Five months ago, I walked into one of the first projects that I couldn’t simply put into my to do list. It was a completely new world, so strange and so big that no amount of time blocking could prepare me for it. I was scared, confused, intrigued, and excited all at the same time, because I knew that this new journey was going to be like nothing I had seen before. I of course, am talking about grade 11.

A lot has changed for me in the past five months. Some things have been for the better, like the freedom we have been given in our work and choices, and getting access to an increasing number of opportunities to travel, learn, and explore. There have also been new challenges, like catching up on math skills and not having the support of my teachers readily available at all times. Overall however, all of these changes follow a theme, and that is a newfound consideration of the bigger picture.

In our near future, there are university applications, career decisions, and hundreds of other responsibilities that come with adulthood. We now can’t just be looking at the grade on our test, we have to be foreseeing where it fits into the puzzle that is the next chapter of our lives. Whether for better or for worse, everything is changing to reach this bigger picture, and I now realize that I must change too. In grade 8 it might have been fine to spend a week on a 6000 word blog post and give it all blindly, but now I just can’t afford to waste that time and energy. I need to focus my work ethic towards the broader perspective of my future if I am going to find the success I am looking for, which is why I have developed the learning goal:

I have determined this learning goal through deep reflection on my work over the past five months. I have looked at times when things have gone well and when things have failed, and asked myself why. After some thought, I determined my biggest successes came from when I considered the bigger picture of my projects, my schedule and external life, and sometimes even my future life. I also determined that the biggest areas where I needed to improve upon came from a lack of this foresight. Where these examples fit into my three categories of big picture thinking are outlined below

One of my proudest work achievements so far has been my Manhattan Project book which I created during our field study to New Mexico. This book is what I consider to be some of my highest quality work as it incorporates a thoughtful and thorough understanding of history, opinions, and legacy through several different mediums of media, and there are several reasons I feel considering the bigger picture of the project tied into this.

For one, as I ventured out on our field study I questioned the decision of recording everything, like I did during the Circle B.C. trip, and then made the choice not to. I considered that the overarching purpose of this field study was not to simply give us photos that we could just as easily get from Wikipedia, but to meet the part of the PLP learning triad which is authentic experience. I then started to realize that I wouldn’t be able to reach this greater purpose if I didn’t lift my head up from my iPad. I also considered that the bigger picture of this project was impact, and that I only really would benefit from recording things related to this.

This big picture thinking helped me once again after the trip. Due to the fact that I gave myself time off during it, I took responsibility to hold up the other end of the bargain and work more when I got home. I then was able to make my writing more streamlined because I had a much better understanding of what events held importance in the big picture of the Manhatten project. I also had had so many amazing experiences that I didn’t mind doing this work because there were so many exciting revisions to be made. I added in more pages, wrote in cool facts I found, and revised my conclusions on historical significance.

The best example I can give of where considering the bigger picture of the world outside of my work proved to be important was during our recent Beat Poetry/Star Wars Exhibition. When this exciting project was announced, my mind raced with ideas of everything I could make. I had first planned to build animatronics, a television station, a radio, and numerous other ambitious products, but then questioned this decision when I started to consider both the bigger picture of the project and my schedule. I realized that although these things would be fun to create, they didn’t exactly add anything in terms of connecting to our driving question. I then also considered that around the time of the exhibition I would likely have exams and commitments with family, meaning I simply wouldn’t have the time. With all of this in mind, I chose to make posters instead, which was one of the best choices I have made this year.

The reason I feel this way is because I chose to just make media items was not just to cut down on work time, but to give myself the opportunity to demonstrate and connect my learning of the 1950’s, beat poetry, and Star Wars. Each of the posters followed themes from real society but integrated Star Wars Lore, fused Star Wars and 1950’s advertisement aesthetics, and incorporated plenty of facts about both. This way I could truly show my thorough and thoughtful understanding of everything I had learned, and now also had the time to produce high quality work. I owe this excellent experience to my bigger picture thinking.

Yet, not everything in this project went swimmingly. Although I considering the bigger picture during the time of the exhibition preparation, a couple months before hand I was doing quite the opposite. At the beginning of the year, my schedule had been pretty empty for months and I had almost forgotten what it was like to be busy. Due to this, I thought that it wouldn’t be a problem to schedule my full two day lifeguarding course on the weekend before the exhibition. This would mean that I would have no time during that weekend to work, but at the time I wasn’t really thinking forward and failed to consider the big-picture implications of this. It only hit me how much of a problem this was going to be the week before, when I time blocked all the work I needed to do. Luckily, at the last moment the course got cancelled, but it showed me how much damage not considering the big picture can do.

