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.

eat the frog........or not?

Sometimes, there's a task. It's The Task. Maybe it's responding to an email, or paying your credit card bill, or opening up the dissertation file, or taking your trash out. Whatever it is, it's The Task that you know will make you feel better to do it, but also you would pay one bazillion dollars for it to be done and for you to not have to do it. 

There is a lot of productivity advice that will say that when you have this task, you should do it first, and they call it "eating the frog." The idea is that if you have to eat a frog at some point during the day, it's better to just get that over with so you can eat more delicious things later without the dread of having to then also eat a frog. Get the hard, tough, maybe gross stuff out of the way, and everything else is crackers and La Croix, or whatever your favorite food is. 

In general, this is good advice. It usually feels good to get The Task out of the way, and feeling good at the start of a work session is usually helpful for overall motivation. Once a hard thing is done, you have concrete evidence that you are, in fact, capable of doing hard things.

However, sometimes, you know you have to eat a frog so you just.....avoid breakfast, so to speak. You say that you're going to start with The Task, and then the minutes (hours) creep by and The Task hasn't been started, and the dread builds, so you don't do anything. You just wait to feel up to eating the frog, and keep waiting. 

So here's my compromise, a workflow that balances getting tough stuff out of the way and also my own tendency to not always be my strongest in the morning:

• When I end the workday, I identify one or two important tasks to start with when I am next at my desk, that will feel like wins to get done.

• When I sit down for the next session, I check in with myself and see if I feel like I want to start with those tasks, or if something else has come up that I need to attend to.

• If I am starting with a difficult task, I set a timer for one pom. If I haven't started the Frog Task in the first pom, I switch to something else.

• I try the Frog Task again when I either a) feel up to it or b) after a hard break (like lunch, or a workout) when coming back to work feels like a new session.

It's great to eat the frog, and it is an awesome way to inject a bit of win right into the beginning of a session. But it isn't so powerful that you should sacrifice the rest of your work day ready to eat that frog. No one tool fits well for everyone, at every energy level, with every kind of task. So experiment with it, and learn when it works for you, so that you can use it on purpose! 

the gap between "i get what to do" and "i can't do it yet"

RIght now, I'm in physical therapy and active rehabilitation after a big abdominal surgery at the end of 2020. As you might expect, I am very relaxed and chill about it - I definitely don't throw tantrums about how "I used to be able to do this" and "why can't I just think about doing it and it happens" and "THIS IS ALL VERY FRUSTRATING." 

It boils down to this gap - there's the fact that I intellectually understand what I need to do, I've researched it, I can explain it, and probably teach it, and then the equally true fact that I cannot do it yet, in my embodied state. 

And while most (I hope!) of you are not recovering from major surgery, I think there's something really powerful about the gap between intellectually wrapping your mind around something, and actually doing it. Just a few examples I've heard from the last few weeks:

• Knowing that you want to break your project into smaller steps to make it feel more manageable, and being too overwhelmed to even look at it

• Intellectually understanding that you should start working on the abstract for the conference due in three weeks, but feeling no urgency about it and putting it off way until it's on fire

• Knowing that you are doing your best in the middle of a difficult degree and hugely difficult circumstances, but still fighting with the feeling that you could and should be doing more

• Reading all the blogs and books and coaching advice pieces about how to do something, and still needing practice to get it right (and hating that)

The gap looks really different in all kinds of people and situations, but the emotions of frustration, shame, anger, guilt, and avoidance all hang around this particular formation. 

And even worse, it plays into one of the sneakiest stories hanging around the academia / intellectual product development / "intelligent/gifted/advanced/good at school" campfire:

You could be anything if you just pushed yourself. You'll never reach your potential if you don't apply yourself. If you just worked harder / started earlier / used these skills / did what I did, you'd finally meet the standards. You have all this potential and you refuse to use it. 

I promise you that if you intellectually understanding how to space out a project like a dissertation over a few semesters was all it took for a person to be able to do that, no one would need me or this community or therapists or skills coaches or librarians or books or blogs about it. My physical therapist asked me why I expected to be able to have full use of my abdominal muscles, recently cut open in 5 different locations, and I explained that I researched how the muscle binds together and which muscles were being recruited to take over and how different exercises redistribute that load. She laughed at me (kindly) and said "you can't think your ab wall back together." 

It's easy to see why she felt that was silly - of course I can't think at my abs and make them work! But it's much, much more difficult to wrap one's brain around the idea that you also can't think your way out of a lot of challenges like focus, scheduling, procrastination, or planning. We can really believe that we can just, focus or have a new schedule or plan better or start things earlier by thinking about it! But, like our abdominal muscles operate in the complex system of the body, a much more complex soup of environment and emotion and context and support is actually surrounding, feeding, and supporting a problem like procrastination. 

And, like my physical therapy is going to be tailored to my situation, what solutions you may need for yours are also individual. But the first step, if you can take a few moments this week, is to look at all the places where you are punishing yourself for a natural, important, evolutionarily crucial, situationally complex, identity and context dependent gap exists between what you may know, and what you may do. Where are you yelling at your metaphorical abs to fix themselves? How can you reframe that into something a little kinder to your abs? 

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! 

[something better here]: using brackets while drafting

Drafting (the part of writing when you're putting words on paper, whether it's the first time, or seventeenth) is really hard work. You're making SO many choices every minute - which word, which thought, who to cite, if you cite, if it's clear, what you mean - and it can be really overwhelming. If you add in a brain that has a few different trains of thought running at the same time, or perfectionism, or any other brain pattern/behavior/emotion that's the least bit distracting, and drafting can be even more overwhelming, if not nearly impossible feeling. 

