staying in the middle
i am a devotee of planning - my planner is on the list of “must come along” things when i leave the house, back when i left the house. i have long had a rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly planning that’s helped me visualize my time, understand project rhythm, break down huge goals into smaller chunks, stay on track and make informed choices about where my time goes hour by hour.
and right now i can’t really stand to look at my planner. i have brought it out on my desk a few times, even opened it, and it’s so full of what i thought this year would look like that i spent an hour getting out the important stuff (project names, future dates) and then put it on a shelf.
for a few days, i went on gut instinct - after a few years of my business, i know (generally) what needs to get done in a week, and i have a pretty good memory for deadlines, and i’m still on top of my email. but it was stressful to have to remember everything, and i felt like i wasn’t making any progress on anything that wasn’t on fire and hugely urgent - which just means that when those things did become urgent, i would be behind.
the last two weeks though, i seem to have found a sweet spot - a set of weekly goals, and my daily schedule sheet. just enough structure to keep me on track, but not so far into the future that i’m going to have to redo it if my schedule changes, or if the conditions change, or if something happens.
here’s how it works:
at the end of the day on whatever the last day of my week is (usually friday but some work has been drifting into the weekends lately), i save a half hour to sit down with my notebook where i’m writing everything down these days.
i look over all the old to do lists, the notes from meetings, and the scribbled notes to myself and copy all the open tasks and projects onto a new page.
i put dates on things that need dates, and then i close that notebook for some time off - even if it’s just an hour or two!
when i sit down to start my week, i make notes about which things need to happen first - and estimate what days i might work on the things that are flexible.
and then when i start each morning, i fill out this sheet. sometimes I print it out, and sometimes i copy it out, but the sameness of it helps me feel a little grounded.
at the end of the week, go back to step one!
if i’m clinging too tightly to what worked in the past for me, then i’m faced every day with the gap between what i thought april 2020 would look like and what it is like. if i go without any structure at all, then i’m drifting without any anchor at all. there are days when the idea of working a “normal day” feels like a complete, disrespectful fantasy, and there are days when a few hours of work when i’m in the zone feel like a tiny corner of the world that i can control. i’m just trying to stay in the middle - a kayaker putting in a few strokes to the right, a few to the left, to ride the current as best i can.
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.
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.
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.
human stuff comes first. sleep, eating, movement, being present. this might be the hardest part of the day.
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.
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.
pick the three most important things every day. give those your best hours and energy. the rest is bonus.
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.
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.
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.
things that are helping me right now
in case you need to hear it:
i’ve been working from home for almost four years now and these have been some of the hardest weeks of my WFH career. of course they are. if this were just about “how to set up and efficiently and effectively work from home” then we would all just get dual monitors and set up our standing desks and make zoom backgrounds and that would be it.
but, i am finding a few things that are really helpful for me right now - not in the “here are 10 work from home tips” that your university PR team sends out kind of way, but in the “i’m a human and i’m in the world and i’m bouncing between trauma-response numbness, sheer panic, and bone-deep exhaustion” kind of way. hopefully there are a few useful things for you to experiment with!
keeping a really big bottle of water on my desk - i’m tired, everyone is tired, but i fell into a caffeine crash cycle early on and i’m still recovering. a big bottle of water on my desk makes it a little easier to balance that coffee with something a little easier on the adrenals.
jotting down a few ideas for lunch when i plan my day - feeding myself is not the most straightforward task in the best of times, but with my hunger response dulled because of stress (or on total overdrive), it’s been bananas. making a plan for a few things i could eat for lunch helps take some of the stress out of that decision and makes it less likely that i will just eat chips.
starting my day with a brain dump - morning pages have been a staple, on and off, of my morning routine for years, but they’re back in a big way right now. i get up, and i just type (sorry longhand fans, i am far more likely to do it if i can type!) and i just type until my brain feels a little emptier. it prevents me from spewing a bunch of that anxiety all over the other people in my life, and gives me a place to be not okay if i need it.
ending my day on purpose - i’m using this routine here to shut down my day on purpose and it’s a lifesaver. i am 100% more likely to put off getting started in the morning if my workspace is a mess, and this also allows me a litle bit of decompression time before i transition into the non work parts of my life.
ritualizing transitions - when all of your life is happening in the same space, it can be really hard for your body and mind to know where and when it is in time and space. so i’ve been trying to really make it clear when i’m switching from one mode to another. i use the same start up routine, i use the same shut down routine, and i try hard to take my lunch break away from my desk. i even change from my “work clothes” (yoga pants and a sweatshirt, maybe overalls if i’m feeling fancy, i’m not a monster) to my “comfy cozers” after dinner to make it really clear that i’m doing something different now. showering can also help mark transitions. you can also experiment with open and closing blinds, using playlists or types of music, or if you have a little space, working in different areas throughout the day.
checking in about social connection - i’m an introvert, so at first i thought that being home would be a dream come true. but then my calendar started filling up with tons of meetings, social zoom calls, text messages, family check ins, and i went for ten days without any real quiet recharge time. now i’m trying to be more conscious about how and when i schedule social time, such as it is, and making sure that i get enough sleep, and alone time, to charge up.
easing up on monthly and quarterly planning - i LOVE planning but right now, a week out is the farthest i can really go. too much is changing, and i was spending way too much time making two and three month plans only to have all the conditions change. i’m working on all the same milestones and goals, but i’ve let go of some of the due dates. instead, i’m using more of a progress report model; at the end of every day, and at the end of the week, i check in with all my open projects, review what i’ve done, and make plans for the next day or week. what’s important is the progress, not the deadline.
