It’s a blessing and a curse to recycle past work.
My biggest concert of the year coincides with the last day of school this year, so once again I’m building to the very end.
I’m thankful for the ability to reuse recycled documents – Google Docs for scripts and programs, yes, but also posters that are the correct dimensions, logos that are in vector format, and so on. One of the blessings of being in the same job for a while is the ability to reuse work from the past, which saves a lot of time and effort.
The blessing of reusing past work as a formula can be a curse, too, because it means you’re never approaching something with fresh eyes, and the work can become stagnant. It’s important to balance the reuse of old work with an eye to the future, check-ins with people whose perspective you trust (colleagues, friends, and, yes, students) to see what is in need of reinvention.