And although academics talk a lot about how to make time for the writing, how to make space for it, how to schedule it - there is so much less discussion about how to actually write. So today, here's a tactic I use with a lot of clients: bracketing. 

Now, this isn't something I invented but it is something that I used (and still do use!) extensively when writing up new ideas (or revising old ones.) Basically, it's a way to capture thoughts that you have about the writing while you're writing so that you can keep going. 

For example, here is a paragraph in an early (draft 0 or 1) version of one of my dissertation chapters. Everything in ALL CAPS was something I needed to cite, expand on, or clarify, but I kept going so that I could see what I needed to change.

• While the stakes of human turned meme are clear (STAR WARS KID, NUMANUMA), the animal also faces risk here. The replicated image changes perception of breeds (in the case of the Persian) and separates the body of the animal from the representation of it. I DONT KNOW WHATEVER - what does it mean to be voiced by a human.

I used ALL CAPS to signal these changes, but I later switched to brackets ( {[ }] ) because they were easier to search for and replace. The important thing was what I was doing - signalling a place I wanted to come back to, capturing the important thought, and then going on so that I could stay in the world of the draft. If I stopped to look up the memes I wanted to cite, or figure out exactly what I wanted to stay, I would usually get distracted, start reading when I was supposed to be done with reading, feel absolutely frustrated and angry when I couldn't figure out what exactly my argument was. In short, I'd stop writing and do something else, instead of noting and then carrying on. 

Here are just some of the uses I've found for bracketing text while drafting:

• Making note of where to add citations

• Capturing thoughts like "is this clear enough" or "do I need more here"

• Leaving myself instructions like "come back and write a better transition once you finalize case studies" or "link this back to chapter 2 once you write it"

• Noting details I wanted to confirm, like publication year or author name

And the benefits weren't just limited to keeping in the flow of writing while drafting! Brackets also helped me:

• Turn some of these tasks (like "find citation" or "add quote from archive here") into the small steps I could put on a list and check off

• Ask better questions when readers gave me feedback, because I already knew which areas I worried might be unclear

• Note places where I would add other literature or sources - I have a tendency to overcite and bury my voice, so brackets helped me see where I wanted to add citations, and then if people said "This needs more support" I would have some good guesses about where to add. And if they DIDN'T say that, then I didn't spend a lot of time adding in citations and quotes that I just needed to take out.

Not all the thoughts we have while drafting are bad - but some of them can definitely take us out of the task of writing and into places where it's harder to get back in the flow. Hopefully using some brackets can help you stay with your thoughts AND stay in the writing! And if you have other uses for brackets - or other techniques that work in the same way, please share!

working with avoidance

One of the hardest things I've found when coaching individual clients, and giving feedback in the community, is how to:

help people get out of avoidant patterns WITHOUT shaming them or making rest seem like a negative outcome. 

Because look - sometimes you need a day off. Sometimes you need to only work two hours a day. Sometimes, I have no idea, as a coach or a person who is not you, what goes into your decision making about what to do, and when. 

But as a person with mental health challenges, I also know that sometimes I'm tired and I need downtime, and sometimes, I'm avoiding things. 

So here is my methodology for identifying, interrogating, and working with avoidance. Your mileage may vary, obviously, but I've found this is a good system to check in with myself.

Am I avoiding things?

I started to compile a list of things that I do when I'm avoiding things, so that I had a mental awareness of which activities sometimes, or often, or always, were avoidant:

Sometimes avoidant:

Cleaning, cooking, running errands, tasks that are due eventually but not now, "fun" work

Often avoidant:

Reorganizing my office, "research" not tied to an active project, "surfing" websites

(Almost) always avoidant:

Netflix. 

So it's usually about the balance - one or two sometimes avoidant things aren't usually an issue; three or four days of only those activities can be. 

What's going on?

Next step, interrogate (gently) the issue! These are good journalling questions that I use:

• Do I feel better or worse at the end of the day of work?

• What project, milestone, or task do I feel most blocked in?

• What project, milestone, or task feels the most undersupported right now?

• Have I been cutting out activities to work on the blocked thing? (skipping workouts, etc)

• What is the next step for the blocked thing?

• What are some alternate activities that are not avoidant but aren't the blocked thing that I can work on if I need to?

Everyone's line between avoidance and something else is different, and it can also shift. So it can take some time to tell the difference, and take even more time to develop an action plan that isn't self-punishment but also moves you out of avoidance if you need it.

Working with avoidance

Here are my general rules for working with avoidance - I'm not perfect about them all the time, but they do give me a good framework and places to troubleshoot.

1. Evaluate regulary - whether that's the end of the day, every other day, or at another interval - so that you can see when projects fall off track and address it.

2. Don't shame - just adjust. No one needs to add blame and guilt into already sticky situations.

3. When in doubt, move. Change locations, change chairs, change tasks - moving in any direction can often have ripple effects.

4. Self care as a baseline non-negotiable helps keep the rest up, so that avoidance is easier to see. If you're collapsing out of pure exhaustion regularly, it can help to address that first, so that you have a more clear baseline state.

5. Identify your absolute no-go activities. I have an "anything but Netflix" mode - I can literally do anything I want, from working out to cleaning to fun admin work - as long as I don't watch Netflix. This helps me with the movement piece, and often a few wins in other areas gives me the confidence to show up for the blocked thing.

6. Reward frequently, heartily, and with joy. If I make progress on a sticky thing, I basically throw myself a parade. The more I associate working on hard things with pleasure, the better I feel.

are you choosing 'not at all'?

As many of you have probably heard, many many times, I want desperately to be a runner. And there are a few hurdles in this plan:

• I'm not great at running.

• I have a chronic illness that flares and sometimes my body isn't up to running.

• It's hard to run in the rain, and when it's hot, and when it's cold, and when you're tired, and when you're hyped up.....

