when the teacher brings him up again.

For me, the best and worst part of the School Psychologist position is the many roles we plan. It makes for short, interesting days, but long to do lists, am I right?

It took me 6 years to find a to do list system that works for me. 6 years. That’s a lot of lost post it notes, forgotten tasks, and tasks apps attempted. Today I figured I’d share with you what I do. Spoiler: it’s simple as can be and nothing fancy.

First, I use this system for my home life and school, but separate. Unless there is a rare reason to change it (see: global pandemic), my school list lives at school. My home list lives at home. This is part of my home/school balance act that works for me.

Anyway, here is what I do. At the start of every year, I purchase 2 smaller (usually half the size of a sheet or paper) notebooks. Each day, I write the date, and the tasks for that day. As I do them, I cross them off. Before I leave for the day, I transfer the tasks over to a new page for the next day. It’s that simple (told you!).

I also have a post it note I keep upcoming assessment dates on, which I transfer to the next page daily. Other than that, everything lives on one page. I keep this notebook open to the date on my desk everyday, and bring it everywhere I go. I love this method!

Why it works for me:

It’s in my face, all the time. For years, I used the Wunderlist app, which worked well, but on days where I wasn’t at my computer, I found that I never looked at the list, and therefore, it just grew and grew. I find that seeing the list of tasks encourages me to use a free 5 minutes to stuff an envelope with rating scales, rather than check my email again.
The check off. So satisfying. I am 100% the person that feels so satisfied by crossing an item off a list. So much so, that I will often write tasks I just did, just to cross them off. When I am constantly checking this off, I have less days where I feel like I accomplished nothing.
I can bring it everywhere. At my first school, it was common for staff to have their iPads or phones with them to check emails. Wunderlist was awesome for this, because I could quickly add tasks on the fly. When I changed schools and that wasn’t the case, I found that it was harder to remember to add things later to my online to do lists.
I still use my outlook calendar for meetings, etc. So each day, I look ahead at the meetings and write down in my notebook what I need to do. This way, my to do list doesn’t get too lengthy with things due weeks in advance.