Brrrr… It’s Cold in Here: Our Love/Hate Relationship with Snow Days

February 26, 2016

Baltimore has seen its share of snow days this winter. It seems like each time I talked to teacher friends during the nine-day snow-a-thon that was Winter Storm Jonas, the conversation went something like this:

Day 1: "I love snow days; I love being a teacher!"

Day 2: "I was just part of a 100 person snowball fight-- Baltimore is the best city in the world!"

Day 3: "I really wanted to do work today, but I watched Netflix instead."

Days 4-8: "I AM GOING STIR CRAZY! I WANT TO BE FREEEEEEE!"

Day 9: "AHH! I have to go back to school tomorrow and haven't accomplished anything."

Everyone at Common Curriculum is a former teacher and we all remember the feeling of infinite hope and inevitable letdown that snow days (snow weeks) provide. Nowadays, we all work from home, so we have learned a few strategies that we think could be useful for those teachers looking to be productive during snow days.*

Note: Cc believes that snow days are miracles (or as close to miracles as semi-predictable weather phenomena can be). This post isn’t advocating for teachers to work nonstop on their days off; instead we want to give teachers who feel defeated at the end of an unproductive snow break a few ideas to help them work against the temptation of doing nothing all day.

Robbie summarized these ideas best with his theory of inertia; here are Robbie’s thoughts:

Snow days hold infinite possibility.

Snow days are glorious. In Baltimore, the city takes on a surreal, dreamlike quality after a winter storm. The roads are quiet. Footsteps are muffled. Everything is still. I remember waking up on snow days with a huge smile, thinking the same thing each time: “Today I’m finally going to catch up on all that work I have to do. I’m finally going to get ahead of the game. And then, I’m going to relax and hang out with friends. Today is going to be both productive and fun. Today is going to be amazing.”

But during snow days, an hour of video games has a way of turning into five, an episode of Sherlock can easily become a season, and a chapter of that novel I’m reading can easily become three. Just like that, the day is over, the magic is gone, and it’s time to return to the classroom frustrated at my lack of productivity, depressed that I have nothing to show for all that time off. Way to go, Robbie.

Inertia controls snow days.

If it sounds like I’m complaining about the wrong things (after all who doesn’t love Sherlock?!), let me explain a bit about how my brain works. I am and have always been driven by inertia. Currently, I’m writing a short blog post, and that means that in 20 seconds, I will still be sitting here, writing this same post. That’s awesome and leads to a state of flow, but inertia is a double-edged sword. When I’m lying in bed and failing for hours to convince myself just to get up and start the day… well, inertia is definitely not my friend in those moments, and frankly, I hate it.

Now that I’m an entrepreneur, my life is effectively a series of snow days, every day, all day. No constraints. Unlimited potential for work. Unlimited potential for procrastination. No protection from inertia. It seems to me that this lack of protection is exactly why snow days can so often be unproductive for teachers, even when we really want to catch up on work.

Strategies for overcoming inertia.

I’ve learned a bit over the years about how to manage my inertia, how to motivate myself to action, and how to switch myself off when I’ve finished my work. So, in no particular order:

• Make an alarm for everything: I have three alarms to wake me up in the morning, an alarm that tells me when to break for lunch, an alarm that tells me when to stop working and go running, and an alarm that tells me to turn off my electronics and get to bed at night. The more I pre-commit to a routine, the easier it is for me to follow that routine.
• Start small tasks, not large projects: I break all of my larger tasks into small “starter” tasks that seem easy and manageable. The smaller the starter task, the easier it is to get started, and thus the easier it is for inertia to take over. I now do this with every aspect of my life. So instead of saying “do the dishes, Robbie”, I tell myself to “clean that one pot on the counter”. Inevitably, I wind up doing all the dishes simply because inertia takes over. It’s a very effective mental trick.
• Change your location, frequently: I do my best work by completing a few tasks in one place, and then switching to another. That could be as simple as writing two lessons at my desk and then finishing my plans for the week in the living room, or it could mean planning at my house in the morning and then walking to a coffee shop to grade in the afternoon. Regardless of what the change is, it’s essential, and it helps with cabin fever to boot!
• Pretend it’s a work day: My first activity in the morning (other than breakfast of course) has to be work, or my brain thinks it’s the weekend. It took me a while to learn this lesson, but by my third year of teaching, I would never accept invitations to socialize before 5 pm on snow days. Instead, I would intentionally get out of the house and get some work done, and then join my friends later in the afternoon or evening. Even if I only did a few hours of work, that made me feel accomplished and allowed me to enjoy my leisure time more.
• Celebrate how the day went: I learned to make a point of congratulating myself even if I only got a little planning done during snow days. The more I rewarded myself for being productive, the more relaxed I felt when I went back to school. Now that I’m out of the classroom, I almost always have a celebratory activity planned every evening. Sometimes it’s just cooking while listening to the next episode of Serial (or the FiveThirtyEight Elections podcast… where my government teachers at?!) and sometimes it’s playing video games. The point is that I think of these activities as a celebration for being productive, even though I would probably be doing them anyways if I wasn’t working. This reinforces the habit of productivity, prevents the days from running together, and makes the rhythm of working from home feel more natural than it would otherwise.

What do you accomplish on snow days?

If you are anything like me and have found yourself squandering snow days for no apparent reason, try one of these strategies and let me know how it goes! You can email me at robbie@commoncurriculum.com or share your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter.

Oh, you’re still reading? But we’re all done. So, stop reading this, get some planning done, and then go outside and make snow angels!

Originally published at blog.commoncurriculum.com on February 26, 2016.