• etc

And so, for the 1920834208 time, I embarked on the couch to 5 k plan. So reasonable! I have a target 5k date and I'm training and then a few things happened, and I missed a week.

So yesterday, I put it on my calendar and in my A column in my to-do list - the "you gotta do it, or else" column. And I realized that what was holding me back was not that I missed a few runs, or that even that I might not be able to run the whole 5k in September without stopping, but that I wasn't "perfect" with the training, which itself, is flexible.

My brain would rather give up on the whole plan together than do it less than 100% perfectly. 

And whoooo, is that a pattern that my brain likes to invite me into. Better not to do it than have to work at it. Better not to do it than to do it 80%, or 60%. Better focus on the things that I'm already crushing than spend "all that energy" on things that are hard. 

So I'm trying to focus on being "joyfully intermediate". I want to enjoy the path between the beginning and the end state - I want to think of that space before something is perfect, or done, or good enough as a part of the process, and not just something I have to hold my breath and survive until I can be more comfortably high achieving. 

It's hard. It was a hard run. But the next run will be easier because I'm back trying to run again. There might not be meteoric progress between 0% running and 100% running, but there will be movement and change and growth and learning, and that's also good stuff. 

schedule like you love yourself

A client last week was filling out a daily journal and mentioned that a mantra, in a Yoga for Adrienne video, was really sticking in their brain:

Breathe like you love yourself. Move like you love yourself. 

And as I often do, I joked around and said "Thesis like you love yourself! Schedule like you love yourself!" 

And it happened, as it often does, that the phrase stuck with me. I spent the next week walking around, and it would pop into my head: schedule like you love yourself.

What would that look like? What does my schedule look like right now? If someone saw my day to day rhythms and didn't know me, would they look at it and say "there goes a person who really cares about themselves!" 

There are definitely elements that suggest I love myself! I have a pretty strict bedtime, I have dates to catch up with friends. I have some workouts in there - I have days off. 

But some things in there are a little dicey - some days I'm scheduled all the way from breakfast to lunch with very little downtime! I often don't get to my workout until late in the day - not because I couldn't squeeze it in, but because I feel like I have to earn it. 

And I DEFINITELY know that there have been seasons of my life where if you looked at my schedule, it would have been 92.7% work, and 7.3% collapsing from exhaustion. It would be difficult to have anyone look at that and say yes, that is a schedule of a person who loves themselves.

But, there's also something deeper at work in the structuring of the phrase: schedule like you love yourself. 

What a beautiful work, like! Because it actually gives us the freedom to separate how we might actually feel from minute to minute (I don't know about you, but the relationship between me and my other selves is evolving and changing and not all sunshine and joy all the time!), from how we schedule. It's not "love yourself first and then schedule like it!" It suggests that if we schedule in activities that make it easier to care for ourselves, then we might just have an easier time caring for ourselves. 

So if it feels like a little bit of a stretch, in this season of love and romance and hearts, to start from the self-love and care and move outwards, try scheduling first, and see if that doesn't invite a little more of it in. 

the zit effect

It doesn't matter how glowing 98% of my teaching evaluations are, the critical, mean, and fair but OUCH ones are tattooed on my heart. You could give me pages and pages of glowing feedback on my writing and I'm going to remember the typos, the mistakes I made with language, the parts that were confusing and unclear. 

I thought that this was just my brain doing Brain Things TM but it turns out that this is a well known, research supported Brain Thing: negativity bias.  

In other words, things of a negative nature will impact your psychological state and brain processes more than positive things, even if they were of equivalent intensity. You remember negative things more, you notice negative things more, you have a tendency to choose things that will minimize pain rather than optimize for benefits. 

I saw it this week (not so) lovingly referred to as "the zit effect": doesn't matter if everything else is going really well, if you have a pimple, you're going to focus on it. And it happens to all of us!

If you have a zit, there are a few options:

• Pop it - bold! Not always advisable! Should probably be supervised!

• Cover it up - takes a certain skill with makeup, not always fully possible, can sometimes prolong the zit

• Ride it out - accept it, try not to mess with it, let it go down in time

• Take preventative measurements - get soaps, get a routine, try and stop them before they start

But the truth is that all of these methods have pros and cons, and nothing completely stops zits from happening. And they look different for each person, they can range in severity, they can be part of a whole separate condition and need special attention, and you can't compare one person's zit to another - or tell them that "it's just a zit!" and that they should lighten up. 

The useful thing here is to check in with yourself the next time you're in a thought loop about how you never get anything done, or are a terrible writer, or are just a trash raccoon in all areas that cannot be rehabilitated to be a cute, fun raccoon: are you focusing on all the things that aren't working?

Practice countering those thoughts with any reflections this week about the things that are working. It doesn't make the negative things go away, but it does "right size them" - puts them back in the correct scale so that you can see the face for the zits, so to speak. <3 

scheduling creativity

It's easy to see why a person who is a performer, artist, author, chef, or a bunch of other professions needs to schedule space and time to support their creativity. If they aren't producing work that is new, innovative, and directly tied to their creative voice and vision, they're not doing their job. 

It can be harder to see how it's important in grad school to have a creative outlet. Although it can vary a bit from field to field, many grad students eventually come to feel that they're in a cycle of:

• Obtain information

• Write information down

• Revise information

• Share information

• Repeat

 But when you feel like you're just following a script, producing and sharing information without any real spark of interest, it can be a total slog! And more than that, it can feel actively unproductive to incorporate creativity directly or indirectly into your day because it isn't "useful" or "efficient". Put another way - what does coloring have to do with my dissertation?

