15 - Why is staying on top of your to-do's so hard?
episode 15 - Why is staying on top of your to-do's so hard?
I used to live a nice, peaceful life where I made a cute little to-do list in the morning, and then I spent the day checking things off, and then once it was empty, I felt so good! Maybe I never had that - but it sounds great, doesn't it?? Staying on top of what you need to do and when is so hard as a grad student, but this episode has some comfort that you're not alone, and importantly, three things you could try today to help with that overwhelming feeling of a list that keeps getting longer, no matter what you do...
Mentioned:
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Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
You can get my free working more intentionally toolkit@thrive-phd.com or the link in the show notes. If you want to go even deeper with the work.
If there's one thing I know for certain it's that if you're listening to this right now, There are things on your to-do list. If I'm lucky listening to the new episode is right at the top, but I'm sure that there are important things, urgent things, things from two weeks ago. Things your boss put on there that all need to get done soon.
Now. Before. So why is it so hard to manage it, to do list? Let's talk about that. On today's episode.
One of the reasons that I think it's so hard to manage it, to do list both as a person, as a scholar and both of those things as a grad student, is that you truly can never get to the bottom. Just like we've talked about in other episodes, there's so much scope creep in academia. So even if you did theoretically finish everything that you wanted to do for the day,
You could work ahead. You could get started on something else. You could pick up a project from the not right now file. There's so many things to do that it's really hard to be like, yes, I'm caught up or yes, I have everything checked off. It also can be really hard as a grad student because other people can add to that, to do list.
Your students can add to it. The professor that you TA for can add to it. Your boss can add to it. Maybe your spouse or your colleagues or your co-authors. It's not as if we all go to our own special scholar room, we work on the tasks ahead of us, and then we leave that room.
We're working in busy, collaborative, interactive environments. And that means that sometimes other people put stuff on your list. Even if it's not the most important thing to you. I know that one thing that would drive me bananas as a grad student would be that I would have the whole day planned out.
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I would sit down at my desk and suddenly there was an email from the professor I was TA for, or my advisor or a conference committee or someone, and all of the sudden. My to-do list completely changed everything that I thought I needed to get done that day. Everything that I needed to get done that day had to be put on hold.
You just don't have full control over your to-do list and that's just with your work stuff. Because you probably also have a few lists going. I know that if I look at my task manager right now, I have work tasks. I have home tasks. I have family tasks. I have things for my hobbies. I have things for my projects. It's wild. How many different things I have going.
And unfortunately, I don't also have different versions of myself with their own 24 hours and their own set of spoons and energy. To do all of those things. I wish that there was one version of me for every list that needed to get done. You probably have a few lists going, but you've only got one body, one brain.
1 24 hours to get things done.
Let's dig into some of those questions to consider, to see how you feel about your to-do lists. What's working, what isn't, before we get into those experiments, that might just help you get a little bit of a handle on what's going on. Let's get into it.
What feels good for you in terms of to-do lists, do you love checking everything off and being done at the end of the day?
Do you love estimating correctly and having a certain amount of time and energy that you can allocate, but what are the behaviors that really make that brain chemical sparkle explosion go off in your head? When it comes to getting things done?
A question to consider. Where do you keep your to-do list? Is it an app that syncs between all of your devices and you can access at any time. Is it an app plus also wherever you manage to jot things down when you're in the kitchen, whatever scrap of napkin or grocery list that is.
Is it in a bunch of different places. Do you have shared lists with other people? But where do you keep your to-do list?
And then last but not least. How do you manage tasks that are in the not right now category? You know, those things that, you know, you need to get done, but not in the next hour or maybe not in the next day.
In other words, how do you capture all of those to do's that you'll need to get to eventually, but you're definitely not going to be doing right now.
Okay. Let's dig into these experiments because if there are anything like me, you're constantly looking for new ways, new programs, new systems to help manage just the onslaught of things that you need to do.
The first experiment to try is to, if you never have experiment with the to-do list manager. So I'm not necessarily going to go on the record as to which to do list manager, I think is best. A dirty little secret that I have is I think that most of them share about 80% of the same functions. And the other 20 are things that you probably won't use anyway.
But. If you've never had a, to do list manager that allows you to separate tasks, set tasks to repeat. Or filter tasks out so that you can only see some at a certain time. Then you might be ready for a level up. One of the things that I love about task managers is being able to automate a certain number of the tasks, the things that I do regularly, but I can also forget to do like.
