goals are like time traveling

One of the hardest part of graduate school is having to hold multiple timelines at once. You have a degree, and all the milestones that lead up to it, unfolding over a matter of years. Time between milestones, or even between points of feedback, can be weeks or months. At the same time, we often have another timeline, one that operates on the day to day. Paying rent, having personal lives, jobs, family, exercise - all things that can easily consume the day in a way that both assure us that we are people, as well as graduate students, and distract from the Big Goals of graduate school. 

Which timeline are you more focused on? This can be a hard question to answer, and for many of us, the answer is "both, but different timelines take priority at different times." My challenge to you this week is build in systems that help you keep your eye on both timelines regularly. Create a way to pay attention to the important, and the urgent. 

To help, here’s a little time traveling exercise.

First, list out your goals for next month. This is the first step because breaking your near term goals into achievable chunks, and focusing on achieving them in the near future, is a sure-fire way to build energy and momentum.

Next, imagine yourself six months from now. Where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve by then, or start on around then?

Zoom out even farther, to a year from now. Imagine where you want to be, or suggest specific goals for yourself.

But this wouldn't be a Thrive PhD resource without also inviting you space to take those goals and be purposeful about the steps you will take towards them. What habits, resources, skills, or changes do you need to build or make to make these goals happen? 

I like to think about goals as a form of time-traveling - we go forward in time to visit with one version of our future selves. To me, this feels more imaginative, more fun, and more curiosity-inducing than setting up a system of benchmarks against which I will judge future progress. If you are prone to using goals as a way to set high, high expectations for yourself that you regularly fall short of, or achieve but at a cost to your health and happiness, try shifting your perspective to time-traveling. Imagine yourself in the future, and then ask that person what they needed to get there. You might be surprised at how different it feels.  

the art of the milestone

So you've got a new system (or you're using a trusty one!) and you can see all the tasks you have on your plate now, and the ones that are coming up. If you're anything like me, that leads to an overwhelming sense of:

MUST DO ALL THE TASKS NOW

which inevitably leads to this cycle:

(Full description of the adult task cycle here!) But in all seriousness, the more I have on my plate, the more likely it is that I'm going to fall off the productivity wagon and get nothing done at all. So creating realistic milestones is key to managing my workload and giving me goals I can actually achieve. Meeting my goals makes me feel good, which makes me more motivated to do it again. That's the cycle I want to stay in. 

So how do you set a good milestone? 

When considering your milestones, start with the absolute deadline first. When do you have to have this thing finished and completed by? This can be scary to face, but knowing the timeframe is the most important step.

Next, look at the rest of the tasks. What else is on your plate right now? What will be added (or taken off) your plate between now and the deadline? Often, the problems with deadline setting is not the work on that project, but the other things that pop up and distract you from the project at hand. Zooming out to see everything on your plate can help you make reasonable choices about what you can dedicate and when.

Break up the work into reasonable chunks. Working on a dissertation proposal? Break that big project into its smaller pieces: Assemble an outline, complete preliminary research, draft the introduction, send draft to writing group, send to advisor, complete revisions, etc. Then space those out, starting from the last tasks all the way to the first steps. You can pace them equally (one milestone every two weeks) or according to the amount of work you estimate (longer for the research collection and reading, less for the outlining once that's completed) or spread them out based on your overall schedule  - or some combination of those strategies!

But whatever way you pace them out, I'd advise you to leave a buffer at the end. Unexpected things will come up - and even if they don't, you'll be finished early! Do you have collaborators? Add time to the buffer. Are you working with a piece of complicated technology, software, or with lab/fieldwork research? Add time to the buffer. Are your deadlines close to other deadlines? Add to the buffer.

And here's the last, most important piece of advice! Every time you reach a milestone date, whether the task is finished or not, set some time aside to evaluate your progress. What's working well? What needs more support? Do other milestone dates have to shift? Update your plan, and resist the urge to "just make up for lost time" on the next date. The more you can learn to be flexible and realistic with your milestone deadlines, the better you will become at estimating how long a task will take, and when you need to call in more support.