Despite this close call, like I mentioned earlier the outcome of the exhibition turned out to be quite positive, and there was a lot of good things I wanted to talk about in my blog. In fact, I was able to find something valuable to write about in everything I did, and in typical Emily fashion I made sure nothing was left out. Of course, this led to hours of work, and a confusing, rambling 6000 word blog post. It wasn’t that I was afraid to cut down this time however; it was simply that I was forgetting the deeper purpose of blogging. We write these posts time and time again not simply to explain everything we’ve learned, but connect and reflect on the most important steps in our learning journeys. I also was failing to consider that my audience will indeed one day be employers and universities, who will not want to read 6000 posts explaining every Star Wars character. This was a key example that made me realizing I needed to set a goal of focusing on the bigger picture.

When I first heard we were continuing with PGP this year, I wasn’t prepared to take it seriously. This was because I felt that by developing my time blocking system I had learned all I would need to know for my current life, and that other improvements wouldn’t be justified. After beginning to read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and discussing it with others however, I began to see that the influence of PGP could still be useful if I let it. If I could start setting good habits now, then I would be preparing my current self to not just deal with the tasks I face now, but what I will encounter years and years into the future.

In considering this bigger picture of my future, I have started applying the PGP Atomic Habits concepts to many different areas of my life. I now realize that the stress I put myself through now will not be healthy to maintain for my entire life, and that I need to start working on developing a balanced routine. To do this, I have created the habits of a five minute yoga routine I do in the mornings and a five minute meditation session which I do at night. I have also considered the big picture of my work habits, as I now am taking the time to implement the note taking skills we have been learning in humanities bit by bit into the rest of my academics, considering I will need this skill for university. I’ve developed habits such as cleaning out my bag every weekend, going for daily runs, and checking for important notifications and due dates. These little changes are having a small amount of change on the immediate picture, but I continue to do them because I am now considering how valuable they will be to the big one.

In this post, I have talked about a few on and off examples where I opened up my mind to a bigger perspective, but moving forwards I want to make this a regular thing. My goal is to make considering the big picture to be a part of my daily routine, which is why I am taking the responsibility to implement the plan below:

1. Define

The first step in my plan is to regularly define and recognize all the parts of the bigger picture that make up my life. How I am going to do this is by inserting this five minute block into my weekly review:

As this time block states, after I define parts of the big picture which I should be considering, I will add them to my Big-Picture mind map:

If I am struggling to understand the bigger picture, I will make sure to consult with my parents and teachers. This year, I have already done this a couple of times by speaking about my time blocking schedule with my teachers and discussing my work/life balance with my parents, and this communication and collaboration has benefited me greatly.

Once I have defined what I can work towards, it will now be time to…

2. Incorporate

Every day in the morning, I complete a scheduling block where I plan out my day. This block is excellent because it gives me a chance to consider everything concrete that will need to happen in my day, but doesn’t leave much time for thinking. To fix this, I have added a new step to this time block which is to review my mind map every morning and see if there is an opportunity to consider the big picture coming up in the future. If there is, for example I want to improve my relationships and there is a Pro-Day coming up, I will time block action for myself (such as spending the day doing something with my family). Then, after I have completed something, I will do the third and final step of my plan which is to…

3. Reflect

In PLP, we believe that nothing can be properly learned without reflection (which is part of the reason why we blog). In light of this, I have incorporated a reflection piece into my implementation plan. How this will work is every time I complete an action relating to the bigger picture, I will log it into my homemade Learning Goal progress tracker:

The goal of this is to monitor the progress of goal throughout the year and help me connect the actions I take to the bigger picture. It will also be instrumental in my defining process, as this reflection will help me realize what other pieces of the big picture I should be considering. I also feel that communication of my progress is essential to moving forwards, and as such at the end of every blog post I will share my updated tracker and some notes on what I have worked on. This way, if my teachers notice any problems, we can all be on the same page and discuss it.

Now that I’m half way through the year, I’m feeling more settled in the crazy and exciting journey of Grade 11. Although things are definitely still changing, I’m starting to learn to change with them and develop a broader perspective. Although the future may not be always easy to prepare for with a daily to-do list, when you have the big picture in mind you start to realize that whatever happens, you’ll be ready.