This is where I live. In this space between what I could achieve in a given day, or week, or month… and what in my imagination I’m capable of.
Of course in my imagination I never kick back and watch a movie with my friend and a bottle of wine (honestly, this rarely happens in reality either… probably why I felt so horrible this morning). I never get burnt out from training hard and sleep for 10 hours straight. I never say “You know, I’m not having a great week but one thing I could control is my hair” and bunk off the things I should be doing to get a haircut. I never get so overwhelmed by “the list” that I have to take time to breathe deeply and try and decide what my priority one is. I never stare at the blank page where I’m supposed to be outlining the plan for my upcoming talk and feel completely and utterly uninspired. In my imagination, I don’t get things to nearly finished, get interrupted and struggle to come back to them.
Other people don’t feature much in my imagination. Whilst I like working with others and I’m pretty social, there’s such a huge overhead and level of unpredictability when other people are involved. I struggle with this because it’s impossible to predict and hard to plan for. Because everyone manages their schedule and their list differently, it’s difficult to know when you should remind someone and when that would imply that they’re disorganized.
I’m the same, as usual when I’m a little stressed out the first thing to go is my email. So if you’ve sent me something that is urgent, or very quick to reply to, you’ll probably have a response. If not – I’m going to level with you here – it could be a while. And so there will be a disconnect if someone has sent me something they perceive to be urgent, but didn’t seem that way to me.
It’s not even February, but my inbox is out of control. I’m so behind on “the list” I can’t get a handle on what needs to be done anymore.
What do I need? A couple of days by myself to pull myself and my organizational system together.
I’m not going to get this.
So what’s the alternative?
Saying no.
To the endless demands that show up in my inbox, I’m sorry but I’m at capacity right now. I expect to get back to you mid-February.
To other things, too. What more can I eliminate? How can I better manage my interactions with others so that they are not time-sensitive? What’s the time commitment above which I should delegate (below which the delegation is more effort than I save)?
Other people are better at this, and I keep finding myself in situations where they say no and it falls on me or a commitment is broken (as was the case this morning). I need to balance my need to be firmer, with the fact that I hate to let people down.
So my winter break reading consisted of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Getting Things Done, and The Power of Less (all Amazon). There’s a large amount of overlap between the first two and The Power of Less, but it’s a nice summary with some good thoughts on achieving your goals. 7 Habits is big-picture focus and GTD is more low level nitty gritty, so I think they complement each other well – I’d really recommend you read them both, if you’re looking to be more productive and effective, but in case you don’t even have the energy to read even The Power of Less I’m going to summarize some tips I’ve picked up from them.
Who are you and what are you trying to do?
One of the first things Covey asks you to do in 7 Habits is write down your different roles. We all have different roles we play – for myself, I’m not just a student, I’m also a TA, and President of WISE, and a girlfriend, and a friend, a daughter, a blogger and something else that I’ve not quite defined yet. Think about all your different roles – because you need to find time for each of them.
Write it down. And I do mean everything. Then review it, regularly.
The most helpful thing I got from GTD is the concept of making an inbox and putting every task, however small or vague or unlikely to be completed, on to it. Because it gets it out my head and allows me to focus on whatever I’m working on. If it’s something that small, like less than two minutes and you don’t think it’s worth writing down, why not just do it, instead? For paper, I have an A4 pad that I carry around with me, because I don’t have an office per se, and I don’t have much paper at all. This is where I collect things, and it gets processed on Fridays along with my email inbox and my task list inbox.
I’ve set aside time to process that inbox, as well as my email inbox, once a week. I was doing that yesterday, and it was actually kind of relaxing. Friday afternoon is good for me because it’s part of tying up the loose ends from this week, and planning the next, which is what my weekly review is about as well.
Give yourself a break.
We can’t be 100% on the ball, all the time. We can’t work every hour we’re awake week in, week out. Accept that you probably won’t achieve everything you want to do.
Go on, take a moment, it’s liberating.
Now, pick out the things that are most important. But keep the others on a “someday / maybe” list. You can always come back to them.
Find a way to pick out the things that are suitable for your energy level at that time. Label things with how long they’ll take so you can choose short tasks for when you have a limited amount of time. Doing a bunch of small tasks can be a good way to amp up your energy level (just don’t get lured in to thinking you can spend all your days like this and achieve awesome things).
Organizing in increments is OK.
Can’t get through inbox right now? Put it all in a folder “to organize” and go through it half an hour at a time, until it’s done. Take one piece of furniture at a time in your apartment to organize and then pick another one next week, or next month. You don’t need to achieve perfection before you can start being more organized! Organize what you need to to get started, live organized, and make time to clear the bits of your life that aren’t as organized up one by one.
Make time for Quadrant 2.
There’s a ton of stuff in our lives that’s important. And there’s always stuff that’s urgent. But just because something is urgent doesn’t mean that it’s important, and vice versa. Making time for the important-but-not-urgent (Covey calls this Quadrant 2) pays dividends. This can be stuff like exercising, or reading around your field if you’re a graduate student, or expanding your programming abilities and knowledge if you’re a programmer (check out this post – learn to program in 10 years). I think making time to process your tasks and review your week falls under this too. This is building your network before you need a job. Look at your life, at the things you should be doing but aren’t urgent right now. Start making time for them, and see what good comes from it.
