453: Family Productivity, with Bonni Stachowiak

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni Stachowiak is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, a professor of business and management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, Bonni was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. She is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Create margin by under-scheduling family and kid commitments. Our default setting is to have a limited about scheduled on weekends.
We collaborate on schedules by using shared iCloud calendars as a family. Acuity Scheduling* supports both of us professionally in automating scheduling to ensure conflicts are rare.
We both use systems to capture ideas and activities before we decide to move on them. The Drafts app helps both of us do this quickly. Bonni keeps a “someday/maybe” list and Dave keeps an “incubation” list.
We get the kids involved with household responsibilities, so everybody learns to contribute and share daily work.
Take time to put on your leadership hat to make decisions about what’s important. Then, you can manage from there.

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