“what feels possible” as a grounding question - sometimes, i sit down at my desk and i can’t handle the idea of working. just can’t for one second stomach the idea of it. so the question i come back to, again and again is “what feels possible?” and then i really listen to myself for the answer. if it doesn’t feel possible to do what i set out to, then i try and get curious about what else feels like it’s within my grasp. sometimes it’s cleaning bathrooms, or making a meal planning list, or cleaning out my downloads folder. sometimes, it’s something on the list, just not the first thing. but instead of asking “why don’t you feel like doing this”, “what feels possible” makes me feel seen and validated AND opens up the possibility that there is something i feel like i can do, even if that thing is stardew valley.
grief and academia
i’ve been working with a lot of people the last few weeks - it’s interesting to have a global business right now.
timescales are different, and things seem to happen on different scales, but we’re all, to some extent, finding that the priorities have shifted.
the six month plan is suddenly cloudy - there might be day to day, or month clarity, but so much is up in the air.
and client after client is saying: i can’t focus. i’m angry. this doesn’t feel important right now. my brain is cloudy. my sleep is disrupted. i’m not hungry. i have no energy. nothing seems like it matters.
and, this, like others have pointed out, is grief.
many of us are mourning right now, in big and small ways. there are the obvious ways this is grief - the literal loss of life - which are enough to make anyone stop and mourn, even if they aren’t directly impacted or personally connected.
but here is a non-complete list of things you might also be grieving:
loss of access to your in-person networks
community spaces
wellness tools, like gyms
access to your data, or to the chance to get more data
the loss, or anticipated loss, of so much generational knowledge
the loss of control over your timeline
personal space
space you felt safe in outside of your home
job offers, or job prospects
optimism about the market or your prospects
celebrations and public acknolwedgement of all your hard work, like in defenses
your students and the spaces you shared together
the energy you got from teaching, or from collaboration in real time
funding opportunities
access to family and friends that live away from you
university resources, like librarians and archives
structure that kept your days and weeks on track
and those are just the ones at the top of my head that are specific to grad school and academic life.
this isn’t about equalizing it - or minimizing the situation by saying “we’re all losing something here, you aren’t special.” and it is MOST CERTAINLY not about starting a hierarchy where some people who suffer the most get the most space to be, and the rest have to just carry on. and it is 100% (!!!!!) not about the normal academic productivity humble brag olympics where we all line up and say how many words we wrote even though our lives and plans are in ruins around our desks.
this is about saying: if you are feeling awful right now, it’s not because you’re taking this personally or because you aren’t doing enough self care or because you aren’t doing a good enough job moderating your news intake. the feelings aren’t your fault. the feelings are a human response to the terror of the situation.
i describe it like this: my day to day is scary, but manageable. i’m finding new rhythms and new work arounds and starting to feel a shred of stability in the center of my routine that i can build on.
but the instant i zoom out to next month or next quarter or the end of the year, the magnitude hits me all over again. and i have to feel it all over again.
but that’s the trick. if you keep denying yourself the chance to feel the grief, it doesn’t just magically disappear. it compounds. and as anyone who has experienced grief can tell you, eventually it will catch up with you. you will feel it. it will out. and even if there was a magic wand waved and all of this went away in a week, we would still have to grieve. we would still have to deal with the impacts of what has happened, and all that we’ve been through. you will still have to address the accumulated stress in your body, in your mind, on your spirit. you’d still have to deal with it.
so the best thing you can do right now is an honest assessment:
how do i feel?
what can i do to help myself take care of this feeling?
what feels possible? can i work on that?
let yourself feel it. it’s going to overtake you - you might need some time to readjust. you might need some time to numb out. you might need to sleep, or to eat, or to play video games all day.
eventually, you learn how to swim in the waves. and if we’re lucky, we’ll see others, bobbing in their own waves, and we can build from there. otherwise, we’re going to use all our energy running from waves that will crest eventually, and be even less equipped to handle them when they do.
take care of yourself. start there.
a note on the choose what you pay model
as i write this, in mid march 2020, it seems more than ever to provide space for graduate students to support themselves and each other in community.
and graduate student funding and the ability for grads to support themselves and their work is more precarious than ever.
and also, i need to make sure that i’m not devaluing my own labor and the labor of others like me providing support and structure in this field and these spaces.
so i’ve made the choice to trial a “choose what you pay” model for my thrive phd community, the flagship product i offer.
may 2021 note: i have since expanded this model to many of my services, and moved the community to a flat, enroll whenever $5/month - you can read more about that here!
you simply select the option you feel able to pay, no questions asked, no application to fill out, no forms needed.
and as always, i provide resources for free - subscribe to my newsletter for the latest on those offerings! i also offer free 30 minute calls to any and all who need them - just sign up.
thank you all for your support as i experiment with this, and if all goes well, i hope to expand this model to other offerings as well.
How to make plans when everything keeps changing
One week ago today, it was my birthday. And I planned a most amazing day off - I went to workout at my favorite barre studio, I had a tasty lunch, I spent a fair bit of time strategizing and big dreaming about Thrive PhD in Quarter 2 of 2020, I went to go see a show downtown. At dinner, my husband and I discussed the news and wondered aloud if things would start changing.
Readers, they did.
I’ve made six news plans in the seven days since, and all of them have been smart, and well considered, I’ve had to scrap them all.