As a graduate student, if you take a course you have to balance it with working on your thesis. It’s easy for the course to be more urgent, because everything is to a deadline. I deliberately start my assignments a while after they are issued. Yes, this sometimes causes me last minute stress if I’ve misjudged how long it will take or things come up, but if I spend that time before I start on Quadrant 2, I get huge benefits and make progress on my thesis – which is what will ultimately determine the date of my graduation. And I know I’m better at postponing the start date for something that will become urgent, than I am stopping when something is good-enough-but-not-perfect.
Also – check out this post from Study Hacks. What I took from it is that devoting time to Quadrant 2 is the difference between talented and extraordinary.
Learn how to delegate.
I’ve written before about how hard it is to delegate within group projects and student organizations. But at our last meeting for WISE I managed to delegate everything possible. Seriously. I was so happy! How did I do it? I said, these are the other things I have to on my plate and I have to do less. I also explained that I’m going to graduate, and the need to prepare for that so that WISE will keep going when I’m gone. And other people stepped up to the mark and so far, they’re doing great.
But just in case, I have a “waiting for” list on Remember the Milk. So I don’t remember what everyone else is supposed to be doing, because it’s all written down – now I can just check it periodically and chase up as neccessary. Added bonus – if people don’t step up and complete things, I can make it public...
Eliminate ruthlessly.
Is everything you do important? Really?
Yes? I don’t believe you.
There’s always stuff you can get rid of. Try it. It’s liberating. A good place to start if you read a lot – if you start reading something that isn’t useful or interesting, stop.
It’s not enough to “be organized” – you need to have your stuff organized too.
What’s the point in knowing exactly what tasks you need to complete if you can’t find the stuff you need in order to complete them? Throw out as much as you can and organize the rest of it. A filing system if you have a lot of stuff, or just a couple of boxes or binders if you don’t. Digitizing stuff and organizing it into folders works well too.
Eliminate distractions.
Email checking is a huge distraction. One of my friends thinks my aversion to email is ridiculous and tells me he just processes his as it comes in and that it takes hardly any time at all. But it’s been shown that it takes an average of 25 minutes to return to task after a distraction. He might be special, but I’m not. I check my email only between tasks, and have disabled the alerts. If I’m really absorbed in something, I can go several hours without checking it. Same for Twitter, Facebook etc. Although I have notifications on my iPhone, I don’t tend to notice them so they don’t distract me.
Wisdom 2.0 (Amazon) is full of tips on how to manage digital distractions.
Set aside time for things that you want to do.
If there’s something you’re passionate about, find time to work at it. The grind of doing stuff constantly that doesn’t inspire will kill your motivation.
Just start. The rest will follow.
This encompasses so many things.
So much time management advice says start the day with your hardest task. There’s a saying, something like, “Start the day by eating a live frog. Then the day can only get better.” It’s true.
Set a manageable amount of stuff to achieve in a day.
With big tasks it can be hard to know where to start, so break them down into manageable steps. Then your thinking has already done, so you can just get on with doing the task.
If you want to go to the gym, just make yourself get dressed and go rather than mandate what you do when you get there.
Covey takes this to the fullest extent, by suggesting you visualize what you’d like people to say at your funeral. You might find that helpful. But even if that seems like a bit much, determining what our high levels goals are can be helpful. Once they’re defined, we need to check-in periodically to ensure we’re making progress on these goals. I did this on my Planning 2010 post. It’s helpful to have them written down as a reference, so that if I’m feeling low on motivation because of the low-level nature of tasks that fill my days, I can go and remind myself of what my important goals are, and see if what I’m doing will help me meet them. If not, why am I doing it? It should be eliminated ruthlessly, as discussed above.
Summary
As I try and incorporate these things into my life, and live by them, I’m seeing the difference. But it’s tough. I struggle particularly with eliminating, and starting the day by eating a live frog. But I see them making a difference, so I hope you find this helpful. If there’s anything else you’ve got from these kind of books, resources for time management, or tips, please leave them in the comments!
I’ve been offered several great opportunities lately, and because of where I am in life (finishing up grad school, building my CV to find a job in the next 6 months or so) I plan on taking all of them.
My boyfriend and some of my friends call me a workoholic. I’m OK with that – I’m a workoholic, because I love what I do. I’m just aware that I need to manage my enthusiasm so that it doesn’t damage my relationships. And I need to get better at making time for myself.
At a coffee shop, after my lecture, my friend Dwayne says, “I hope you don’t burn yourself out”. Pet hobo says, “This is Cate burnt out! Didn’t you realize?”
I had, it’s true, been feeling slightly at the end of my rope, and even talking about taking some time off, which is not like me. After the second presentation was over, I was shaking slightly and completely spaced out. But after I’d drank some tea, and eaten some dinner I ended up in my office with 15 minutes to kill. And decided it was a great time to clear out my desk.
