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.