All in all, we’re very lucky - I have the space and privilege to take a breath and try and figure out what comes next. But I am still more distracted, more anxious, more bananas than I can remember being in a long time. And from what I’m hearing from friends, colleagues, and clients - that’s all of us. So here are a few things that are really helping me to make some plans and find some structure even as things change by the hour:
I am abandoning the idea that I’ll be able to plan effectively more than a few days at a time. Now is not the time to embark on my quarterly planning tasks! It is not even really the time to set up big monthly goals, at least not specific ones. I’m planning my days and my weeks so that I have some structure to my time, but I’m letting go of the idea of planning as a way to maximize achievement for right now. It’s planning for structure and sanity.
I made a list of all my open projects and put them into three categories:
I need to work on this to keep it active
I’d like to work on this
I am okay with pausing this
This is letting me see a little more clearly where my time and focus (when I’ve got it) should go. I’m also committing to revisiting this list often as the situation changes - as my resources change, this list might change too.As I sit down and plan my week and my day, the time goes first to the “I need to work on this” stuff. I also am scheduling in NON-NEGOTIABLE breaks and self care. Just because I am home all the time does NOT mean that it is healthy for me to work all the time. If I have time left over (ie, I’ve gone through and put in all my appointments and scheduled work sessions) I am leaving it blank right now. In other seasons of my life, I would have scheduled other activities, but for now, I want the flexibility that those “buffers” afford me.
I am, for the sake of my brain, treating this as a “new normal” as opposed to a time limited scenario. For the first few days, I was spending A LOT of time and energy trying to figure out how long these conditions could last or when I could put in a “back to normal” date in my calendar, and it was really wearing me out. The date kept shifting, and my anxiety kept growing, and I kept trying to read more news to get more data for planning, and it was not a good cycle. So I just decided to make my plans with these constraints until further notice.
I’m also being really honest about what my emotional and physical restraints are. I am not functioning at 100% output right now. I don’t know of many who are. So this is not the time for me to say “in a good week, I can do 20ish hours of focused writing.” Halve it, and start from there. Maybe quarter it. Set reasonable goals, and adjust if you have to. Setting unreasonable goals and then not meeting them will only make you feel worse.
“Welcome back” is the mantra I use in my Thrive PhD community and I’ve been sharing it around a lot lately. If I step away from my work, if I’m unexpectedly away from my desk, if it suddenly becomes necessary for me to take a day and just be numb for a while, I say to myself “welcome back.” Not “how will you make up for that break?”, not “was it worth it?”, and not “did you deserve or really need that time away?”. It’s just “welcome back”: welcome back to your work, welcome back to your desk, welcome back to your communities, welcome back and let’s try again. We will all need breaks. We will all have things come up that we couldn’t have seen coming. The best thing we can do is welcome ourselves back, when we’re ready.
All we can do is make the best decisions we can with the data we have at the time, and then adjust. The data is changing. The situations are changing. All we can do is try to make smart decisions, and adapt.
These are strange times. I honestly do not know what will happen - all I know is that if we treat this like a fun, indefinite work retreat, and then beat ourselves up for not writing the next great novel, or not getting extra research papers written up, or not perfectly homeschooling our kids while we try and teach remotely, we’ll have missed the point. The point is not to use the changes in the way we structure our lives to work more, the point is to be aware of the fact that this situation is bigger than our deadlines, and all we can do is try our best to keep surfing the waves as they come.
Ways to be kind to yourself.
It has lovingly been pointed out to me that sometimes, I'm not so nice to myself. As my therapist says, "maybe you can show the same compassion and generosity to yourself that you give your clients." Which, RUDE, but also, that's not as easy as it sounds. Anyone who has ever been asked "would you treat a friend this way" knows that!! So we spent the majority of my session brainstorming concrete ways to be kind to myself and I thought I'd share that list in case any of it is useful for you.
Resist the thought process that says "I will do this thing to take care of myself AFTER my work is done."
Schedule in time to take care of myself, even if it is only for five minutes.
Shrug your shoulders up to your ears and let them down again to release tension at the desk.
Spend pom breaks NOT on Twitter
Use focus blockers like Forest on my phone to help me NOT scroll instagram endlessly when I could be relaxing in another way
Make plans with friends and keep them
Respect bedtime whenever possible
Literally, outloud if possible, or written down, congratulate myself for making it through hard days, even if I didn't do them (especially if I didn't do them) perfectly
Offer myself as many fresh starts as I need without numbering them
Visualize my health bar (like in a video game) and imagine filling it up with things that make me feel good
Take deep breaths
Close my door and meditate, even for 5 minutes, when I feel squirrelly
"Doing hard things feels hard, and that is NOT a sign that I don't know what I'm doing."
"I will allow myself to be intermediate at this task, because intermediate is better than not at all."
Drink water (or at least, have some water with your coffee)
Check in with people I trust about how I seem to be doing and adjust my perceptions accordingly (ie, if people I trust tell me that I'm doing okay, I try not to then say BUT YOU DON'T KNOW I AM ACTUALLY A TRASH PANDA and allow for the possibility that I am not seeing clearly)
Make a list of all the things that are working, and that I'm grateful for
"I will not punish myself in the present for choices I made in the past that I cannot fix or change. I will remind myself that I tried to make the best decisions I could with the information I had at any given time, and the best I can do is the best I can do."
"What if you tried again?"
"What would make this feel more fun?"
