Recovering From The Classroom- Part 2

In this episode, Rachel shares her journey of redefining her daily routine and work-life balance after experiencing burnout, emphasizing intentional planning, flexibility, and self-care. This episode offers practical strategies for creating a fulfilling, balanced life as a self-employed educator or parent.

Chapters
00:00 Navigating the Transition to Self-Employment
02:17 Finding Balance in a Flexible Schedule
04:47 Intentional Living and Daily Structure
09:27 Creating a Flexible Routine for Productivity
13:57 Habit Stacking for Daily Success
18:44 Rediscovering Personal Identity and Hobbies
23:09 Reflecting on Growth and Future Intentions

Resources 

Have a question or topic suggestion? Drop it here in this form!

"Atomic Habits" by James Clear (Book) 

First Coffee- Mary's YouTube Channel

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Teacher to Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Siccioni, former classroom teacher turned entrepreneur and mentor to educators building their own unique teacher businesses. This is a space for teachers who are curious about alternatives to the classroom, exploring private practice and other multifaceted work, and for those who want to know what success can look like beyond the classroom. I'm glad you're here. Now let's get into today's conversation. Last week I talked about the emotional roller coaster. I don't know, it felt a little bit more like that salt and pepper shaker ride than maybe a roller coaster mix of really strong emotions that I went through when I left the classroom. This time I want to talk about the logistics and what was actually happening in my world and my business and my thought process as I was going through this and really sort of finding my stride in my own teaching business. So when I became fully self-employed in January of 2021, I said it was like a college student going away for the first time. There was so much freedom. And I really didn't know what to do with my time. At first, it was kind of like being on break again because I didn't have a set structure. I didn't have like a time that I needed to be somewhere by other than for my lessons. So that gave me a lot of flexibility as to what I did and when I did it. And I didn't have like a set schedule. I mean, other than getting the girls on and off the bus. And whenever I happened to have scheduled lessons, I could really do what I wanted when I wanted. So frequently I would take my dog for a nice long walk after I put the girls on the bus, especially if it was a nice day. And then I come home and I would have some breakfast and then I get showered and get dressed and get ready for, you know, my first student, whenever that was. I tried to have my schedule so that way I didn't see my first student before 10 and I was wrapping up with my last student by four when my kiddos would get home. And for the most part, it worked that way, with the exception of a couple of evenings and a couple of tutoring students I took in the beginning. But there were definitely some days, if I didn't have a student scheduled, or if I only had like one or two online students, that I sat on the sofa and I ate comfort food and I binged watched Netflix. And then there were other days where I would sit in my office and just work, work like a maniac, work on planning, work on creating content for my social media, work on marketing. I would just sit there and work. I didn't find an in-between. There was no balance. I was either 100% on or 100% off. And it didn't take very long before that same cyclical pattern of burnout re-emerged. By October, I was tired again. Different job, different room, different boss. But I was recreating the exact same situation. I wasn't consciously creating anything. I was still running on some sort of bizarre autopilot, bouncing back and forth between either being on break or being, you know, all work. And it was probably around my third round of burnout. So halfway into my second year of business, that I kind of had like a sit-down moment with myself. I'm like, and I thought, Rachel, you are a hundred percent self-employed. Your life is literally whatever you make it. So what do you want your day to look like? Because your life is a collection of days. So I had to get really intentional about what I wanted it to look like and feel like and be like. How did I want to look and feel and be? And I had to just sit down and think about it in those ways. And it really did take me that long and three cycles of burnout, three cycles of do I even really want to be doing this? Of just wanting to, like, you know, quit my whole business and maybe go waitress somewhere or go back to my old job of working in an eye doctor's office. And at that point, I hadn't discovered any AI or ChatGPT or Claude. So all of these conversations were happening with a notebook and a pen. And so I started writing. Like literally, I wrote, what do I want my day to look like? When do I want it to start? When do I want it to stop? What do I want the beginning of my day to look like Monday through Friday? What do I want the end of my day to look like Monday through Friday? Of course, it wasn't going to be exactly like that, but if I'm going to dream, let's dream big. What do I want it to be like? And then I asked myself, what were my non-negotiables and what were the things that were outside of my control? So for example, getting my kids up and out the door. That was outside of my control. Being home when they got off the bus, that was within my control, but it that was a non-negotiable. I want to be home when they get off the bus. I also wanted to have a snack at the kitchen