Find the task everything else is waiting on

Simon Breakspear
18 September 2026

During my doctoral work at Cambridge, my supervisor suggested I take half a day off to attend a project management course. For the record, that’s never a good sign. In fairness, I was enjoying learning about almost everything except the project I was technically there to do. I went, and the course leader opened with a very British question that has stayed with me for years: if you’re making a cup of tea, what’s the first thing you do?

Hands went up. “I choose the type of tea I feel like.” “I get a mug out.” “I take the milk out of the fridge.” All reasonable answers, and all of them wrong, because the first thing you do is put the kettle on. The kettle is the one step you can’t hurry, so it sets the time for the whole job, and everything else can happen while it boils. Every school improvement plan has steps like this too, and I’ve come to call them kettle tasks.

The Idea: Find the kettle task: the one your improvement aspirations for 2027 can’t happen without, and the one nobody is chasing you about.

30-Second Version

• When you’re tired, you lose your ability to prioritise well before you lose your ability to work.¹
• Some of the most important tasks are invisible because nobody is chasing you for them. They’re your kettle tasks: slow to boil, and next year’s improvement can’t get moving until you finish them.
• Name the one or two you’ve been putting off, switch one on this week, and let it boil while you get on with everything else.

The Full Read

Here’s what exhaustion does to a school leader. It doesn’t stop you working. You keep grinding out the long hours regardless, but what quietly goes is your judgement about what those hours should hold. You clear the inbox, answer the messages and respond to whoever’s chasing you, and each one gives you a small dose of relief. Meanwhile, the thing that would actually change next year’s trajectory sits untouched, because nothing is flashing red about it.

That’s a kettle task, and most of us have a few: the professional learning that has to be designed now if it’s going to run in Term 1 2027, the conversation with your team that settles next year’s structure, the piece of strategic thinking only you can do. None of them interrupts you, none of them can be hurried, and until each one is done, next year’s improvement is stuck. Leave them until you’re ready, and you’ll be standing in the kitchen in January with a cup, a teabag and cold water.

This time of year is when it bites, because the urgent is at its loudest and the 2027 kettle tasks are at their quietest. Last week I was with some schools in the ACT I’ve been working on a longer-term project with, and one question kept coming back: “Given where we are now, what are the most essential things we need to do between now and November to set ourselves up for real focus and momentum in January 2027?”

Not everything slow is a kettle task, and not everything you’ve been avoiding is one either. The test is a single question: will future you be frustrated in January that this didn’t start in September? Most of your list fails that test, which is a relief, because it means you’re looking for one or two things rather than twenty. Once they’re named and switched on, the rest of the year gets easier, because you know the work that decides next year is finally underway.

Small step →Write down the one or two kettle tasks for 2027 you’ve been putting off, the ones your future self will be frustrated you didn’t start now. Switch on one before you touch anything else, and let it boil while you work through the rest.

What’s your kettle task this month?

¹ McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less. Crown Business.