Backwards Designing Your Life to Optimize Your Presence
TL;DR: Everything we do is being consumed by our brain, which in turn influences how we think, react, and make decisions. The habits we consistently implement strengthen our brains to think, react, and decide accordingly. When we are in a state of chronic stress due to our habit of preparing for the future, yet finding ourselves in a state of preparation to attempt to manage the stress, those tendencies keep us away from the present moment and become our normal way of being, further feeding stress. This necessitates a Systems Thinking, Backwards Designed approach to automate our brains via Mindful habits to shift us from being reactive to proactive.
How can we remain present while remaining prepared?
As educators, we immerse ourselves deeply in a multitude of elements while simultaneously envisioning the learning experiences we develop for our learners. However, constantly thinking ahead can bring anxieties and ‘what-ifs’. Of all the considerations we have to think about when building out lessons, activities, and units, remaining in the present moment day-by-day is not always an option.
SYSTEMS
Sturdy systems are built with the end in mind and are strategically planned out to ensure optimal efficiency.
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PRACTICES
Calmness is found and developed in the present moment through intentional presence practices.
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PARADIGM SHIFT AUTOMATIZATION
The lens through which you see the world provides you automatic, quicker ways to apply prioritization and end-in-mind focuses to allow maintained presence.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Instead of having opposing approaches between planning and presence, the objective can remain the same between both endeavors through building neural pathways in Systems Thinking, Backwards Design, and Mindfulness. The more intentional we habitualize practices, the more permanent and automatic these ways of thinking and being become, and the less brain calories we expend on decision-making (thank you neuroplasticity!).
Theory:
Developing an automatic Systems Thinking approach to more effectively Backwards Design situations will require less cognitive expenditure and allow one to remain more present, coupled with Mindfulness to keep adversities objective and emotional expenditure neutral.
One of the qualities of practicing and achieving mindfulness is remaining in the present moment. For those of us who are planners, however, this can be tricky. When we are anywhere but the present moment, displaced and irrational thoughts and emotions can steal our peace and replace it with anxiety, depression, or guilt. This can lead to chronic stress if we are unable to productively manage stress when faced with adverse situations. When stress becomes chronic, our body releases a steady stream of the stress hormone, cortisol, which can lead to bigger issues. Cortisol is released when our brain is trying to protect us from potential threat and prepare us to survive the threat. This is assuming that once the threat has left, our body can return to homeostasis. However, chronic stress creates a longterm exposure to cortisol, which disrupts our entire system and creates a multitude of problems. It is important to remember that the brain is a physiological part of our bodily system and our mind has the power to affect our entire physiological system based on how we face adverse situations. Mindfulness techniques are important for this process.
The brain is a physiological part of our bodily system and our mind has the power to affect our entire physiological system
You Are What You Consume
What we consume, both physically and mentally, matters. From how we treat ourselves to the environment we allow ourselves to remain in, our brain is always listening. These consumptions can either control or adhere to the habits we implement. Habits can come in the form of how we treat ourselves, the environment we allow ourselves to be in, and influence the decisions we make. Habits make way for us to be proactive or reactive, both consciously and subconsciously, in all facets of our lives. It is all systemic, intertwined, and deeply influential.
“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment”
So what do we do when our habits positively serve our productivity, while having the potential to feed longterm exposure to stress and actively keeps us from a core tenet of mindfulness: presence?
The neural pathways to build are found in Backwards Design.
“Backwards Design” (1998) is an educational method to designing curricula, coined as such by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe to take a planning approach known as “Understanding by Design” (1998) (UbD). Wiggins and McTighe brought UbD to the world when the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) published their work, appropriately titled Understanding by Design (1998).
Wiggins and McTighe’s Backwards Design methodology not only helps one focus on understanding what big ideas are worth exploring, but shifts our paradigm to begin with the end in mind. It is a mashup of Stephen Covey’s second habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism” approach of identifying and focusing on priorities first.
When you are able to build neural pathways to strengthen and quicken your ability to sift through the chaos and identify the most important area of your focus, you are able to visualize the end result. Now, how do we keep the end in mind? Ask yourself:
“Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?”
In 1998, Ben Hunt-Davis and his Olympic rowing team set a goal to achieve an Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Their technique? To do whatever answered ‘yes’ to the simple question: “Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?” Their focus on doing whatever made the boat go faster got them their Olympic gold medal in 2000 and gave us a new layer of what keeping the end in mind means.
All it takes is a simple question that forces us to analyze our habits and practices. The challenges are identifying what end we want and sticking to our habits and practices.
Priority Was Singular
The Industrial Revolution brought us the plural form of “priority”. This slight change created significant impact to how we have attempted to devote our time, energy, and resources across all of our “priorities” in the effort to strive for productivity’s sake. While we become busy managing multiple priorities, less of our brain calories are available to do anything to our full potential. This not only blurs what our focus was in the first place, but also fails to answer whether or not what we are doing will make the boat go faster.
Draft 1 of the Priority Identification framework (Chollett, 2021)
In order to know whether the habits, practices, and tasks you are doing will make the boat go faster, you have to be willing to identify the priority (singular). When you say “yes” to one thing, you are saying “no” to something else. This cycle of sacrifice is where chronic stress is cultivated and continuously nurtured if we are mindlessly saying yes to things that do not make the boat go faster. It pulls you away from presence, assists in the crumbling of your infrastructural systems, and distracts you from knowing what is the most important priority in your life.
References
About. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://willitmaketheboatgofaster.com/about/
Backward design. (2021, January 25). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_design
Maltz, M. (2016). Psycho-cybernetics. New York: TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Books.
Mindfulness. (2021, November 05). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness
Systems theory. (2021, November 04). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. (2021, April 08). Retrieved from https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/
UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN FRAMEWORK BY JAY MCTIGHE AND GRANT ... (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/siteASCD/publications/UbD_WhitePaper0312.pdf
White, J. (2013, August 28). Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Retrieved from https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2008). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.