Writing down a list of all the reasons why a project is important
Drafting the acknowledgements for the project I'm working on to reconnect with all the people, spaces, and resources who are helping me finish it
Ten minutes to stomp my feet and listen to angry music and acknowledge that sometimes, things are really hard and that's not my fault.
Allowing myself to change the plans or the schedule if I need to
Communicating clearly with people about when things need to change so that I am not worried about people "catching me" being late with something
Not cancelling plans or activities that are "fun" or "frivolous" or extra just because I didn't make a goal or meet a deadline.
Visualizing all my "tough energy" - anxiety, sadness, frustration, anger at myself, guilt, shame, whatever - as a cute monster that wants my attention. I ask it to sit in the chair next to me as I write, or better yet, wait outside of my office until I'm done and then I can attend to it. But it's really hard when that is sitting on my lap as I work. So I literally picture pulling a chair up next to me and asking it to sit there. It works!
Being kind to ourselves is such a hard thing to put into practice because it's a very big abstract idea that needs to be done in many, tiny, concrete ways.
shutting down: ending routines
A lot of productivity and life-hack blogs are focused on the beginning of the day - the Miracle Morning, the 84 things successful people do before 5 am, six ways to super charge the first hour at your desk. But I have found that focusing on what you do at the end of the day can be just as, if not more, powerful. This is especially true for anyone who may not be a morning person, or who has a little resistance to sitting down and working without a warm up - ending well might just be the key to starting up smoothly.
Here are some ideas for things to do at the end of a work session - combine a couple of them to make an unshakeable ending routine!
Save the last pom (25 minutes) or half hour of your work session to wind down - building it into the work instead of scrambling to do your routine as you're rushing out the door sends the message that the routine IS part of the work.
Close tabs you don't need. This is controversial!! But as a reformed multi-hundred tab opener, hear me out. If you open up tabs to save them for research or reading later - process them in batches regularly so that you can keep your browser more clear. Ruthlessly deciding if you actually need to read something, or if you opened it in anxiety or boredom. Do you need that site open for constant reference? In Chrome, you can pin that tab so that it takes up less space but remains open. Common references that you don't need constantly - put them in a bookmark bar. But closing unneeded tabs day to day can make your computer run a little better (even marginally) and give your brain the sense that you are moving forward, and not just carrying a trail of information behind you, ever growing.
Make notes about what you were doing and thinking. Nothing worse than sitting back down at your desk and not knowing what you were writing last, or what you meant to do. Keeping a notebook (bullet journal or otherwise) or a Google Doc open can give you a place to record that little stuff (the reference you meant to look up, the errand or appointment you need to schedule, or the new idea that occurred to you while writing) so it doesn't disappear, and makes starting again easier. One client shared with me that she always leaves her writing in the middle of a sentence so she knows where to pick up again - genius!
Review your schedule for the next day, and the rest of the week. Having a quick glance at what's due tomorrow, what you have scheduled, where you might squeeze in something fun. Knowing what's coming before you sit down for the day can give you a chance to correct any problems with a little notice, and give a sense of what your day will look like tomorrow.
Set your priorities for the next day. If you have a sense, or better yet, if you write down, what your priorities for the next day are before you leave, it makes it that much clearer to start the day when you sit down again. Also, this can act as insurance against people putting tasks onto your plate - sometimes things come up right at the last minute, but planning your priorities before you open your email, for example, can make it easier to hold to YOUR schedule and worktable.
Clean up your workspace. Put pens away. Deal with mugs and coffee cups and water bottles and snack wrappers. Organize your papers, tidy your lab sink, check your supply levels. Make your workspace a place that you can return to with some sense of willingness, instead of dread at the mess.
Take a few moments to write down something that went well, or something you're grateful for. If you're only going to pick up one end of the day habit, I strongly recommend it's this one. Ending the day reflecting on something that went the way you wanted it to, something that helped your day be better, or someone or something that you're grateful for can help shift your mindset (even a little) from a day that also had tough or frustrating parts. Any time you remember the good inside the bad, and that days are rarely 100% of any one emotion, you train yourself to be just a little bit more nuanced in how you view your days.
Scheduling writing
Many of my clients (most of my clients) (all humans everywhere, probably) lead busy, full lives. There are a thousand things competing for their attention and writing can sometimes seem like the least urgent thing in the room. But, there's a difference between urgent and important.
Urgent: things that need to be completed soon or there will be dire consequences. Urgent things are often public, and they often impact other people. These are the fires you're putting out on a daily basis.
Important: things that have a high value. It will matter if you do not do them. They're the big goals, the huge milestones, the end of the road.
But the two aren't always together. For example, if your cat escapes from your house, locating them would be both urgent and important. Submitting grades on time for your students is both urgent and important; it impacts your students (and your evaluations) if they're late, and doing well in your teaching assignment can have a long term impact on your career.
It's easy to understand why urgent and important things have to be prioritized. But if you're running your schedule solely by what is urgent, things can fall off your plate. Long term projects, far away deadlines, and your overall goals can slip out of focus when you're only dealing with the tasks and roles that are demanding your attention day to day.
Writing tasks often fall into the important, but not necessarily urgent, category. How many of us have put a conference submission deadline on the calendar months in advance, only to wake up that morning without an abstract? I struggled during semesters where I was teaching, working, and being a human to prioritize my writing - there were simply too many other things to do, and those deadlines were a long way off anyway. But then, a therapist introduced an idea to me that changed my life:
Schedule your writing.