Creativity is hard to define and can be difficult to research but there are lots of studies that attest to the fact that:

• Creativity is linked to improved problem solving

• Creative play can reduce stress

• Creative activities activate different neural pathways in the brain

• Creativity can boost self-confidence

So, to that end, there are a few things you can do right now to promote a little more creativity in your days!

• Recognize that writing, even non-fiction, academic writing, is itself a creative act. You're choosing words out of an infinite range of possible words to communicate something that is only living in your brain! What might make it feel more creative? I like to sometimes practice writing my ideas in a different voice - more formal, the most jargon-y I can do, like I was explaining it to a 8 year old - to see if that clarifies my ideas.

• Try representing your argument with pictures, or sounds. One of my favorite ways to do this is to make fake slides for a class I would teach on this argument, or for a conference paper version. Sometimes playing in a more visual medium can help you unblock!

• Dictate your argument to your computer, or phone. Sometimes speaking more naturally, or recording a conversation you have with a friend about your work, can loosen up some stickiness.

• Add some non-work related creativity into your routine! Knitting, coloring, sewing, doodling, bullet journaling, dance, acting, improv, creative writing, poetry, performance, cooking, cake decorating....the options are endless! But just because it doesn't a) make you money or b) move the dissertation forward doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile! Creative play and expression benefits don't diminish just because they don't serve the project directly!

ecosystem theory: how to reframe the "i do this or i do that" binary

“yeah sure i would love to take weekends off but i have way too much work for that to be feasible”

“of course i would love to have time to exercise but lol have you seen my to do list?”

“reading in my field not for a specific project, just to be aware? HA! not this term buddy!!!”

the list of things we SHOULD be doing is enormous - be a great colleague and teacher and scholar and writer and researcher and committee member and have time for side gigs and volunteer for your resume and……that’s just the tip of the iceberg in professional academic settings. you might also be in possession of a human body that has needs, or maybe you have relationships you’d like to maintain, or an interest outside of work that you would like to pursue! there truly isn’t enough time in the day to even approach optimization in all categories - and that’s without worldwide pandemic events that disrupt everyone for years on end.

but one of the big barriers i find - as both a human and a coach who works with humans - is the discrete nature of choice. in any given hour of the day, i can only do one thing at a time (i mean i could multitask but i fall down enough just walking, i definitely shouldn’t try to write emails and walk at the same time.) so at some level, i have to either choose to spend that hour sleeping, or eating, or moving my body, or answering emails. i can combine and optimize and shoot for an order that makes sense, but if you can’t do everything, you do have to choose some things.

and if your brain is really focused on the urgent, important work of your professional life (and wow does our society like to really redirect our focus there if it ever drifts!!), it can be hard NOT to frame things as “i’m either caught up at work, OR my human stuff is being handled.” so often, this leads us to focus on either fitting more into every day (i’ll get up earlier or work one weekend day a week!) or trying to work faster so that we can fit in more - and those efforts make sense logically but they also create ripe conditions for exhaustion and burnout.

what does all this have to do with ecosystems, katy?? well, in a former life, i wrote a lot about how animals are portrayed in media, and lots of my work actually focused on how media is used to drive conservation efforts. i’m sure you’ve heard calls to save the pandas, or protect polar bears from losing their habitat, or drawing your attention to the destruction of coral reefs. now, in no way am i suggesting that we shouldn’t save pandas (look at them in the snow!) or that polar bears haven’t been forced into smaller and smaller ranges to their detriment, or that coral reefs aren’t some of the most stunning examples of biodiversity in the world and we shouldn’t save them!! my argument here is that by focusing on one species, rather than the whole ecosystem, we can make short term decisions that have long term consequences, however unintended.

i’m not the first person to talk about this, obviously - there are discussion about umbrella species, how to use celebrity species to raise money, and how to spend that money in a way that supports ecosystem rehabilitation, and how to focus attention on large scale, complex issues like climate change when people want easy, sexy wins like reducing acid rain. but, in this context - choosing what to spend our precious time on during the day, week, month, or year - i think that these discussions actually have a lot to tell us about how we can view the interactions between our work output and our life.

for example, in my life, i have to work on fitting exercise and movement into my day. i am not one of those people blessed with the ability to get up in the morning and run, or do much else but play wordle in bed until i’m ready to face the day, so i have to squeeze it in somewhere else. in the thick of the day, when my inbox is full and people need things, it’s really hard to say “yes, let’s drop everything and do a workout video” because it definitely isn’t as urgent, and can often feel less important. in the race between “job” and “move body”, body doesn’t always win in the head to head competition.

but it’s not a head to head competition, at least not most of the time. if i take 20 minutes to go for a walk, i often get some direct benefits (visit from the neighborhood cats, some serotonin, a chance to listen to a good podcast) and then some less direct ones (increased focus after i come back, a sense of pride that i made time even though it was hard, better sleep). moving my body is good for the ecosystem of my life, even if in the moment it isn’t the best choice for my writing when viewed in isolation.

when i pay attention to my ecosystem, rather than just optimizing conditions for one task or group of tasks, i do tend to spend my time differently. i have to work a little harder up front on scheduling, weather a few temper tantrums about not wanting to go do hard things like folding laundry, and sometimes, it does mean that people are waiting for me, or that i don’t respond immediately to emails, or that i’m less reachable at certain times of the day and week. but just like reducing stormwater runoff doesn’t directly help beavers return to my local nature preserve, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play a part, or isn’t worth doing. together with stream conservation, community education, ecostewards that monitor stream health, municipal policies, and urban planning, my rain barrel does make a difference (and provides me with a free way to water my gardens all summer long, too).