The next day, I tried to lie in but I just had loads of ideas and was really motivated to do stuff. So I got up, and did stuff. I have had a fairly productive week, and my email is – finally – all processed and dealt with.
Maybe I wasn’t burnt out, I was just scared. Or maybe I was, but I don’t need to relax – I just need to achieve a big goal.
I think, though, that the real thing I need to keep me happy is the days where I get to do whatever I’m inspired to do. Constantly working on a big project because a deadline is looming and realizing that it’s been weeks since I sat down and said, “what’s inspiring me today?” is the real problem. This means:
Starting things earlier (when I’m choosing to do them).
Spreading big project deadlines out as far apart as possible.
Setting aside time to “be inspired”.
For me, there’s a fine line between being “burnt out” and invigorated. Which I think means I’m not burnt out so much as uninspired. A much easier thing to work on.
Google this, there’s nothing useful. Someone needs to write a book on this! I’d buy it, would you?
If not, hopefully it’s because you’re not a minion.
by drewdomkus / flikr
Grad students are basically minions. I am the minion of my supervisor (luckily he’s nice), the minion of any prof whose course I take (to a lesser extent) and the minion of the prof I TA for.
My supervisor is the reason I have a place at the university. He gives me a scholarship, too. So if he asks me to do something, I do it. It becomes my priority.
If I’m taking a course, we get assignments and deadlines which obviously we have to complete on time. The course I’m taking at the moment has set us in the region of 100 hours of homework, which finally ended last week. Now we have a project to complete, but the deadline is fairly early in December – reflective of her schedule, not ours. When she decided that it was not OK for me to code in Haskell (despite saying any programming language) I had to rewrite it in Java the following day – this was not what I’d originally planned to do then, my priorities had to change.
This is the least of it. I dropped a course, because the prof said openly that he wanted the “source code” to anything we did (including, say, word documents) so that he could use it if he wanted to. Lately, I’ve heard another prof doing a similar thing. Grad students are minions.
Then, there’s TA-ing. Being a bit tender-hearted (also, and probably correctly described as a “people pleaser” I end up as the minion of my students. I see them on their schedule, help them longer than I get paid for, and respond to their emails as fast as I can. Then there’s the stuff the Prof asks me to do – at the end of the semester, I have four consecutive weeks of marking (an assignment a week), plus students being sent to me for tutoring, plus… these things have to become my priority.
Lastly, there’s WISE. As President, you’d think I wouldn’t be a minion here but I am – I’m the minion of anyone involved who doesn’t do their job, because then I have to do it for them. My priorities have to change.
This wasn’t meant to be a long moan, just example of how, whilst I set my priorities, being a minion means that they get changed because other people’s priorities are more important than mine.
Lurching from crisis to crisis, panic to panic is not productive. It’s not effective. 7 Habits talks about this – your deadlines, your priorities need to reflect your values, not just be jerk reactions to events.
But what if you’re a minion? Because I try to do that, I make my list every week. I try and incorporate the minion activities (like marking) that I know I will have to do. But then I can get a request and have to rejig everything. Recently I came home to an email (at 11:30pm, sent at 6:30pm) asking for something to be done by the next day at 10am. Of course, it didn’t happen. But I did have to abandon everything else the next day to get it done.
Productivity for Minions – someone should write this. How to balance living a productive, effective life, whilst continually having to respond to others knee-jerk reactions.
The thing about focusing on effectiveness, is that everything that I put on “the List” is something I think is important. And then if I get a little behind I end up in a situation where my todo list for today has a time estimate of over 11 hours. And then I panic.
Today I managed to convince myself that I’d forgotten my wallet. I spent half an hour waiting at the physio for my boyfriend to come by with his credit card (thankfully his office is across the road, but he was in a meeting). And then he rushed off and I walked home to find it. And I did – buried deep inside my backpack between my laptop and a pile of papers that I’ve been carting around for days but haven’t found the time to read.
By the time I got home I’d calmed down, and when I found my wallet I felt so stupid. I don’t, typically, see myself as a person who forgets important things. However I’d got so frazzled that I had believed it when emptying out my backpack would have shown me that no, I am not that person. I thought about concealing it from my boyfriend, but I opted not to. When I called him to confess, he laughed. For some reason he finds it endearing when I’m really dozy. I think it’s best not to question this.
Getting overwhelmed is something I need to focus on. When everything is important I don’t prioritize as well as I should do. My “List” is a mix of things that need to happen today, with things that make long-term easier. Such as reading a paper every day – I don’t need to do that today, but when I have to do something like write a project proposal (like I did last week) it only took a couple of hours because I’d laid all the ground work ahead of time – in the piles of annotated papers on my desk and the references organized (with notes) in Zotero.
So, he’s my plan for staying calm and getting on with things. Because one thing is for sure, when I’m overwhelmed and freaking out, I’m not being productive!
Breathe
Do what’s possible, starting with things that need to happen today
Forgive myself for taking a break (I needed it!)
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