As part of a "Dissertation Stress and Anxiety Management" support group, we were asked to track our activities and moods for a week, down to the half hour. If you spent a half hour checking Twitter, you noted it. If you slept for 12 hours, you wrote it down. It was eye opening for several reasons, but most of all, it exposed a fatal flaw in my own scheduling.
You see, I went into the exercise feeling confident that I would "do well." I was busy! I took care of important tasks and kept multiple projects up and working all at once. I rarely spent whole days procrastinating (or resting, but that's a subject for another time.) But what I realized, when I looked at the week written out, was that I spent all my time dealing with urgent tasks as they came up. I worked to the deadlines, letting others' schedules dictate my time. And I wasn't writing. I wasn't moving any of my long term goals forward. I was busy, and productive, but I was avoiding the writing because it was big, and scary, and not due yet.
So the therapist shared how she balanced her own dissertation writing with her clinical hours - she blocked out 3 hours, twice a week, as her "Dissertation Class." She was great, she reasoned, at making meetings and seminars - she would never schedule over that commitment. So, why not treat the dissertation work the same way?
She put it on her calendar, and she respected it. She didn't schedule meetings over it. She wouldn't move the time around, even by an hour, no matter how busy or behind she felt. And if she ever felt compelled to skip, or move it, or otherwise not work during that time, she would run the "class" test.
"If this were a class, with other people in community with me, would I skip it?" And if the answer was no, then she went to work. Having just six hours a week blocked off made a massive difference in moving her writing forward. It gave her time to focus on important things, not just urgent ones.
Make it work for you.
Maybe you have plenty of time for writing - but by the end of the day, you're too tired to work out. Maybe you're blocking plenty of time for your academic goals, but your professional development and career planning is falling by the wayside. You can use the same principle! Make a list of the things that are important to you, and work backwards to block time off to work on them.
Sign up for conferences or workshops around your professional development - having a commitment "on the books" can support your growth.
Look at your schedule for time you're not using as well as you could - would scheduling in a fitness class or walk around the neighborhood that you treat as immovable help you be more active?
Take an inventory of your life in its totality - where are you hitting your goals? Where could you put more focus? Does your schedule give you protected, dedicated time to work on your long-term objectives?
It can be hard to focus on important things when they aren't urgent - but eventually, they become urgent. Your dissertation chapter is due in a week. The conference abstract is due today. You are graduating next month. Your health is suffering, or your mind is anxious. Blocking time off, in the amounts and places where it works for you, in advance will help you focus on both the short and long term picture.
Plan out your time mindfully. Respect the time you set aside - you are a priority. The urgent things can (sometimes) wait until you're done.
The danger zone.
Anyone who has a child, or who has ever babysat, knows the look. It's the look someone gets when they're tired, or hungry, and you have only a few minutes to intervene and provide the missing element before a real nasty tantrum sits in. Sometimes you catch it in time, and sometimes you don't, but over time, you come to figure out the warning signs, and the conditions under which those tantrums happen. Then, you're a few steps closer to figuring out how to avoid them all together.
Now, the brain of a PhD student (or any adult, really!) is not that much farther along the evolutionary track than your average toddler. We might have more tools to describe how we're doing, and more resources to meet our own needs, but we all melt down sometimes. What if you spent some time in the next few weeks thinking through what your "tantrums" look like, what your warning signs are, how you can prevent them systematically, and how you address them in the moment?
For me, my tantrums are often, but not always, caused by fatigue/exhaustion/brain fog. I have a chronic illness, so those are sometimes symptoms of my disease, sometimes they're symptoms of the fact that I stayed up late watching Netflix. A typical tantrum progression looks like this:
Notice that I'm tired/foggy, apply coffee
Feel like a god for 15 minutes, decide that I can overcome my body with the force of my mind (and coffee)
Skip lunch/snack because coffee suppresses my appetite and I'm in the zone, and then eat quickly when it's too late, or eat things that don't make me feel great.
Stare at computer while it slides out of focus, become increasingly irritated (not with myself, but with the cruel universe that invented the idea of computers, or the concept of Wednesdays)
Look up at the clock, realize that three hours have passed, confirm that in fact, 10-15% of lots of tasks are finished, and no single task has been checked off.
Meltdown
So now, I try and pay attention to those warning signs, and intervene at any of those steps. For example, here are those steps again, with the "corrective actions":
Notice that I'm tired/foggy, apply coffee
Try hot water! Or a lower caffeine solution.
If coffee is a must, alternate coffees with water. Cap at 2.
Schedule a hard cut off time for the day, a nap, or plan for time off later if today's schedule doesn't allow for it.
Feel like a god for 15 minutes, decide that I can overcome my body with the force of my mind (and coffee)
Remind myself that I am not a god, make sure that I do not cancel plans to take care of myself
Skip lunch/snack because coffee suppresses my appetite and I'm in the zone, and then eat quickly when it's too late, or eat things that don't make me feel great.
Do not skip lunch! Make a list on post it note, not in kitchen, of possible foods and choose best options based on grocery/time/appetite restrictions.
Bring snacks up to office to eat during pom breaks.
Stare at computer while it slides out of focus, become increasingly irritated (not with myself, but with the cruel universe that invented the idea of computers, or the concept of Wednesdays)
Go for a walk.
Have a desk dance party.
Switch to lower brain activity tasks.
Look up at the clock, realize that three hours have passed, confirm that in fact, 10-15% of lots of tasks are finished, and no single task has been checked off.