the health of your personal ecosystem matters - metaphorically and also literally. what would change about how you schedule and prioritize and plan if you were thinking about your ecosystem rather than your tasks? and like ecosystem conversation, it might take some time for your changes to have benefits that you can track. and it doesn’t mean that there are big problems and challenges and hurdles that your individual choices alone won’t really move the needle on! sometimes, we just need a reframe to help ourselves seem some wiggle room where there wasn’t any before. your ecosystem matters, and it’s worth experimenting to help protect and strengthen it.

if it's cold, i can wear a coat - thoughts on my brain not always/rarely doing exactly what i want it to do

in my personal life, i am well known for not being dressed in a way that is weather-appropriate. i hate wearing socks, wear sandals WAY past the first frost, often feel that a long sleeved shirt is fine if it's not below freezing.

but, last year, i discovered that wearing socks meant that i was less distracted by my cold toes all day. if i wore a coat, i could take longer walks before my body got real mad, and hats definitely kept me warmer than i would have thought. i don't LOVE wearing them but i definitely don't hate being more comfortable, and with a little bit of effort, i can go out and enjoy my favorite season just a little bit more.

sometimes, i think about my brain as having weather patterns of its own. in fact, brain weather is my favorite term for everything that happens up there! there are some weather patterns - hurricanes! tornados! - that require our full attention and presence, and my brain can definitely throw up a hurricane or two where it's all i can do to stay safe and supported until the worst of the winds have passed. and then there are moments of absolutely gorgeous weather, where my brain just feels so good that i can't imagine what rain was even like! blue skies baby!

i've always been better at handling extremes than the in between - and my brain is no exception to that. i know what to do when i'm feeling 0% good, and what to do when i feel 100% good - easy! but what about when it's like, 60% good? what if i'm in the middle of brain weather that's cold but not life-threatening so? a steady drizzle of brain weather? a too-hot for comfort but not too hot to stay inside day? that's a lot harder for me to adjust to, just like it's really hard for me to decide whether or not i want to bother with a coat when it's just a little chilly.

weather - brain and earth - is something i can't really fight. i can definitely refuse to modify my behavior (not wear a coat, not get extra sleep, you get it) but if it's cold, the earth truly doesn't care if i'm wearing my coat or not. it keeps doing its weather thing, and i'm left to decide if i want to adjust or not. thinking about my brain as having weather systems, and flowing with them instead of fighting to try and get to a 100% sunny days optimism only pattern that is neither real nor sustainable, has really helped a lot.

if i'm having a high anxiety day, i can either bolt myself to my chair and SIT THERE UNTIL THE ANXIETY SUBSIDES AND THE WORK IS DONE, or i can go for a walk, or move my body a little bit, or swap out a coffee for some water. it doesn't knock out the anxiety, but it does make it more comfortable to exist with it. wearing a coat doesn't make it NOT winter, just makes it more comfortable to live DURING winter. i can spend a lot of energy BEING MAD that i'm anxious, and stop everything until the feeling subsides, or i can know that there are short, medium, and long term things i can do to work with it, all of which will both increase my empowerment and my comfort.

we are conditioned to view ourselves as problems to solve, but accepting our current reality doesn't mean that we won't ever feel differently - in fact, showing ourselves care through the sticky moments usually does the opposite, and helps us move onto what's next more quickly, more completely, more gently, more supported.

and that's what i want for me and all of us - more gentleness, more support, more tools to help meet us where we are, with the weather we have. so maybe you offer yourself a hat or a coat, or a little bit of something that makes it just 1% easier to live with your weather - making it all the more likely that when the weather does change, you're not so burned out that you can't appreciate it.

are you covering new territory?

i think while i write when i’m doing any kind of scholarly writing. i definitely have outlines - can’t live without them - but there’s a certain magic that happens when i’m drafting that helps me clarify what i actually mean, and how i want to say it. the problem is that when i really let myself think and draft in all directions, i can end up with a draft that can be really repetitive, covering the same idea in a few different ways, or with more citations, or in different case studies…

so over the years, i’ve developed some ways to build in reflection during the drafting process to help catch some of those flights of prose-fancy, but one question has quickly risen to the top as a multipurpose question:

am i covering new territory?

your writing is like a map. it shows people how to get from some ideas to other ideas - hopefully yours! and just like a map, it has some important features, like boundaries (what’s included and what isn’t included) and major landmarks (how can people orient and relate what you’re saying with what they already know?). and sometimes, we get stuck filling in the same part of the map with more and more detail - adding more citations, reading more literature to make sure that we’re citing what we need to, adding more examples that further illustrate the same ideas.

the “am i covering new territory” question can help you see that retreading - it doesn’t mean you won’t ever return to that area of your map, it just is a sign to move to a new area so that you can have a more complete map.

outlines can also be really helpful here - if you’re adding more and more detail to the same section of your outline, that might not count as new territory! even the most schematic of outlines can give you a sense of the overall boundaries and region of your writing-map, and help you see what areas need more.

when drawing a map, you need not start at the edges, or the top, and work your way from one side to the other. maybe you start by labeling all the major landmarks, and then you decide where to draw the boundaries. maybe you start in the center, and radiate outwards. maybe you get everything to 10% detail, and then 30%, and then 80%. the “am i covering new territory” question can help in all of those scenarios - a way to make sure that your whole map, your whole argument, is getting attention, a reminder to keep an eye on the whole even as individual parts get your focus and attention.

may you all cover new territory this week!

a year is very long, and other thoughts on planning

first things first, try as i might, i simply cannot quit the new years resolution industrial complex. i love the freshness of a new year, i love the optimism it brings, i love an explicit chance to believe in my capacity to change and grow.

however, long, long gone are the days in which i would sit, at the cusp of a new year, and list out every single thing i wanted to do and change about myself, and then embark on a near manic quest to do so many of them at once that i would be fully and completely exhausted by january 15, if not earlier. and if there was any inkling of that behavior left, the pandemic well and fully knocked that out of me.

and judging by the response that dr. jane jones got from her tweet, we’re all tired. and from where i sit, in january 2022, there’s quite enough uncertainty about the way the year will unfold for anyone to feel a little uneasy planning for the whole year.

a year is a very long time. a pandemic year - even longer. so, here are a few of my most important ideas and tools for thinking about, and actually planning, in a time like this TM:

• plans are just drafts of what you think you might do with the resources you think you might have available. they are, like any good draft, subject to revision, further research, and the whims of the (cosmic) editor. making a plan in january that doesn’t fit in march, or november, isn’t a sign of failure - just a sign that you may need some tweaking to reflect any changes.
  

