The Habit That Built Our Marriage (And What It Has to Do With Your School)

My wife and I are not great at celebrating.

If you measured the health of our marriage by the thoughtfulness of our anniversaries and birthdays, you'd probably assume we were in trouble. A year ago, we were lying in bed at the end of the day when I asked her, almost randomly, how long we'd been married. She thought about it for a second, grabbed her phone, checked the calendar, and laughed.

"Twenty-two years," she said. "Today is our anniversary."

We had made it to the end of our anniversary without either of us realizing it. No dinner reservation. No card. No grand gesture. Just Tuesday.

And yet we have a great marriage.

Here's what has made it strong. Not the anniversaries. The habits.

Almost every day, one of us calls the other on the drive home from work. It's not a hard and fast rule. Some days a meeting runs long or the timing doesn't work. But the habit is so strongly in place that when a few days go by without that call, we both feel it. And we reset. It doesn't matter so much what happened yesterday. What matters is what we do next.

That daily phone call has built something no anniversary dinner ever could, a best-friend kind of closeness, maintained not by grand gestures but by consistent, ordinary, intentional contact.

The same is true for your school.

She Never Made It to Her Desk

Picture a principal six months into her role. She arrives at school energized, ready to tackle the day. She drops her bag inside her office door and before she reaches her desk, she's already in the parent drop-off lane greeting families.

By 8:15, she's handled two parent concerns, covered a question from a teacher who flagged her in the hallway, and responded to a board member's text. Her coffee is cold. Her to-do list is untouched. And the day has just started.

Now, she's not failing. She's doing what every instinct in her tells her to do...show up, be present, be available. She's proud of her responsiveness. And her staff and families feel it.

But her availability is costing her school its best version of her.

When everything has equal access to your time and attention, nothing gets your best. Not your staff. Not your families. Not your mission. And not your home.

You are the only person who can design a day where you show up as your best self. That's not selfishness. That's stewardship. That's leadership.

Two Rituals Worth Designing

Most principals manage their day reactively. Whatever is loudest gets their attention first. Whatever is most urgent shapes what happens next.

But the most effective principals I work with have done something simple and countercultural: they've designed their transitions.

Not their whole day. Just the beginning and the end.

The Startup Ritual

Before the day pulls you in a dozen directions, you need a ritual that sets the tone.

Ask yourself two questions:

• How do I want to feel at the end of my startup ritual?

• What steps do I need to take to get there?

Maybe it's fifteen minutes of quiet before anyone arrives. Maybe it's reviewing your three priorities for the day. Maybe it's a brief moment of prayer or reflection before the noise begins. The specifics matter less than the intention behind them.

Your startup ritual is the on-ramp that gets you into the day at full speed instead of scrambling to catch up from behind.

The Shutdown Ritual

This one is underrated, and it might be the more important of the two.

Most principals bring work home not because they lack discipline, but because they leave the day with open loops. Unfinished conversations. Unanswered emails. Tasks that didn't get done but didn't get written down either. Those open loops follow you home. They sit at the dinner table with you. They're in your head when your kids want your attention.

The shutdown ritual closes the loops.

Write down what didn't get done today so your brain can let go of it. Review tomorrow's priorities so you're not starting from scratch. Then close your email and take a breath.

Here's what I've learned from working with leaders: your brain will calm down when it has a system it can trust. The anxiety isn't about the work, it's about the fear that something important will fall through the cracks. A consistent shutdown ritual becomes that trustworthy system. It gives your brain permission to rest.

When you close that door and walk to your car, you should be ready to give home everything you have left. Not the leftovers. Not a distracted, half-present version of yourself. The real you.

When Something Tries to Override the Ritual

Here's the honest part: the rituals will get bumped.

A parent will show up unannounced. A staff crisis will erupt at 4:45pm. Carpool will run long. Life in a school is beautifully, maddeningly unpredictable.

But the goal isn't rigidity. The goal is resilience.

Think about my daily call with my wife. We don't talk every single day. But the habit is strong enough that when a few days go by without it, I feel the drift. And that feeling becomes a built-in question: When did we last connect? Do we need to reset?

Your rituals work the same way. They're not a law. They're a compass.

When something bumps up against your startup ritual, you have a filter to run it through: If I handle this right now, does it allow me to be at my best today — or does it cost me that? When your shutdown ritual gets compressed, you have a question: What's the one loop I most need to close before I walk out that door?

The ritual doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful. It just has to be strong enough that you notice when it's missing.

And when you notice, you reset. It doesn't matter what happened yesterday. What matters is what you do next.

Design Your Day Like It Matters, Because It Does

You were given only so many hours in a day. In the parable of the talents, the question was never whether the master gave equally, it was what each servant did with what they had. Your hours are your stewardship.

Most principals wait for a crisis before they rethink how they spend their time. Don't wait. Design the transitions now, before the adrenaline of a new role wears off, before the reactive patterns calcify into habits you didn't choose.

Start with two rituals. How do you want to start? How do you want to close?

Build those two bookends with intention, and watch what happens to everything in between.

Ask yourself: What would it look like to design a day where I showed up as my best self: for my school, my staff, my families, and my home?

Your school deserves that leader. Your family deserves that version of you.