Use pom timer to have natural places to reevaluate progress
Close tabs / programs with other tasks in them
Use extensions to block unhelpful websites to make it easier to stay on task
Meltdown
Apply self-compassion.
Change locations
Make a plan for tomorrow, or later that day.
So just like it's important to make a schedule that works for you, it's equally important to know your own danger zones, where the pressure to stick to the schedule might actually be causing more harm than good. You're just a curious, hungry, tired toddler under all that grad school regalia - it's okay to take care of yourself.
So you're more efficient. Now what?
Congratulations! You've made some changes to your work/life/tools/thinking/way of existing and you're getting more done in less time than you used to. You can grade a little quicker, write a little faster, submit things a little bit sooner.
Or, if you're not quite there yet, imagine that I have gifted you five extra hours in every week moving forward.
How would you spend them?
No really, imagine how you'd spend them.
When I did this exercise for myself, I came up with three work projects I have been struggling to get launched. Did you say something related to your work as well?
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with being more efficient at work things so you can work more.
There is a problem when you have internalized the idea that the only worthwhile use of your time is working.
So as you explore ways to be more focused, schedule better, plan more efficiently, and work smarter, also turn a critical eye to where you start to spend some of that newly freed up time. Are you doing the things that fulfill you, that advance you, that enrich you, that line up with what you value, what you find important? And if not, why is that?
What's missing?
When you sit down to make a schedule, the first impulse is to put in everything that needs to be there. You put in your classes, your work commitments, your travel times - the immovable blocks that everything else has to fit in around. But once you have a first draft of your schedule, after you've put in everything you think needs to be there, I challenge you to do something radical:
What is missing from your schedule?
"Katy, how do I know what's missing if it was never there in the first place?" I imagine you yelling, in frustration. Here are some ways to find out what might be missing, or what you could add in as a regular schedule block that you haven't ever considered including.
What are the tasks that you are consistently doing at the last minute? Could you schedule regular time to get on top of them?
What are the long term projects that you wish you could work on more? Can you find time, even bi-weekly or monthly, to set aside to focus in that area?
What kind of invitations (social, family, professional) are you consistently turning down? Would you be more likely to go if you set the time and place?
What are the skills you want to build? Are there places in your schedule, a project you could undertake, a group to join, to help build a structure around your learning?
Do you need to build in a block that's purposefully unscheduled? Could you use some time, every week or even every day, that you protect but don't decide ahead of time how to use? That way, when it comes up, you can use it however you want and still have a little spontaneity in an otherwise very scheduled life.
Sleep is often missing!
Schedules are great - they help keep us on track, they protect our time, they make it easier to wear all the hats that we do on a daily basis. But they're also a good place to look to see how our values are being reflected in our day to day lives. Is everything that's important to you reflected in the way you use your time?
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.
Fighting against decision fatigue
For my money, project management systems (however that looks for you) are at their best and most powerful when they're helping you make choices. Pick up any book about habit building, or productivity, or self-help book, or blog, and they'll tell you the same thing:
Making decisions is tiring on your brain. And the more decisions you make in a day, the more likely you are to have trouble making decisions by the end of it. And one consequence of that mental fatigue is that it becomes much harder to exercise self control.
As one study demonstrated:
A nearby department store was holding a going-out-of-business sale, so researchers from the lab went off to fill their car trunks with simple products — not exactly wedding-quality gifts, but sufficiently appealing to interest college students. When they came to the lab, the students were told they would get to keep one item at the end of the experiment, but first they had to make a series of choices. Would they prefer a pen or a candle? A vanilla-scented candle or an almond-scented one? A candle or a T-shirt? A black T-shirt or a red T-shirt? A control group, meanwhile — let’s call them the nondeciders — spent an equally long period contemplating all these same products without having to make any choices. They were asked just to give their opinion of each product and report how often they had used such a product in the last six months.
Afterward, all the participants were given one of the classic tests of self-control: holding your hand in ice water for as long as you can. The impulse is to pull your hand out, so self-discipline is needed to keep the hand underwater. The deciders gave up much faster; they lasted 28 seconds, less than half the 67-second average of the nondeciders. Making all those choices had apparently sapped their willpower, and it wasn’t an isolated effect. It was confirmed in other experiments testing students after they went through exercises like choosing courses from the college catalog. - NYTimes "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?"
So, the research suggests - by the end of the day, it's not just harder to make decisions after you make a lot of them, it's actually harder to exhibit self-control. In our context, it looks a little something like this:
You sit down at your desk, and decide what to start on. You decide which emails to respond to, which articles to read, what format to take your notes on, whether to open up Twitter, what to write, what to eat for lunch......and then it's the end of the day.
So you collapse on your couch, and it's harder to will yourself to get back up to [do the rest of the things that you want to do, like go to the gym or make a healthy dinner]. It's harder to resist the lure of a new show to watch, or video games all night.
So, when you're thinking about designing the perfect project management system, spend a little time thinking about how it helps you make decisions.
Is it clear when you open it up what tasks are most important?
Does it allow you to quickly filter out less important/less urgent tasks so you aren't "tempted"?
Does it make it easier for you to categorize tasks in a way that makes decisions more clear?
We have to make an extraordinary amount of decisions every day - no project management system will erase that. But by knowing what decisions do to our brains (this is your brain on decisions!), we can set up systems to make it easier on ourselves. Maybe we work out in the morning or at lunch when our will power is a little higher. Maybe we make it easier to grab healthy snacks during an all day revising session so we 'don't default to the (awesome) choice of jelly beans and suffer the (less awesome) impact of pure sugar to the blood stream. And maybe we make sure that we have tools that help us take even a little of that decision making responsibility off our plates!