• once more for the people in the back: plans take into account the resources you have - time, energy, support. how many of us have written a plan for 100 hour work weeks when we really only have capacity for 30? how many of us plan for a year where teaching happens equally week to week and then get totally surprised by the crush of work at midterms and finals? the more realistic you can be about your resources, the less you have to adjust. but, following point one, an adjustment isn’t a failure, just a revision.
  

• i myself have leaned hard into seasonal/quarterly planning and resolutions. this is an idea that i learned from sarah faith gottesdienercts.com/pages/about and it make so much sense to me. we might have an overarching goal for the year (like, finish the dissertation) but how that translates into daily, weekly, or monthly rhythms is very likely to shift, change, and evolve as time passes. so rather than trying to pick a resolution (like writing every day) that works in january when classes are still ramping up but not in april, when you’re swamped, you pick just for the next season. my winter resolutions often have a lot to do with supporting myself through the cold, dark months, and my summer ones are usually more buoyant. i change all year long. so do my goals. it makes sense that my habits and resolutions do too.
  

• you can also slow the planning process way, way down - or plan to revisit it often if you do it in a more compressed way. maybe you decide on your big three projects/focuses for the year, and then every month you make a plan for the individual steps and when/how you’ll do them. maybe you wait until the second week of the semester and you get a sense of your students and work load before you decide on a writing schedule/habit. the more information you have, the more specific the plan - and the more specific the plan, the more useful it is.
  

• above all else, planning is a way to help make some decisions (what’s important, what to focus on, when to do it, how to do it) in advance to reduce decision fatigue. if your plans leave you tired, or even more confused than when you started, i encourage you to focus smaller, more actionable, more concrete, even if that means abandoning the year long view and only visiting it from time to time, while you keep your gaze firmly on the daily/weekly. it all adds up - little bit by little bit. let your plan help keep you moving in the direction you want to be going, even if you need to improvise a little bit on the exact route to get there.

hatching is hard work

it’s really hard to hatch out of an egg.

i mean, i’m not a bird. so i don’t know that for certain in an “embodied i did this way” but i do in a metaphorical way.

imagine you’re in an egg. you’re cramped, and you know you have to get out but….how??? everywhere you feel, it’s hard hard shell, and also you’re still a baby bird and you’re not that strong yet!!! how do you get from inside to outside?

scientifically speaking - many birds have an “egg tooth” on their beak that they use to create weak spots in the shell, and then they slowly, chaotically, enlarge that weak spot. but, mostly, as you can see - it’s a chaotic, instinctual process.

we spend a lot of time valorizing efficiency, planning, and effectiveness - and i get it! being all of those things are great. and i’m certainly not saying don’t plan! but it’s really hard how to plan exactly how to get out of an egg when you’re inside of it.

and as a graduate student, it’s really hard to plan exactly how you will write a dissertation chapter without starting it. you can read all the books about how to write a chapter, how to structure your time, how to organize your sources, but all of that information stays in the theoretical realm. some of it might end up to be useful, some of it could be irrelevant, but if you keep reading until you feel ready to do, it’s hard to know what is what.

but you DO have an egg tooth - you are a smart person! you’ve gotten this far! you’ve got skills and knowledge and you do know things! maybe not these exact things, but you’re not starting from zero. so my best advice is:

thrash around. move in whatever way makes the most sense for where you are right now - there’s no perfect way to hatch! but you will break through eventually - and then you can work on enlarging the way out from there. trashing feels erratic and chaotic, but it’s movement.

and the best news about movement? it, by its very nature, makes you stronger. a chick gains muscle tone as it presses up against the shell - the growth is painful and i’m sure scary for that little buddy, but what a way to change and grow in a rapid way. no one says to that chick “well, you could have saved some time if you had hatched in this way” - they say “good job hatching little buddy!!!”.

obviously you can always learn through reading, through research, through observation. but you can also learn through doing, trying, thrashing, failing, messing up, redirecting, tweaking, and starting again. it’s hard to imagine the world outside the egg when you’re still in it. it’s hard to imagine how you’ll be at the next level of your scholarship, your human life, when you’re learning how to do it. and it’s natural in the face of the unknown to try and learn as much as you can before you get there, but sometimes, it’s faster, and maybe even a little more fun, to follow your instincts, thrash a bit, and get out of the shell.

what if there was no virtuous way to work?

"I got it done, and it went really well, but I was definitely working up until the last minute"

"I hate that I was rushing, but I guess I did finish it!"

"Yeah, this went really well, but next time, I want to be done at least a week before."

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating that everyone stop pushing before deadlines, or that there's anything noble about staying up all night! What I'm saying is:

There is no one way of working that is inherently "good" or "correct" or "desirable", just as there is no "bad" way of working. There's just working, and what it does for you, and your life.

So for years and years, I have felt guilty that I write mostly on deadlines. I will have a course, or a blog post, or something that's due, and I will get it done in time, but if I have three weeks to write it, I will start it ....closer to the deadline, and not the instant it is on my to do list.  So I'll get it done, and it will go well, and I'll like it, and people will like it, and I can't be 100% happy with that, just because I didn't "spread it out". 