Sending a newsletter or cleaning out my downloads folder or the conference paper that needs to be submitted in three months. But I don't need to think about for three months minus one week. That to-do list manager can help you store some of those. To do's that you don't have the space or the energy to deal with right now and show them to you at a time and space where you might.
You can do this in to-do list, click up notion. There's all sorts of different apps, but if you are working in a place where it's basically a list and you hope that you've got everything. Then I'm sorry to tell you, or maybe I'm excited to tell you that grad school is hard enough without trying to keep all of those tasks all in your brain at the same time.
Offload a little bit of it into the computer. It might just help you.
Experiment number two comes to you by way of one of my darling dearest clients. This is something that they mentioned to me that is a tool that they used when they're feeling particularly overwhelmed.
I thought, Hey, that sounds great. And I've been using it ever since, just for myself and recommending it everywhere I can. It's pretty simple. You grab a post-it note or a piece of paper, if you're feeling particularly overwhelmed and you just write down one thing on it, one task, one post-it note.
I tend to write pretty small. So I'm a lot more like three tasks, one post-it note. But the idea is pretty simple. Everyone has too much to do too much to focus on. And if you're really drowning in that place where, oh, I can't pick, which is going to be the most efficient, I don't know what's going to be the most effective.
And this experiment might really help you just pick something.
Sure. There are some tasks that are dependent on each other. But usually, you know what those are and you know that you can't do one without starting the other. So this is for those moods. When you know that it might be a little bit more efficient, five, 10% maybe to start somewhere else, but you don't want to, you don't feel like it, or you simply can't decide this. You just pick three things, you put them on a post-it note. You do those three things. Repeat.
This is , a great experiment to use in conjunction with a task manager or a longer to do list. . It's a lot like zooming in. You focus the camera on just the first thing, maybe the second or third thing that you're going to do. And then you repeat, there's probably not going to be any end to the bucket of tasks that you're drawing from.
But this lets you just sort of say, yeah, there might be an infinite number of ways to do it, but I'm using this method. This post-it note to just do these one or two things.
And last, but not least might be a revolutionary experiment if you've never tried it. I challenge you in this experiment to clear out 10, 15, maybe even 20% of your tasks. This is a real stale task. Clean-out is what I call it. Basically it's about saying there are some things that I thought I was going to do.
But in the harsh light of today, I'm not doing them. Or it's no longer as useful for me to do them. Or it's just not what I want to do anymore. Uh, Two weeks ago, I thought I did. And now I don't a month ago. I thought I did. And now I don't. Part of what gets so overwhelming is that we have so many things that we could be doing that gets suggested things that we start and then life changes.
Our scholarship changes, our research changes, and we kind of have to say like, okay, This was a really good idea two months ago. And now I don't think it is anymore. I love a stale task clean-out because it helps you remember that you don't have to do everything just because you thought you might.
Of course. There are some tasks that you do need to do. There's some things. That you need to be accountable for. There are certainly some things that just saying, I'm not going to do this. We'll get you out of it. But for all of those things that are more in the should category, I should read that paper. I should catch up on this method. I should send that email. I should follow up on that connection.
put it in its own category and clean it out from time to time.
Like I said up top. There are only so many hours in a day and you don't have, as far as I know. Six different versions of yourself that are pursuing six different projects with six different to-do lists all simultaneously.
So, this is just acknowledging that you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to say this was a good idea. Back then. And now. It's not as good of an idea as these other 15 things that I want to do even more.
Unfortunately. We might never get to the place where we feel like everything is completely checked off. But that doesn't mean that you don't get to take a break. It doesn't mean that you don't get to stop for the night or stop for the weekend. And if you have a to-do list that lets you zoom in, zoom out, filter, no matter what the mechanism is, it can really help you get into the habit of saying I didn't do everything, but I did enough for today.
And that mindset switch is one of the things that's going to make grad school a lot less hard. See you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
episode 14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
The question on almost every mind I encounter is why is it so HARD to know how long things wil take? As a scholar, you'll be asked to do a LOT of self-directed work and it's really hard to plan and adjust if you can't estimate how long something we'll take. We'll talk about how this shows up, and why some of the most common advice (add in buffer time) can really backfire. Get into it!
Extra resources:
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📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
You can get my free working more intentionally toolkit@thrive-phd.com or the link in the show notes. If you want to go even deeper with the work.