table with my kids. I want us to have dinner as many nights a week as we could, like have dinner all together as a family as many nights a week as were logistically possible with dance classes or soccer or eventually horseback riding came into the picture for my youngest. Once I looked at, and I actually have a physical planner, like a paper planner, and I also have calendar pages that I print out. And I just write down all the things that are scheduled. And now I had written down what I actually wanted my morning to look and feel like, and what I want my evenings to look and feel like. And then I used my favorite curriculum writing technique, backwards design, and figured out how to make it look like that. So I still don't want to see students before 10. Um, sometimes my kiddos have tough mornings, and I can't always get there by nine. Sometimes 9:30 is pushing it. And so I don't want to feel rushed. I had plenty of rushed mornings. Rushed, adrenaline-fueled, short-tempered mornings. I don't want those anymore. And now that I get to meet my own boss, I don't have them if I can help it. Occasionally a doctor's appointment or something will come in there. But it's having that stress in my morning is almost always a recipe for disaster. So I make sure that's not there. Making sure that I am able to get my kids off the bus or pick them up from school, I make sure that I can do that. I have a hard cutoff. Unless something that is non-negotiable that I can't change comes up, I always have that. And so now I schedule my students during the day or around that. I do my best to avoid evenings because evenings are pretty well packed Monday through Thursday. And by Friday, everybody's just exhausted. So we really try not to do anything except just stay home and be together as a family on Fridays. I even had a like bedtime routine and I have shared this out, actually. What once I created a bedtime routine after I formed the private practice teacher, I made it a printable and just shared it because some of the teachers that were in my program were also moms and we're trying to sort of figure out we that was a rabbit hole we went down in one of our group mentorship meetings, was talking about like just family. How do we negotiate different parts of family life as a private practice teacher? What do we want that to look like? And so we brainstormed it and we talked about it together. There were several parents with kids at different ages, and we just sort of talked about like our bedtime routines and we got some ideas from each other. And so that was one of the things that came out of it. And one of the things that I really love about our group when we get together and have these spontaneous conversations that you can't necessarily put in a training, you know, they just come up out of need. I knew that I really wanted to be able to take Yeti for a nice long walk. The walks are really good for me. I knew that some mornings I wanted to listen to a podcast, and some mornings I wanted to listen to the birds in the trees. And so I put that out there too, that I would listen to podcasts three times a week. And on the other days, I would listen to just nothing in my own thoughts, or I would dictate. Just like sometimes you have great ideas while you are in the shower or just before you go to bed. I have great ideas when I'm walking my dog in the morning. My brain is refreshed, and there's something about being out in nature and the crisp morning air where we live. It just gets my brain going. And so I am able to talk right into my notes app on my phone and share all of the ideas and the things that come to me during that time. And it's one of my favorite times. I want to make sure that I am able to do some yoga. So I make sure that I get at least 30 minutes of yoga. And it's not always pretty. Sometimes it's just 30 minutes of yoga stretching, but it helps me to feel much better in my body. And when I feel good in my body, I'm able to be more relaxed and more present and my brain works better. My whole day gets better when I do that. So I make sure that I make time for that. And I want to make sure that I can get showered and have a nice breakfast. And I make sure that the girls are able to have breakfast in the morning before they go to school. So all of those are things I knew that those were all things that I wanted to have built into my days. And then it was a matter of figuring out how to schedule around those things. So that way I'm able to show up for my students and my mentees as the best version of myself that I can be when they are paying for my time. And I'm taking really good care of myself so that way I can be a resource for others and feel good at the same time. Another thing that I discovered as I was going through this process of structuring my day and thinking about my life as a whole and what I wanted my life to look like and feel like on a daily basis. I want to make sure that I'm creating something that's flexible enough. I have ADHD. I know I've mentioned that before. And if it's something that's too rigid, I'll abandon it. So I need to create something that is flexible enough that I don't have to quit everything just because it was out of track or I didn't wasn't able to get a whole 30 minutes in, or I wasn't able to stay on the right time. And speaking of that, of time, I learned that time blocking works really well for me, or even just having like a list of things that I want to get done. So what I do with my blocking, if I have a client scheduled or a student scheduled at a specific time, that's a fixed appointment. That's in there. But then there's like morning before that student or morning after that student. And