Every accomplishment came with a "but next time" clause: this was great, but next time I'll start earlier; this worked well and I'm proud, but also I wish I wasn't like this. 

And as I got to know myself and my work habits better, I realized that a lot of my guilt and shame around some of my working habits were because I believed that I was getting the results, but I wasn't doing it the right way, or the good way. Good people start their work early! Good students study ahead of time and never cram! The right way to work is a little bit every day and have lots of time before the deadline! So no matter what the data said, I felt like I could always do better because I wasn't doing it the right way. 

Now, sometimes, I cut it *very* close to the deadline. And it makes me stress, and I lose sleep, and I crash afterwards, and I'm a total crank to everyone around me. And that is a very good reason to try and start a little earlier! But "because good people always finish ahead of time" is a less good reason that invites a lot more guilt into my life. 

And as I work with my own brain, and neurodiverse clients, and just the people of the world, I realize that we have a lot of shame around not doing things the "right way". So someone could be working really well, and really efficiently, prepping the two hours before a class meets, but they'll feel bad about it (despite the evidence!) because they're rushing. Or they'll take all the distractions out of a room because that's what "focus" feels like, when in fact they get the best work and thinking done while old episodes of The Great British Bake Off play in the background. Sometimes, the "good way" just doesn't work for you, and you carry this idea that even though your way is working in all the ways that count, it still isn't right. 

So, I've gotten better at asking myself a few questions to get at the heart of what I want to change, and more importantly, why I want to change them. These questions can help you, too, as you do monthly reflections, or end of semester reflections, or any other kind of reflection you might want to do <3 As always, take what's useful and leave the rest! 

• What really worked about this (process, project, outcome)?

• What didn't work as well?

• How do you know it didn't work as well? What are you noticing, measuring, or noting?

• What data do you have that points in a different direction, that things are working well?

• What do you think would be a different or alternate way of attempting this, or a similar, task?

• What do you think the advantages of the alternate way would be?

• Why do you think those are advantages?

• How will you know if the new way is doing what you want it to?

the dance between accountability and compassion

Sometimes, I get in my own head. Life happens to me, like it happens to all of us. I had a bit of a slow start to this year. And all I could think about was how I didn't have the time for any of the hard stuff because it was the new year and I had to start working on my new year goals. If I didn't get a good start in January, I'd be off all year and if I didn't hold myself accountable, no one else was going to. I was so worried that if I took care of myself and showed myself some compassion for what were pretty understandable feelings, I would fall into a pattern of only ever excusing myself out of important things. I wouldn't do anything because I cut myself too much slack.

Many of my clients struggle with this same thing, and in fact, it could be part of the human condition:

"If I take the day off to heal from being sick, what if I never get back to work?"

"If I let myself extend this deadline, what will stop me from extending all my other deadlines until deadlines have no meaning to me?"

"If I don't hold myself to my high standard all the time, I will permanently lower my standards and that will be a disaster."

One of my favorite Instagram Follows - Lisa Olivera - is a therapist and last week, she posted a bunch of really interesting prompts showing how self-compassion and accountability can, in her words, dance together. As she says, "Offering ourselves compassion while also being willing to take care of ourselves through being accountable to our well-being and our needs is a really nourishing way of reparenting, caring for, and also getting shit done." Here are some of my favorite examples she points to:

Self-compassion: It makes so much sense why this is so challenging for me.

Accountability: What next step feels in my reach to make it a little bit easier in this moment?

Self-compassion: It's okay to need a break sometimes. It's okay to need rest and time off/time out.

Accountability: When I feel ready, what would feel supportive in getting started again?

Self-compassion: It's understandable that I forget to use my self-soothing (Katy note: and also work, productivity, and planning!) tools at times.

Accountability: Is there anything that would make them more accessible to me when I need them?

We can realize that we're human, and offer ourselves some understanding and compassion for that AND also be looking for ways to support ourselves. We can have off days and not beat ourselves up for that AND also look at what caused those days and what might feel more supportive next time. We can take a break when we need it AND commit to checking in with ourselves about when we're ready to work again. 

The point is that the shame and the guilt and the pain and the fear that we add to the situation doesn't usually support us. It adds sticky feelings to the hard stuff we're already going through. What if we tried to be accountable to our goals, our values, ourselves AND understood that we wil necessarily do that in a human way because we are humans?

We've all got this - not in spite of the fact that we're human, but because of it. 

commitments over deadlines: getting out of the "i'll just do it next week" guilt trap

"Self imposed deadlines never work because I know myself and I am a liar!" is something a client said to me today (after having seen it on Twitter or Tumblr or something) and I laughed and cried because:

wow, the truth of that

and 

wow, the truth of that.

This is not a post asking you to abandon deadlines, self imposed or otherwise. You need them sometimes. They most importantly put temporal boundaries on projects - and if you're someone who likes to tinker in the sandbox until the last second before you have to leave the park, this is an important step. With so many things, there is no clear or obvious done point - so we have to create one with a deadline. 

But! If you are stuck in a cycle of:

• feel overwhelmed about tasks on your plate now and tasks that are coming

• wildly guess at a deadline that you (or your anxiety self) feels like is reasonable, or at the least, will make you feel like a human being who does things and not a sentient trash pile who happens to be in grad school

• work at that deadline for a minute

• realize that for whatever reason it isn't happening

• give up

• or set new, farther deadline - say, next Friday!

• repeat

then it might be time to try something new. Because if you set a bunch of deadlines, and then don't hit them, and then keep setting deadlines, eventually you reinforce the idea to yourself that time boundaries don't matter unless someone else gets really mad at you for missing them, or unless you have severe consequences for missing it. And that's a tough way to live.