You asked, I listen a viewer request episode of this podcast, all about how hard it is to know how long something will take. This is hard for everybody. I don't care if you're a scholar. I don't care if you have never written a long form project in your life. It is really hard to know how long things will take. Here are a couple of the reasons why.
Number one. Optimism. We truly believe - and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the more times that you do something, say, write a dissertation chapter or grade a final paper - that you get better and faster at it as you go along.
However. That sense that we're getting better at it can cause us to make optimistic deadlines for ourselves. Often, these are grounded less in the amount of time or the amount of energy a task will take and more in the, when we would like to be done ism of all of it.
I know that for me, I often say things like, ah, this should take me until the end of the day. Not because I know that there are X number of hours left in the day and I need X number of hours to do this project. But because I want to be done at the end of the day. So there's the sense of optimism and also a sense that we're building around when we'd like to be done versus when it will actually be done.
But it's also true that rarely are we focusing on one thing at a time, at least not over the course of a day or even a half day. So, yes, you may be objectively to getting faster at reading or writing, but if you are arriving to your appointed, writing time with, Hey. Real grading headache then. Yeah. It's going to take you longer because you have more things going on. So it's really hard to estimate because the way that you show up for the task is dependent on what things you did before, what things you'll do do later, and also the brain and body resources that for some of us really fluctuate.
As a person who has a chronic illness, I'm used to things really fluctuating in terms of what body shows up, what brain shows up. But, yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to know this'll take four hours, but four good hours four medium hours four I'm bundled up on the couch, but still theoretically working hours.
All of those different measurements are things that I work with, but they're also not the same.
The last thing is that specifically for scholars or people in academia? Things that are done don't tend to stay done. So you might be done grading for the semester, except for those two students that took an incomplete that you have to grade four or five months down the road. Things might feel really done and buttoned up with your manuscript. You sent it off to the journal and then it comes back for revise and resubmit. And you've got to find time in your schedule to do that. So estimating how long things will take is really hard because so many of these projects are overlapping happening at the same time.
And we don't have control over when actually they're done and acceptable to other people, because that's just the way that so many of these big complex projects work. It's not solely up to us.
Let's use these questions to drill down a little deeper into how and why, and for what reasons you're estimating your tasks and what goes into that. First question. What is your estimation pattern? Do you set a deadline? Do you tend to start with the task and break that into smaller pieces and assign deadlines for each of those?
Do you avoid a project until the anxiety becomes so intense that you have no choice, but to work on it. But what are your practices right now around estimating how long things will take and building that into your schedule?
Second question. How do people around you set time estimates? Are you working in a lab where not only are your deadlines pretty murky, but your PIs deadlines are pretty murky and the postdocs deadlines are pretty murky? Is your chair, somebody who says that they'll have something back for you on Friday or Monday, and then we'll also go dark for a couple of weeks when it's not done?
How are you seeing other people set these deadlines and what messages are you absorbing about that?
And last but not least. What data do you already have about what time it takes for you to do things? Do you have a planner that you can flip back on and see how long that you've worked on certain projects? Do you have a sense on your LMS, like canvas how long it takes for you to grade a paper or how many hours a week you're actually spending on a course site?
Maybe you have time logs, but what data do you have about how long things take you?
All right. The juicy stuff. Let's get into those experiments to try to see if we can't make estimating time just a little bit easier. So the first one is a suggestion that I have mentioned before, but in this case, I think it can be really helpful and it's keeping a time log. This can be as high-tech or low-tech as you needed to be.
I have done this with browser extensions, like toggle. I have set timers on my desk using a manual. flip timer that counts down for me. I've used pom trackers. I have used a printout to say start time, end time of various tasks, but you don't really know how long things are going to take you.
If you don't know how long it's already taken you to do a similar version of that task. So, yeah, it can be a little bit confronting to be like, wow. I thought that it took me 20 minutes to grade a paper and it actually takes me 40. But if you are spending 40 minutes and truly believing in your heart of hearts, that it's only taking you 20, that's never going to help you fix that estimation problem. And ultimately that's what we're trying to get at here. So the better data you have, the more realistic those deadlines can be.
It's all going to be based on optimism unless we base it on data. So even if it's a little bit sticky, Let's collect some data.