so those would just be time blocks. I wouldn't necessarily put in like 1045 to 11:30 on there. And then I just kind of have a to-do list of all the things that I want to get done. And again, I don't necessarily put them all in in order of priority. It's more like a brain dump. So every morning I brain dump all of the things that I want to get done. Let me see if I can sort of explain this maybe in a better way or another idea, because all of these systems have evolved over time. Since I figured out the system, it was about in the second year of my business and I've now been in business for six years. So there are a couple of new things that I have built in that I want to share with you that maybe would be good ideas for you. You're welcome. You know, please take them. That's why I share them if they're helpful. So I now have, and I'm gonna show it if you happen to be watching the video. I have two like note pens, sort of. My mother-in-law gets us a calendar every year, like a desk calendar that's the tear away of the day. And on the back of this one, it says notes. And then it has these little like bullets. That's the calendar. And so I have one that's for the day and one that's for the week or the month. So when I have something that me that I want to get done before the end of the month, I will put it on this one. And then when I have something that I want to get done that day, or it would be a good day for it, because I have a pretty light schedule as far as client or student appointments are, I put it on the today one. And I have a little says today. So I'll sit down and write all the things that I want to get done for the day. Some of it's business, some of it's personal. So groceries is on there, dishes, um, weeding is on there, laundry is I got tired of writing laundry, so now I do laundry every day. I'll talk about that in a second. Getting a form to the post office, that would be something that's on my today list. It's not a this month list. And then I have my something that needs to be done sometime during this month, which should be like meal planning for our vacation at the end of the month. That's something that I'm gonna need to be doing. So it's not something that needs to be done today, it's something that needs to be done. And so the next morning when I get up, I'll look at my list of everything that I wrote from the day before for that day. I don't always get through it all, and that's perfectly fine. There's another day, like I have a time that I stop working by and I can feel it in my brain. I'm like, I'm done. I don't have any more juice. I really just want to relax and be with my family. I'm done working for the day. And it's usually sometime around six. So the next morning, after I get the girls to school, after Yeti's had his walk and my brain is in good shape after I've moved my body and I'm ready to come into my office and sit down and start working. The first thing I do is rewrite my to-do lists. And I look at what I didn't get done from yesterday. And I also look at what I want to get done during that month. And then I write a brand new list and I just throw the old list away. As soon as I've rewritten it, I throw the old list away. I don't need it anymore. And then I work through it and I'm looking at my schedule on Google Calendar as to when I have my times. And then I will time block them in on my desk calendar. And it's just sort of a way that I'm able to get my brain ready for everything that I'm gonna do that day. I'm mentally thinking about it. I have put some limits so it's not this like never-ending, you know, amorphous to-do list. It's not vague, it's not super rigid, but it's clear. It's everything is written down. I know exactly what needs to be done, and I just work my way through it. I get the things that I can get done, and then I'll see a client and I cross them off as I go, and then I'll get back to my list, and then I'll see maybe a student, and then I get back to my list. I take lunch, get back to my list, and then I go and pick the girls up from school and I visit with them. And if I still have any energy left, I come back in and I'm back to my list. And that's how I've been able to structure my days. When I first started on this journey of, okay, I'm my own boss, my life is literally what I want it to be. Never before did I have the opportunity to make my life what I want it to be before becoming self-employed. My life was something that happened in my spare time outside of my job. But now, as my own boss, I get to say when I start and I get to say when I stop, and I get to say how long my lunch is, and I get to say whether or not I go out with my sister or my friend from high school or a new friend for lunch, or if I run errands, when I run errands, I get to say all of that. And so when I started on that journey and had that realization and got out of that either all or nothing mentality with working, I got the book Atomic Habits. I mean, I cannot think of the author's name right this second to save my life, but I'm sure you've heard it. And I was reading it and I was struggling to read it. And so I started listening to it on an audio book, and it was awesome. It's a really, really great book, especially if you're neurotypical. But if you have ADHD like me, I found it really, really hard. Again, it was that like it was just a little bit too rigid for me. But there was a concept that he talked about in there that has worked for me, and it's habit stacking. And I actually am kind of a little bit in love with habit stacking. So what I do now, and we just moved, so it was a great time to add another habit to the stack, is I do laundry every single day. So that's