Setting milestone dates is an art as much as it's a science - but being able to plan realistic workflows for yourself will allow you to see much more clearly when you're working in the way you need to, and when you might need a little extra time, effort, or support, to meet a deadline. The more clarity you have throughout the process, the more you can avoid that last minute rush to finish everything, and just have a last minute rush to finish some things.

good, better, best: setting some parameters for goals/tasks

Have you ever looked at something - a goal, a task, a project - and thought:

I guess I'll just make something up? All I can see is the perfect option or doing nothing at all?

I have! Because there are a lot of things (like word count goals, levels of doneness, how many vegetables to eat) that vary widely! And when we set 1 (singular) goal for those, it turns into a binary - we made it, or we didn't.

Recently, I've started using the good, better, best framework to set some goals or plans for the day.

For example, I want to move more, and if I write "run" in my schedule, I either do that, or I don't. Mostly I don't! Because lots of things sound better the process of learning how to run longer distances! And that leads me to not do ANYTHING to move my body, and then it just gets harder the next day. So instead, I write down three things:

Good - a walk around the neighborhood with podcasts

Better - a YouTube exercise video

Best - a run

and that way, I have choices - and I can see which I have capacity for, and I don't set up a situation where I either have to do a very hard thing (for me), or not do anything at all.

You could try it with writing goals, like this:

Good: open up document and address a few changes from supervisor

Better: do some changes and write the new paragraph

Best: restructure the other section 

That way, when you sit down and your brain NOPES right out of a big, complex text like restructuring, you have other options. Or, if you really want to BE THE BEST!, you can aim for that. 

Don't like the good, better, best hierarchy? I totally get that! Ranking causes all kinds of anxiety, so you could also try naming them in these ways! 

• Choice 1 / 2 / 3

• Cool / Warm / Hot

• Shallow / Medium / Deep End

• Strong / Stronger / Strongest

• Toe in / Dunk / Swim

• (whatever colors feel useful to you! colors are very personal!)

The goal is to give yourself choices and ways out of the all or nothing paradox - especially when perfect / all / best might not be available! Because something is almost always better than telling yourself that perfect and nothing are the only two choices! 

how do you want to feel?

I love a good goal as much as the next person. Run a 5k! Write on the blog once a week! Get to one million followers on Instagram! 

But, the older I get, the more I realize that there are lots of things that I want to do, but that the actual activity or goal or achievement isn't the motivating part. And even more importantly, I don't feel nearly as good as I want to even if I accomplish the goal if I'm miserable the whole time I was working towards it. 

The goals just don't feel as good when I'm only focused on the outcome, and not the process. And the easiest way for me to tune into the process is to pay attention to how I'm feeling.

There's a popular planner that a friend recommended to me - the Desire Map Planner - which I ultimately had mixed feelings about. BUT I loved the core prompt:

What are you going to do today to feel the way you want to feel?

The idea is to pick "core desired feelings" - but you can also think about them intentions. How would you like to FEEL this year?

My feelings for 2020 are:

Grounded. Capable. Engaged. 

I might have enrollment goals for Thrive, for example, but when I'm doing the marketing and writing blog posts, I want to *feel* engaged. I want to feel like I'm doing that work on purpose, that I have something important to share, that it means something to me. So that way, if I hit my goal, then I did it because it was authentic and came from me. And if I don't get there, then I still can rest knowing it was authentic, and it came from me. I felt the way I wanted to feel while I was working, and that counts. It means that I'm giving myself permission to feel the way I want to feel WHILE I work on things, WHILE I try to achieve my goals, and not as reward for afterwards. 

I definitely won't feel grounded, capable, and engaged every minute of every day this year. But I have the goal of feeling that way when I can, how I can. I have a place to aim for. I have a bar to measure myself that isn't about achievement, that isn't about metrics, that is a little more in my control. I might not be able to fully control my enrollment metrics, but I can offer myself a five minute meditation when I'm feeling anxious about it, to get a little more grounded. It's a different way of thinking about taking care of yourself. 