A list of things to do when you don't want to write.
Change locations.
Open up a new document and write in that.
Try writing longhand on a piece of paper.
Reread what you have and annotate it.
Do a chore you've been putting off.
Brainstorm titles.
Format citations.
Reread part of the text that inspired your thinking.
Send a paragraph to a friend to get their quick take.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and write an impassioned essay about how much you hate writing. Then try again.
Imagine how you would explain an idea from your work to your parents, or to your students, or to an alien new to the planet.
Answer the question: who needs what you are writing?
Writing is hard, and it is easy to wait until you feel inspired to write. But, if you can get in the habit of writing when you say you will, no matter how you feel about it, you can begin to test the hypothesis that you need to be inspired to write. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be new words on the page every time. It doesn't have to go in the final draft. But endeavoring to keep your appointments for writing with yourself is a habit worth building.
What I lost and what I found when I finished my PhD
No matter how it looks, or where it takes you, the end of grad school necessitates a change. You are completing one cycle and starting another, no matter if that cycle is academic, professional, personal, intellectual. As with everything, your mileage may vary, but here is a list of things I lost and found after my defense (some immediate, so much later, and I'm sure there will be more things on both lists in another year, or another decade.)
Things I lost:
A sense of myself as a student, always learning and growing
An intellectual community with tons of shared interests, vocabulary, references, and ways of thinking
A vision for the future that was standardized
A good excuse for not going to things I didn't want to go to ("sorry, can't! will be writing - big deadline!)
Good reasons to be self-deprecating ("Oh I'm just a grad student) in professional, and sometimes personal, situations
A plan for the future that was assured for semesters or years at a time
Things I gained:
A (tentative! still growing into it!) identity as an expert in my subject field, and also in my skill set
A new understanding that plans are just plans, and that being open to change and new opportunities would serve me professionally and personally (even if it's really scary to enact those things, or even think about them sometimes)
An expanded definition of the word colleague, and where I could find those people
A desire to engage in my field beyond what I could cite or what I could write
The realization that even if I were to stay an academic, that would always be a choice - and that I was free to continue to choose what I wanted to do "when I grew up" forever
Much clearer work/off boundaries
An appreciation for how hard I worked to actually write and defend a dissertation
New ways to think about, and talk about, the skills I gained researching and writing a dissertation
New confidence in my ability to communicate complex ideas in a variety of ways
The knowledge that what made grad school hard often had very little to do with the quality of my work, and much more to do with the system in which that work was produced and evaluated
More clarity around the behaviors and beliefs that I held and reinforced that made grad school hard
Learning for fun instead of to survive
A degree that certifies me as a researcher and writer and instructor at the very top of her field
Things you can say yes to today.
It is so easy to believe that we have to wait to start things - I'll start that in May, or when the semester is over, or when I get back from my fieldwork, or when I feel better, or when this is more in hand. So consider these a gentle invitation into today, into this week, into this pom. You might not resonate with all of them, but any time we try something different, we get new information. And information helps us make the best decisions we can about how, when, and where we spend our time and energy.
Take a deep breath.
Try a website blocker during writing sessions
Ask a friend or colleague to read an early draft
Make a special playlist and only use it when you're writing on that project you're stuck on.
Get out your favorite pen and write a whole page of things that you're curious about
Experiment with keeping your email closed until after you do one pom of work on your own project
Remember that when you set boundaries in a clear, professional, and kind way, it gives others permission to do the same.
Clean up one of your work or living spaces
Make one or two decisions ahead of time, to save yourself some decision fatigue
Call someone you're missing to say hello (or text, I'm not a monster)
Set some time aside to do something completely fun, even if it's for 2 or 3 minutes.
Write your favorite motivational phrase on a post-it, or even on your hand, so that you can see it.
Send a friend, colleague, student, or loved one a message saying how proud you are of how hard they're working.
Set up an informational interview with someone whose job you're interested in.
Update your CV, feel good about your accomplishments while you're doing it.
For every 10 books or articles you request from the library, check one cookbook out. Or comic book. Or book you loved as a kid. Even if you only read a few pages, fun!
Set a new goal, or increase your goal target, for your writing or reading.
Make a bunch of celebratory doodles in your planner on today's date to remember that this was the day you started [x].
You don't have to earn fresh starts. You don't have to do everything all at once. You are allowed to feel good about what is working even when there are things you want to improve or change. You are allowed to be proud of effort that only you can see. You can always try again, whether it's a new pom or a new day or a new month or a new year. The truth is that we very rarely regret the things we start, or try - but the things we wait on, the things we never attempt, those can start to add up.
Just 1%
Yesterday, I woke up feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list, and an old pal of a thought pattern showed up:
"If you had been more on top of things last week, you wouldn't feel like this."
"If you had started that [new plan that was definitely going to fix everything] when you first thought of it, you'd be farther along now."
"If you had just been better earlier...."
And when these thoughts come to play, I often don't want to do anything at all, because obviously, the only solution to feeling better now was to start weeks ago, and I didn't do that, so what's the point, bring on the Netflix and chips!!!!
But as I scrolled through Instagram, I saw this post from Karamo, king of my heart, where he said:
You just have to be 1% better today.
And pals, I promise that this is good, useful advice.
You do not have to, in this session, this month, or this week, fix everything that you want to be fixed.
Just do one thing that gets you closer to where you want to be.