something that I do in the morning, and I move the laundry from the washing machine into the dryer, and then I put a new load in the washing machine and I do that in the morning. So when I get my kids up, I come downstairs, I take my morning medication, I drink my water, then I make my coffee, then I go back upstairs to check on them and make sure that they're getting dressed. I get myself dressed for going out and taking a walk, at least out of my PJs, because I don't leave the house in my PJs. And that's when I do the laundry. So when I get dressed into whatever I'm gonna walk the dog in and take the kids to school in, I move the laundry over just like I described. And then I go in and check on them, come back downstairs, drink some more coffee, make them breakfast, have a little breakfast with them, and then we leave and go out and I take them to school, and then I come home and I take my dog for a walk, and that's the rest of my morning routine, which I've already described. So that's the one habit that I have stacked into my morning, and it is working out beautifully. The laundry is always in some stage of movement. It's not just sitting there piling up, haunting me. And I I've talked before, any of my mentees know laundry, it has always been my enemy. And I don't, I feel like we're getting to a place where laundry is not my enemy anymore. Then my evening one that I picked up, and I got this from I think her name is Callie Branson. She used to be but first coffee, but I think she changed. Anyway, she's on YouTube and I do really like her. So if you are inclined to find her, um, I might even see if I can find the link and put it in the show notes if you want to check her out. But one of the things that she does, she actually mentioned the one about the laundry trick. So I've added that one in and I do really love it. The other thing that she does is she closes her kitchen at night. And I love that. I love that so much. I make sure that I clean the kitchen every night. My husband is usually the one who makes us dinner. He's a much better and more invested cook. If I cook for you, you won't starve, but it won't be great. If he cooks, it's actually a meal and you will enjoy it. So he's the one who does most of the cooking for our family. I don't mind cleaning up after a great meal. So I am the one who cleans up the kitchen, but I do close down the kitchen every night. And that's just part of our nighttime routine. And that's one of the things I've added in. And I love it because then I wake up in the morning and it's a nice clean kitchen and everything just feels fresh and ready to go for the day. Another part of recovering from the classroom, it's not quite maybe logistical, but I think it's not enough to make a whole podcast out of. So I kind of want to add it on in here. Another part of it was figuring out who I was now. Because the woman who went into the classroom is not the same woman who came out of it. When I went into the classroom, I was relatively newly married. We'd only been married for a couple years. We didn't have any children yet. And I had a lot more free time. If anybody remembers their first year or two, or sometimes even three years of teaching, those are very labor-intensive years. And so I would work until seven o'clock at night sometimes. And it was fine. My husband was perfectly self-sufficient. He could feed himself, I could feed myself. We both did work that we love to do. So there was no resentment. And we always found time to connect and talk to each other. And it that was not hard as a young couple without kids. The woman who left the classroom was 10 years older. The woman who came out of the classroom was 40, had been married for over 15 plus years, and had two children and really didn't have any interest in doing the things that I did when I was in my early 30s with no children. And so I had to figure out like, what do I want to do for fun? Once I had created this schedule that was working really well for me, and I started my second business, the private practice teacher, and that was working out well. And everything was running smoothly, I found myself with pockets of free time. Well, cleaning is not that fun. So I'm not going to add that as a hobby. I wanted a hobby. You know, when people ask you, like, what do you do for fun? I wanted to have something to say. Because I hadn't, I mean, when I was a teacher mom, like, what do I do for fun? Like, I sleep through the night. That's fun for me. I wanted to have a hobby and I didn't really know what I like to do anymore. So I tried some things. And now I read for pleasure. I was taking book recommendations from people, trying new genres that I've never tried before. I remembered being one of the few wives, like you know how when my husband had his friends from high school and we would all get together and I would talk to the other wives. They would talk about things or even talking to other moms at my kids' extracurricular activities. And they would talk about the books that they're reading or the shows that they're watching, different things that they have going on in their lives that were for them, not just for their kids. I didn't have anything to add to those conversations. I couldn't participate in those conversations as a teacher mom. We don't really talk about that much. It was a teacher mom, like 180 days of the year, that's pretty much what I do. More than that. If you consider the weeks you have to go in before school even starts. And I wanted to be have something to add to those conversations. And now I actually have the time to do that, to do those things. So when they would talk about books they were reading, I would go