How do you want to feel this season? This month? This half of the year? What makes you feel that way? How can you build in checkpoints for yourself around how you're feeling, and not just what you're getting done? 

time for new rules.

at this point, i’m pretty confident in my own work flow. i’ve been running my own business for years, i’ve succesfully managed my time since i was a child, i have a pretty solid understanding of what makes me tick. and yet, for the last few weeks, i’ve been experiencing some pretty crippling self-doubt.

am i working enough?

am i working too much?

if i work, does that make me an unfeeling monster who isn’t tapped into the world?

if i don’t work, is that a selfish move, given all my privilege and resources to continue my life in much the same way as before?

what is this person that i admire doing? what is this person that i love to dunk on doing? what is the right way to do this? how will i know if i’m doing it right???

and as a consequence, i felt like not only do i not know instinctively how to work in an unprecedented situation, i had no idea how to tell if it’s enough. how would i ever evaluate my progress if i didn’t know how to measure it?

and so i asked some friends, i had a good therapy session, i did some journaling, and i wrote down this set of principles for the foreseeable future. a set of core ideals. a (hu)manifesto for doing what i need to, but also living in the world.

1. no one knows how to do this yet. everyone is running experiments on what works and what doesn’t, even if they say they have it all figured out.

2. evaluation is not punishment, but for data driven adjustment. adjustments will make more sense if they’re based on data, and we can only get data if we pay attention to what’s working and what doesn’t.

3. human stuff comes first. sleep, eating, movement, being present. this might be the hardest part of the day.

4. the goal is presence, not productivity. aim to be conscious of the choices you’re making with your time, including the choice to rest, and take time away from work.

5. communicate generously so that the people who need to know where you’re at with a project or a goal know. generously listen when others tell you where they’re at.

6. pick the three most important things every day. give those your best hours and energy. the rest is bonus.

7. you are allowed to feel whatever you’re going to feel. be grateful for the good stuff, be compassionate about the hard stuff, be present for all of it, in as far as that is possible. you are NOT allowed to make yourself or others feel bad because they’re not feeling or doing what you are.

8. eyes on your own paper. you are the most trusted expert on what works for you. just because someone says that you should do or feel something does not mean you have to.

9. try your best. let your best look different if it needs to. give yourself credit for trying, and for the times when you cannot try. and then, try again.

what if, instead of trying to play by the rules you set for yourself back before you saw any of this coming, you just made new rules? your situation will be different from your colleagues, from your advisor, from your parents, from your best friend. you need your own rules, your own lighthouse of guidelines to follow. they might change. they probably will. but once you have a foundation, you have a place to start. and having somewhere to start can be empowering, and feeling a little bit more in control is medicine we could all use right now.

Being okay with 60%.

I'm about to tell you something radical. Get ready. 

In my experience, the goals you set, the plans you create, the schedules you obsess over, the systems you use, are less important than this:

Being able to be okay with a 60% day.

I have seen clients finish their dissertations under a variety of conditions - teaching or working full time, navigating a family, working through serious health conditions, having restarted halfway through - and not one of them used the same skills. They used different software, different schedules, different workspaces, and different workflows. 

But they all decided to release themselves from needing to use any of those tools 100% of the time, or to 100% of its efficiency potential. They got comfortable with a 60% day, feeling good about what they did do, paying attention to what could be better and working towards a better flow all the time without tying their emotional state to that 100% benchmark. 

Use whatever structure works for you. Do you love goals? Go for it! Set as many as your heart desires, but I encourage you to not let the structure overwhelm the reasoning. The goals are there to give you something concrete to focus on, but it's your commitment that actually moves the project forward. 

100% is amazing, but difficult to sustain. Life, invariably, happens. So if you have a tendency to always strive towards the 100%, and lapsing into frustration, avoidance or anxiety when you don't hit it, try focusing instead on seeing the good in a 60% day - What did you accomplish? What did move forward? What made you feel good? Conduct an experiment where you track how you feel over a few weeks where you focus on smaller, more focused bursts of work - are ten 60% days better, overall, at moving you forward than two 100% days? Commitment, not the perfect work day, is what moves you forward. Commit to showing up, and maybe even learning to value, for a 60% day.