Haven't opened your dissertation in a while? Open it up.
Feeling like you haven't gotten enough movement lately? Go for a short walk around the block, or park farther away than you might have otherwise.
Have one vegetable or fruit.
Write just one paragraph, or one sentence!
Go to bed a half hour earlier, or get up 15 minutes earlier.
Clean up one area of your office or house.
It doesn't have to be big. You just have to be 1% farther than you were when you started. Because the magic is that the first 1% is often the hardest, but it can unblock you. Once you open the file, you read it a little, and then maybe you see a sentence you want to fix, and then you fix it, and then you read the paragraph, and then you see where you want to go next, and....
And even if all those steps don't happen at once, you've started down the path. And you've countered the voice that says: "if you started this a week ago!" because you've started it now.
And then, maybe, you'll look back in a month, or in three months, and say, this was the day I said yes to trying a new way of thinking about my work, and the scale felt laughably small at the time, but look where I am now....
Ways I've been failing lately
Here's an incomplete list of things I've been failing at lately:
Staying consistent with my meditation - I do a few days and then I get off track and avoid it for days
Working out consistently/healthily - I'm either going every day or not at all, and neither extreme is great.
Going to bed on time / getting up on time
Keeping my house tidy
Working on things in advance of deadlines, even though I know it lowers my anxiety to have things in progress ahead of time
Staying off social media/my phone when I'm supposed to be working
And here's a list of things I've been doing to try and help myself recenter:
Using my bullet journal to track tasks because my computer feels overwhelming sometimes
Using the Forest App and extension to stop myself from going on Twitter and my phone all the time
Setting appointments/scheduling things in the morning so I force myself to get out of bed
Reaching out to friends and accountability partners to tell them what I plan to do every day
Talking to my therapist about how frustrated I am and not avoiding appointments like I want to
Keeping a sign on my desk that says "you can always try again"
Taking deep breaths whenever I remember to
Drinking lots of water / trying to eat things my body feels good about
Prioritizing sleep
One of the most frustrating things about life is realizing that many things do not follow a straight path of progress. You can do really well with something for a while, and your brain thinks "Cool! Mastered that! Totally understand and get it! Will never have to do this again HOORAY!" only to get thrown off your game, and have to in fact do something again. I constantly "relearn" lessons about how important sleep is, how much my mind craves some stable routines and habits, and how hard it is to work when other things feel unstable. So as you start to evaluate where you are, and how you want to spend the next few months, remind yourself that failure isn't just part of the process, it IS the process.
We learn what doesn't work when we fail. Failure teaches us how NOT to do something, what the costs and benefits of a certain method are. Even if it stings (and GOSH does it sting sometimes!) failure moves us forward. And most importantly, every time we fail at something, big or small, it teaches us this important thing:
Failure isn't fatal.
Every time you try again, every time you restart your day after getting off track, every time you recommit to a habit or a goal, you show yourself that failure can be overcome. And that resilience, that willingness to keep going, the ability to give yourself another chance, that's what finishes degrees, and more importantly, that's what gives you a full life. It might not feel good (it NEVER feels good?!?!) but failure is a sign that we're trying, we're growing, we're believing that we can do this. We can do this.
Did you make the most of [whatever is ending right now?]
Sometimes we reach the end of something (the year, the Thrive session, the term, the month, the project) and when we expect to feel accomplishment, we instead feel disappointment. It's hard to look back and see all the places where, if things had been different, we could have excelled, we could have made the most of something, we could have gone farther and faster than we did. We focus on all the opportunities we missed, and it does not feel good, especially if others are posting about how wonderful it feels to completed something.
I get it. I feel that way! A lot! When I sit down to do my end of month, end of quarter, and end of year reviews, I first see all the things I didn't finish. All the habits I tried to start, all the goals I didn't accomplish, all the ways I fell short. My perfectionism is well documented (here and here) and there is definitely always an element of setting expectations that aren't realistic. I set impossible goals and then beat myself up when I don't meet them, and when I try and consciously set realistic goals, I'm only moderately successful. Somewhere, deep down, I set these goals because I believe that I need the push, that I'm not at my potential yet, that I can (and should!) be better.
So I've learned to do the impossible: hold two contradictory truths in my head at the same time.
1) I, minute to minute, tried to make the best decisions I could regarding the conditions (physical and mental health, life circumstances, whatever) I was working with. I did my best with what I had.
2) There are some parts of my life that do not promote my best living and working conditions; there are still places where I can do better without sacrificing myself.
Or, put another way. I am proud of what I accomplish, and I can see ways where I can do better.
It is so hard to feel good about what you did do, while also not turning a blind eye to places where you can improve. It's hard to feel good about being partway. It's hard to feel good knowing that, actually, there is no real finish line. Life is always changing, we're always adjusting, but most importantly:
We are always growing.
So, when you approach your next period of evaluation, try and hold both views at once:
What went well? What do you feel proud of? What did you accomplish? Give yourself credit for what you did and what was going on when you did it.
What is your next step? What are one or two things you can work on to improve? What is one area that you would like to focus on growing, supporting, or starting?
That's how you grow without guilt. You feel good about what you're doing even while you see the path to follow next. You give yourself credit, you show yourself compassion, you still see where you can improve. Make a done list. Remember all the challenges you overcome that didn't make your planner or your goal planning sessions. Find other ways to measure progress. Write three things that you love about your work or your project or yourself. Make a list of everything you're grateful for until you're out of ideas. Find the good even in the growth.