The easiest way to explain and understand this technique is to follow an example. Here we go:
Some schools have a calendar which appears to be intended to frighten teachers. Deadlines, final delivery dates, and other critical events are strewn throughout the year. One way to cope involves Time-Shifting. The name is borrowed from the practice of recording TV programmes to watch at a later time, but in this context it involves doing things earlier than their scheduled time.
Time Shift Planning involves carrying out the following steps for each event or deadline which is of interest:
Step 1: Decide what you actually have to do in relation to the event. For example, if there is an entry in the Calendar that says ...
28 May - Year 8 Parents Evening
… you may decide that you are going to have to make appointments with your Year 8 students, provide a photocopy of your completed appointment sheet to the school office, update your classroom displays and prepare brief feedback for their parents.
Step 2: Create a new deadline in your own Yearly Plan, at least one week before the original date. Using the previous example, it might read...
21 May - DEADLINE - Year 8 Parents Evening preparation complete.
Step 3: This is obviously the hard bit: you must keep to that deadline. You can be sensible (for the Parents Evening example, you'd probably put the wall-displays up at the last minute) but as far as possible you will do absolutely everything by this revised date. This means that you need to work quickly; the fact that in reality you have plenty of time should not prevent you from getting routine work out of the way as quickly as possible
Why is this important? Because (using the example above) the period between 21-28 May is a stress-zone, when the administration staff will be finalising arrangements, and the leadership team will be ensuring everyone is ready. There might be announcements in staff meetings, e-mail reminders, and notices in the staff-room. There will be competition for resources: a queue at the photocopier and a shortage of sticky-tape.
You want to stay outside this stress zone; to be able to totally ignore this flurry of activity and anxiety - not just for this deadline, but for every deadline, throughout the school year. You will ignore every 'school' deadline - that is; for each 'school' deadline you will have your own personal deadline date, one or two weeks earlier. These you will not ignore, you will do your utmost to achieve them because they are yours; yours and nobody else's. You will have no-one but yourself reminding you about them, and no-one but yourself to blame if you miss them.