So instead, try something new: try aiming for a commitment like:

• working for one hour every week day on this project

• one pom of freewriting when you get to your desk for the day

• picking three things from your to do list and working on any of those before you start something else

• accountability posts four out of five days next week (*wink*)

If putting more and more pressure to get to done isn't work, try adding some focus on the process. If you work for an hour on a project every day, it might not be done on Friday, but it will be some place new. If you commit to doing one of your scary three things first, you might just get the momentum to keep going. But focusing on what you'll do regularly, rather than the amount of time you have left to do something, you build the habits that make the deadlines happen. A deadline of this Friday doesn't magically build you a writing practice - it just puts some pressure on. So try the practice first, and then add the pressure.

accountability doesn't mean always doing what you say you will

When I say "hold yourself accountable" - what do you think of? Do you imagine a system of unyielding deadlines wherein you must always deliver by that date or no one can trust you? Is it that every word you say becomes a contract that you must abide by, no matter what the situation?

That's certainly what my (recovering perfectionist) brain often imagines. But, this has been an excellent season to relearn that accountability is actually much more generous than that. Dictionaries define it as "expected or required to justify decisions." To be accountable is to answer for the decisions you made - not to deliver flawlessly, but to be able to explain the whys and hows of what happened. 

Say for example, and this is for sure a completely made up example and not something that happened to me recently *wink*, you sat down to work on a project, and instead you got a notification that you needed to update your operating system. So you pressed update, and walked away while it ran, and before you knew it, it was four hours later, and you had gotten a solid nap in, and made some really delicious soup, but also you did not do that project. You feel bad about it. People were waiting on it, and those people cannot eat your soup or benefit from your nap. 

This person, who is definitely not me, could just keep avoiding the project, or work really hard on it and ignore all the other things that also need to be done and are time sensitive, and get really behind on everything else, or take another nap to avoid thinking about anything. And in a really punitive way of thinking about "accountability", all of those fit because they are some way of avoiding, overcompensating, or punishing oneself for not doing something when you said you were going to do it.

But in a more generous model of accountability, it's about saying: 

• What happened? I walked away, got distracted, got wrapped up in other things, and crashed because I am really easily distractable, and tired right now.

• What decisions did you make? What are the consequences? I made the call to update the computer, and then everything else sort of flowed from there - not nefarious or even consciously procrastinating! But the consequences are now that I'm behind.

• What needs to change on a system level? Nothing systemic, really - a perhaps avoidable but also understandable sequence of events. I could get better about setting phone reminders when I walk away from my desk, and maybe prioritize some sleep.

• Who needs to know about the changes? Should email that person who is waiting on the project, let them know what happened ("I'm sorry, this fell off my plate and I won't be able to get it done by x - if I get it to you by y, will that overly complicate the timeline. If it does, I can prioritize it and have it by z, just let me know. Thanks for understanding - there's a lot to juggle right now."

• What, if anything, do you need to implement moving forward so that the new plan is viable? I might want to make a reminder to check in at the end of the day - if other things are going to be delayed, an earlier heads up will probably be better.

It's a dance between self-compassion and accountability , I can both understand what happened and also make changes to not repeat patterns I don't want to repeat. But accountability doesn't mean "I have to always deliver things exactly when I say I will" - it just means that I am responsible for the decisions I make, communicating when things need to be communicated, and making changes when things need to be changed. It's not an end-state - this isn't a "I use pom timers and now I'm always accountable to everyone all the time!" thing. This is an evolving practice - building in enough places to be self-reflective, and practing enough self-compassion so that we can learn from ourselves without it being a punishment-based thing. 

get specific: figuring out what you need is so important

have you ever been completely drowning (metaphorically speaking), and someone comes in and asks “what do you need?”

did you want to punch that person in the face, or did it send you even deeper into the spiral?

i’ve been known to yell “IF I KNEW WHAT I NEEDED I’D GET IT FOR MYSELF” as i go back to laying on the floor (a slight exaggeration but only slight lol) because that question is really overwhelming. if i knew what i needed, i’d have more ideas about how to get it. i’d have more ideas about where to look. i’d have more ideas about what to ask for.

so, here are my patented steps for figuring out what support i need:

1. notice that i am actually needing support, or having a hard time, or struggling with something (this can be harder than it looks!)
   

2. take care of my nervous system - very hard for me to make a plan when my brain is at an 11!
   

3. dial in to what feels hard - “everything is hard” is a place to start, but “it’s hard to figure out when to stop reading and start writing” or “it’s hard to know what a first draft looks like because i’ve never seen one” or “it’s hard to know if my work is any good because all i have is my supervisor’s opinion and that’s not a super stable foundation for making career decisions” are all a little bit more specific. sometimes it helps to journal until you get underneath the initial "everything is hard response”.
   

4. see if there’s somewhere or something or someone that can help! maybe you ask your supervisor when they start writing during data collection, or at what point they start drafting during a research phase. maybe you ask to see a colleague’s first draft. maybe you show your work to more people in more places to get a wider sense of the reception. but specific problems are much easier to support than vague ones.

i use these steps on a daily basis. i loop back to the beginning all the time - because as i grow and change, i need support with different things. it has helped to decide that needing support isn’t a problem. i’m not wrong or broken because i need help sometimes, or even a lot of the time. it’s just part of learning to do new things, and learning to do new things is a huge part of human and phd life.

this is also part of being part of a community that values the wisdom and brilliance of others. this is the kind of community i cultivate in my spaces, the kind i created in my classrooms, and the kind i see popping up (in pockets) in scholars all the time. asking one another for support is a way of saying “i see your smartness, and i’d be honored if you shared a little bit with me, and promise to return the favor if i could ever do the same.”