home for the holidays (??): work and balance during breaks
December is usually time for wrapping up: gifts, lab work, grading, chapters. There is something seductive about starting on January 1st with a fresh slate, and many of us try and cram a bunch of work into the end of the year to make that deadline happen. But it can be complicated as the end of the year can also mean travel to see family or friends, holiday celebrations, or true exhaustion after a busy, stressful, challenging year. And this year, some of us are traveling home for much longer periods of time, or trying to find a way to make the same room that you’ve been in for months feel restful. Here are my best tips for setting up work during break so that you can both move forward on the work front and enjoy the light that the end of the year can contain.
Set boundaries.
Communicate what you need, as clearly as you can. When I go home to Michigan, it can be so easy to fill up every minute with family and friend time, but if I need to get work done, this can be a huge obstacle. Letting all impacted parties know as soon as possible that you'll need to do some amount of work while traveling can help set that pattern up in advance. I like to use language like this:
"I'm so excited to be [coming home // going to stay with you // at the all day family event] but as you may know, I have a big deadline coming up. I'm planning on working for an hour or two every morning, but after that, I'll be all yours."
“I am really sorry to not be coming home this year, but it would really make it feel more festive if we could Zoom/call on these days, and that way, I’m guaranteed to take a break.”
“I know that you are on vacation/PTO this week, but if I could have from 9 to noon to work on my chapter in my office, I promise to be available the rest of the day to be with you.”
“Yes, Advisor, I know that we have a big grant deadline coming up, but I’ll be away from the lab from December 20-January 3, and only checking my email intermittently. What’s most important for me to finish before then?”
Compromise. Is it easier to skip one whole day of festivities and get everything wrapped up, or scattering work during down hours throughout the break? I like to make the bargain that if I've got space to work for an hour or two every day, I can make the rest of the time present and focused, with no phones or computers. It is also helpful to remind people that by skipping a low level event, you can guarantee that you'll be there for a high value one - the work is immovable but the timing can be flexible.
Develop a signal for "Do not Disturb." Will you be in a location where it is easy to be distracted? Have to work in a communal space, and not your quiet office? Develop a way for people around you to quickly and quietly know you're in a focused zone without them having to ask you if you're working. Putting a sign on your bedroom that announces that if the door is shut, you aren't to be disturbed, or wearing headphones can be a great way to signal that you're in the zone.
Keep your word. If you say that you’ll be done at noon, and then you push it to 3 pm because you’re in the zone once, that’s one thing. But if you consistently do it, then people can easily get upset. Or, if you say you’re going to work from 9 until noon, and you actually hang out in the living room and watch The Crown, people assume that you weren’t serious anyway and they’re more likely to not respect your work time.
Set up work conditions quickly and easily.
Use your work rituals. My brain associates certain visual and taste cues with working, so when I'm traveling, I make sure to bring the elements of my work ritual with me. Even if I'm in my childhood bedroom, my brain slips more easily into work because I've got these rituals.
Find a work zone. Especially now - we can’t just sneak off to a coffee shop or the library in town. But maybe one of your relatives is set up to work from home now - can you borrow their space when they aren’t using it? Sometimes you have to go to a new location to totally escape the "hey, let's wrap gifts and watch Netflix" trap. Be creative - maybe the laundry room is just quiet enough for you to work with the dryer as a standing desk, or maybe setting up shop in your car (windows down if it’s hot, or with an extra blanket if it’s chilly) can help you get some distance.
Avoid time traps. If you only have a few hours, avoid the time consuming tasks and move right into the high value work. Avoiding Twitter, and especially email, can be incredibly effective here. Set up a vacation auto-responder to give yourself some space to respond to emails in a delayed way, put your social media on pause - use these shortened work hours for the most pressing, highest impact tasks to really feel like you accomplished something when you snuck away.
Make it feel like Not Work when you are not working. When you’re done - put the computer away. Clean up your desk when you shut it down for break. Make a “work basket” with your laptop, your notes, and your charger and pack it all up when you’re done for the day. Maybe to celebrate the start of break you put up some twinkly lights in your regular work space just so it feels different. Maybe there’s a new candle that you burn during breaks only! Having it look and feel different when you aren’t working can make it a little easier for brains to relax and not just “check that one email really quick” and fall into a rabbit hole for hours.
Be mindful, be compassionate.
Take a few centering breaths. Have a sticky encounter when you're rushing off to finish this essay before the deadline? Feeling guilty about missing some of the festivities? Resenting every life choice that led you to be at your childhood library grading student papers while everyone else makes merry? We've all been there. Take a few deep breaths, and get re-centered. Rather than letting all that bubble up and be a low (or high) key distraction during your work sessions, write it out in a Google Doc or in your journal to pick up (or not) after.