read those books. When they talked about authors that they liked, I would go find one and read it. And now I can have those book conversations with people. I might even join a book club, which I'm pretty excited about. I started horseback riding. At the age of 47, I started horseback riding. My daughter has been riding for almost four years. And I've been a barn mom and talked to a lot of the other barn moms. And now I'm actually doing it for the first time in my life. And let me tell you, it is a great workout. And there's emerging research about how good it is for women in this stage of life. So I would absolutely check that out. And I joined a craft group. I didn't know what I wanted to do for a craft group. So I just brought some colored pencils and coloring pages. And I was coloring at our craft group. Now I'm crocheting. I actually just crocheted a blanket. So that's something that I kind of wanted to add in here about the logistical side of once you have created this whole life vision and what you want your everyday to look and feel like, and you build your work schedule around that. And then you find these pockets of time that are free, that you can do things all year round. And now I feel like I have this well-rounded life and I want to share it, which is why I started the podcast. And so just kind of wrap this up and tie it up with a nice little bow. After all of that, you know, looking back six years later and taking it all in, because I am in one of those benchmark moments, right? Like I just moved a month ago and had this whole like taking stock of my life and looking back at everything that's happened. I am so thankful for everything that's happened, every emotion, everything that I've gone through. I actually was just sort of having this conversation with one of my former students that I just had lunch with. She's home over the summer, and she was one of my students that I had at this school that I left. Her senior year was the one that I wasn't there for, which I hated because she was one of my one of my students I had since eighth grade. And I really wanted to be there for her. And I had her older brother as well. But we just had this wonderful conversation. And so I'm so grateful for all of it, everything, the way that it happened. And not because everything that happened was okay. It certainly wasn't. And I don't need to repeat any of those lessons. But I can absolutely say that without it, I wouldn't be where I am. I wouldn't have learned the things that I've learned. I wouldn't be the person that I am now. I wouldn't get to have the students that I have now. I wouldn't get to work with the amazing teachers that I get to support now. My friendship never would have happened. The private practice teacher never would have happened. I mean, when I started at that school, I thought I was going to be there for 20 years. I thought I was going to retire there. And I was okay with that vision of life. In fact, that was the vision of my life that I wanted. And, you know, just thinking about my student and her plans for her future, which we talked about, it's really wonderful sometimes when our plans that we have for ourselves don't work out and make the way for other plans that end up being so much more wonderful, do. And I guess that's the part that I wanted you to sort of take home. If you are still in the grief, anger, resentment, confusion, where you're in this strange disorienting freedom of not exactly knowing what comes next, I want you to know that it's okay to be there. It's that's normal. I think it's normal to be there. I think that you're likely just recovering and it's gonna take time. So allow it the time and space that it needs. But also take this time and space that you have to get thoughtful and intentional about what you want the next part of your life to look like and what you want it to feel like, and how you want to feel in that time and space, and how you want to be able to show up for yourself and for others and for your students and for your family and for your friends, and walk into whatever the next chapter of your life is going to be with that intention in mind. And I think that you'll be able to create something that's really amazing and perfect and beautiful. And then a year from now, five years from now, six years from now, you'll be able to look back and say, wow, I'm really glad that everything happened just the way it did to bring me to this place where I am now. That is all I have for you this week. Also added to my socials, but put this link in here for Mary to add in the show notes too. I've added an Ask Me Anything Google form to my link tree and to all of my socials. So if you have a question for me and there's something that you would like me to talk about, feel free to put it in there. I don't have a really firm idea of what I want to talk about next week. I have a couple of ideas, but I also have some meetings coming up with some of my teacher mentees. And a lot of times I get some good ideas from those that turn into things that I want to talk about. So I don't want to lock into something just yet for next week. You'll have to tune back in and find out. I do have an interview scheduled, so that will be coming out for you at the end of this month. I'm hoping to have some more interviews scheduled. So keep your ears perked up for that. And I hope that you have a great week. Thank you for listening. If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with a colleague or leave a review. This helps the conversation reach other teachers who may need it. You can learn more about what I do and how to work with me at theprivatepracticeteacher.org. Best wishes always.