Do as Little as Needed, Not as Much as Possible

Sitting in a crowded conference room, chairs lined row to row only a couple of inches apart, I listened to Educelebrity Dave Stuart Jr. speak about finding balance as a teacher. He referred to a term that was foreign to me up until that moment: satisficing. “Essentially,” he said, “satisficing is the combination of both satisfying and sufficing.” In simple terms, Stuart Jr. was encouraging his teacher audience, who were cramped into the small space, to not sweat the little things: to work sufficiently and to satisfy the demands of the job, but to not put one’s own physical and mental health at risk in doing so.

That conference took place over two years ago, so you can calm your panic levels and rest assured that teachers haven’t, as far as I know, been gathering in masses amidst a global pandemic. And yet, Stuart Jr.’s message seems all the more relevant given that we have all the same pressures as before with the added struggle of having to cope with the loss of normalcy. The thought of a large gathering, for example, something that only 14 months ago would have been perceived as mundane, now evokes a visceral response. What toll has such an immense change in perception already taken on our mental health?

More recently, as I was listening to an older episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast, I was reminded of Dave Stuart Jr.’s remarks. Ferriss, an American entrepreneur, podcast pioneer, and author extraordinaire, is perhaps best known for the branding of his skills of accelerated learning and maximizing productivity. In The Four Hour Work Week, he outlines several productivity tips and explains how his process of batching has allowed him to minimize work hours while maximizing efficiency. In The Four Hour Chef, Ferriss details his process of learning how to cook world-class meals in record time and often with minimal ingredients. Indeed, he has mastered the art of ‘doing less’; as he writes in the former text, “doing less is not being lazy. Don’t give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal satisfaction.” 

Ferriss opened the podcast episode with a quotation from Henk Kraaijenhof, an Olympic-level sprinting coach: “Do as little as needed, not as much as possible.” This notion immediately resonated with me as I thought back to Dave Stuart Jr.’s presentation on satisficing. In many ways, I had already adopted both Stuart Jr.’s and Ferriss’ mantras throughout my teaching career, making productivity one of my strengths. Compared to my first few years as a teacher, I’ve scaled back on content, assessment, and time spent lecturing. In doing so, I’ve found more time to engage in meaningful discussions with students, created greater opportunities to conference and provide one-on-one verbal feedback, and developed a higher capacity for flexibility in changing my lesson plans to meet the needs of my students. 

Undoubtedly, we all have an anecdote from this year where we’ve had to push back a due date, modify the parameters of an assessment, or adapt a lesson on the fly given the ever-changing protocols to teaching and learning. In fact, on the first day of term three of a rotating four-term cycle, I engaged in a 75-minute discussion with my AP Literature students that was originally planned for 15 minutes. Why? Because the students wanted to keep the discussion going, and, frankly, they needed it. And so did I. What was discussed? Lucid dreaming, favourite movies, university realities and expectations, genres of music, heartbreak, sports, and a whole host of other topics, none of which were related to AP Literature. At the end of the class, I asked the students two questions: “Was today’s lesson educational?” and “Did you have fun?”. The answers were a unanimous “yes”. Every student in the class learned something that lesson and had fun doing it; criteria that I would consider for success any day. Yet, I’m not certain I would have made the same choice to set aside course content and have an entire 75-minute discussion in any other year. In earnest, I’ve never made the choice to do so in any other year.

As educators, we tend to have a strong work ethic, which means we can be hard on ourselves when we let marking pile up or we haven’t prepared for a lesson thoroughly. It’s that very rigidity in the employment of a strong work ethic that can cause us to feel guilty if we are not going above and beyond as teachers. A silver lining is that the pandemic has given us a legitimate excuse not to do so. But we shouldn’t need an excuse not to do so, and that’s the point. Some of us, in a normal year, whatever that means, do our best just to stay afloat at times. And we always get the job done. Most of the time, the students can’t tell the difference between an over-meticulously developed lesson plan and one that, while less polished, was still engaging and met the demands of the curriculum. 

In fact, it’s because we do so much as teachers that we don’t have to do more. Enter satisficing. To be clear, it’s not about doing less for doing less’ sake. And it’s not about being lazy. Truthfully, it’s about reconsidering both your time and your values in order to better preserve your mental health and your utility as a teacher. As a side note, what percentage of teachers quit the profession after just two to five years? Look it up, I won’t spoil the answer for you, but I will say that the percentage merely reinforces my point. And while I could have plugged along on that first day of term three and taught to the AP Exam, my students likely won’t remember the lessons on characterization within The Great Gatsby in the long run, but they probably won’t soon forget the lesson where we discussed Glam Rock and Arsenal FC’s chances of winning the premier league in the same class.

The process of satisficing may look different for everyone and it certainly doesn’t have to involve ditching an entire lesson plan; rather, it’s simply about doing what’s needed and not feeling guilty about anything more. So that begs the question, what’s not needed? For me, it’s the small things that take away from my time to preserve my love for the job. Here is a small list of changes I’ve made over the past year in order to satisfice and prioritize my mental health: deleted Gmail from my phone and stopped answering emails in the evening, stopped completing any work, for that matter, or marking after 5:00 pm unless absolutely necessary, began arriving to work 15 minutes before my classes started and not at 8:00 am every morning, leaving work once all my classes ended, unless I had additional responsibilities, and not waiting until after 3:30, spending additional time in the faculty common room at lunch conversing with colleagues and not frantically planning or marking during that period. Keep in mind that you can’t satisfice in every instance, and the time still needs to be made up elsewhere, either before or after the fact. But satisficing has offered me the reassurance that I’m doing what’s required of me as a teacher and the freedom to do what’s needed for my mental health beyond the classroom. I still meet all of the daily demands of my job, continue to get my work done as needed, and finish my marking and planning in a timely manner. In truth, it’s because I satisfice that I am more inclined to use my time wisely and effectively in order to be able to make the above concessions and why I’m able to not sweat the small stuff.

Every job has its demands and there are times as a teacher when we simply have to put in an extra effort. And I’m all for putting in the extra mile in order to make a difference for your school or students. But these times should be the exception, not the rule. The mental impacts of this pandemic likely won’t be truly felt for at least the next three to five years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see large attrition of teachers during that time. I don’t want to be part of a statistic, and I don’t want to exit the teaching profession when I feel that connection and in-person learning are essential now more than ever. It’s for this reason that I satisfice. We need to be honest with ourselves in accepting that it’s not necessary to constantly go above and beyond to feel adequate as educators. Doing less is not about being lazy, especially when speaking about personal sacrifice. You owe it to yourself and to your mental health; do as little as needed, not as much as possible.