Number two. This experiment is for all of my out of sight, out of mind, people or out of this week's calendar out of mind, people. Where, if a deadline isn't in the zone where I call it sort of like immediately tangible for me, that zone is about 72 hours. I can hold about two and a half days in my brain at once. And then things start to get a little bit fuzzy. So if it's not due by the end of the week, or maybe even a little bit longer or shorter than that, but if it's not in that zone of tangibility, it doesn't make sense to me. So it really doesn't make a difference if it's due in a year or in six months or in three weeks, they're all in that "not now" time category, and I'm not focused on them. Your zone might be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, but if you have a zone where things are tangible or they don't exist, it can be really helpful to counter those disappearing deadlines. You can maybe have a scheduled countdown where it says, okay, two weeks until this happens three weeks until this happens, or maybe you have a monthly planning practice where you check in every week and say, okay,
These are the things that I'm doing here are the things I want to get done at the end of the month. How much time do I have to sort of do that?
Scheduling a weekly check-in can really help counter those disappearing deadlines. Sending update emails to your advisor can help counter those disappearing deadlines and even starting a practice where you keep a done log or a planner where you notice what things you've checked off, and also what things you're not working on can be really helpful to make those projects that just don't feel real to you because they're not in the right now time.
Feel a little bit more tangible. Of course, and there will be other episodes in there already been other episodes about breaking things down into smaller pieces or giving yourself little dopamine hits in terms of rewards to help you through those middle stages where you've planned it. And it's not quite due yet.
But anything in that zone is going to be useful.
Last bit, at least is an experiment that I personally love, but I know it can be a little bit tricky for people. So let's actually dig into when giving yourself some extra time before a deadline - when you're estimating, how long things will take- when that actually helps. And when it can be a little bit counterproductive,
So the first thing that anybody reads on the internet, if they Google, how to get better at estimating deadlines. Is the stock advice to add in some buffer time. If you think it's going to take you two weeks double it. That's common academic advice, however long you think it's going to take, make it two times that length that you actually expect to work on it.
I find that the math isn't that easy and different tasks in different people use different multiplication factors. But that sense of, yes, I do want some flexibility and if this plan will only work. If every day is perfect and every day has the exact right amount of hours and there are no snags and no difficulties. Well then it's not a very robust or resilient plan.
So I like to add in buffer points around my check-ins. So if I'm working on a project that I expect will take me two or three months. I might have check-ins every two weeks and I might schedule a buffer day at the end of every two week period to. To catch up where I don't schedule anything. I don't have anything on the calendar, but I, you know, work on all of the things that got left by the wayside in the intervening 13 days before.
You might want to schedule a buffer day. Regularly. I can sometimes have seasons where I have them on Wednesday afternoons and Friday afternoons where I just catch up. You might want to have a whole week or maybe two weeks of buffer time before you submit a really big draft or before a big conference where you're traveling so that you're not working right up until the last minute.
But thinking about that buffer time as time that helps you surf the unpredictability of it. So whenever you're doing those estimations, make the estimation based on the results of your first experiment, the actual data, and then add buffer to that to help you prepare for the unexpected.
The thing that actually really hurts people when they add in this extra time is that they assume that they can spend it. It's sort of like having a flexible budget. Where, you know, if it's the beginning of the month and you're feeling flush and you know that you have X number of dollars in sort of like your fun money, you might spend that a couple of times early on in the month because you're like, yeah, you know, it's early! I have fun. I'll get it from other places.
And I find that buffer time and flexible deadlines can be like that too. That the earlier you are in the process, the harder it is to spend that time responsibly, so to speak. So I like to add in a lot of support in the beginning and middle of the projects, like I mentioned at other episodes, so that I'm not spending that buffer time before I actually need it.
Of course, if you wake up and you feel like trash, or you have the completely unexpected thing happen and you lose two weeks of it, then yeah, go ahead and spend your buffer time. That's what it's there for. But having more regular, check-ins seeing what things you can do. Moving in smaller pieces more frequently can help you not spend it right away, especially if it's burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket.
But let's reiterate that this will be hard probably for the rest of your life until you figure out how to control time. And if you figure out how to do that, please let me know because I'm in the market to control some time. But. All jokes aside. This is one of the things that is most difficult. And I find that so much of the anxiety comes from the idea that, oh, I can't be accountable. I never meet my deadlines.
When in reality, the most severe consequences, the ones that feel really awful, come from us not communicating about our changing deadlines, not the fact that the deadlines changed at all. So I hope that a couple of these experiments might help you make more accurate estimations in the first place.
Might help you adjust when you notice that they're starting to drift, but most of all, they help you to build in some compassion so that if, and when you do get off track, because we all do, you know who to reach out for, who can help you and what things will be useful as you get back to where you wanted to be.
See you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!