Be compassionate with others. Many of us come from backgrounds that don't totally understand all the work that goes into a graduate degree, and it can be so vulnerable to explain that you're behind on a deadline. To others, it might look like a sequence of typing activities done into various windows, but that work is important enough for you to take time away from other things to finish it. Being compassionate with others that might not understand how important the work really is can help you not feel quite as attacked when those well-meaning but probing questions and comments start to roll in.
Be compassionate with yourself. Missing out on long-awaited (and expensive!) travel home can be a huge trigger for me. I start to feel guilty about not finishing things earlier, about having to take time "away" from people who care about me, about not having an idyllic holiday season, or even about not resting enough. Having to work during breaks doesn't necessarily mean that one priority is higher than another - it just means that you have a full, complex life with values and roles that sometimes overlap. We all wish we could take picture perfect breaks, and be there for every minute of every holiday, but finding a way to fit work into the whole picture of our lives, and finding the support you might not have known was there otherwise, can be a gift all its own.
My break this year won’t look anything like what it has in the past, but I’m determined to, at the very least, make it feel different from the rest of 2020. May your break (AND YES YOU DO NEED TO TAKE ONE, as much as you can manage) be restful, safe for you and safe for your communities, and a reminder of the fact that work and rest are two different things, even if they happen all in the same spaces.
So you made a schedule. Now respect it.
Making a schedule is half strategy, half fantasy; you sit down, you imagine how the next few days or weeks will go, and you attempt to write it into existence. But what happens when, you know, life happens? Here are a few tips to help respect (and help others respect!) the schedule you make - and maybe a few pointers on when to be flexible, too!
Figure out not just the schedule, but the tools/resources you need to make it work. If your plan is to wake up every morning and write from 8 am to 11 am, how much sleep do you need? Do you need to have an idea of what your breakfast will be so you don't need to make that decision before dawn? Do you need help getting other humans in your house out the door, or the dogs walked? Schedules are great, but they don't happen in isolation, so figuring out what you need, and when you need it, to make the work happen is important.
Have you considered buffer/transition time? A written schedule can be deceiving - the class you teach might end at noon, but do students often want to speak to you afterward? Do you need to eat lunch (probably!!)? Do you need a few minutes to walk around the block, or answer emails, or switch locations so that you can write in peace? Accounting for that buffer, rather than always being "behind", can lower the "ahhh I'm late for the schedule that I created!" anxiety.
Are you inviting in distraction? Some distractions can't be prevented, but others can be anticipated and headed off at the pass. Maybe you just can't get into the deep focus state you need for writing at home, where there is laundry to do and meals to prepare - so you stay on campus an hour later than normal to get two good poms of writing in after you teach. Maybe your lab computer has an internet browser, so you're surfing Twitter while running experiments, instead of reading, or grading, in the down time. Email inboxes are basically a list of invitations to do something else - snoozing your inbox, keeping the tab closed, and removing notifications from your phone can help you look at your email more purposefully. Yes, you can work through distraction, but if you can prevent it, that's more energy to use on your scheduled task and less you need to spend on sticking to your schedule.
Communicate about your schedule to stakeholders so they can help you keep to it. Especially if you're starting a new schedule, it can help to give people a heads up about changes. Include a line in your syllabus that you check your email once or twice a day, and rarely in evenings or on weekends, so that your students know when to expect a response. Ask your PI or lab mates if there's a possibility of protecting a block of time for your writing, and then speak up if there's a meeting schedule that conflicts with that protected time. Tell your parents or friends that Thursday evenings work well for phone calls to catch up (because your brain is tired anyway!) and that unless it's an emergency, texts are a better way to get in contact. Put a sign up on your office door so that your office mates, kids, partner, or roommates know that when the door is closed, you're focusing. These boundaries can be hard when they're new, but the more that you present them as necessary and not optional, the easier they are to enforce.
But, schedule in time to be present with your life, too! If your schedule is all work, it can be hard for people to know when and where you can be with them. In my house, I will schedule "work nights" where I know that I will have to focus into the evening, but I balance them out by making sure that when I'm not working, I'm actually present (no emails on my phone while I'm supposed to be watching a movie!) Write it in your schedule - this is the time when I live my full, human life.
Of course, there will always be things that come up - a sickness, a family schedule change, a last minute advisor request, a deadline, days or weeks when you get behind. It is so easy to slip into the magical thinking loop where you imagine how if you had just stuck to the schedule in the past, everything would be perfect in the future. Schedules are helpful tools, but they are just tools. Showing up, trying again, believing in your ability to make progress no matter how it looks - that's what finishes tasks and gets things done.