I was having a bit of a crisis the other day about how much I had committed to and whether I would do a decent job at any of it to two friends and colleagues.
They gave me a bit of a pep talk. And then set me a challenge – to stop beating myself up about being unqualified, overwhelmed, and insufficiently productive. In fact, they challenged me not to think any negative thoughts about myself, for the rest of the day.
The sheer volume of negative thoughts about myself that I beat myself up with on a daily basis is… ridiculous. And I had grown so used to this barrage of criticism I stopped noticing I was doing it.
The way I’m tackling this is – negative thought pops into my head. I register it, and decide on a positive action that addresses it. This is having a positive effect on my productivity, not just my mental health. I’m trying to stick at it.
I’m also being more forgiving. Small meltdown earlier when I wailed “why are there only 24 hours in the day?!” – but then I just decided that something was not going to happen, emailed apologizing for my lateness on something else, and went for a workout.
It has become normal for me to berate myself in a way that I would never, ever, dream of doing to another person. And then I’m surprised that I’m not as productive as I theoretically could be? I don’t respond to constant criticism, complaining and disparagement? Not really that shocking. This has to change.
I’m working on it. Meanwhile, are you being kind to yourself?
I’ve been getting really stressed out on Mondays lately. I realized why when I called someone out on doing the exact same thing.
Monday mornings I do my “snippets” – I make a list of things I achieved the previous week. And I mentally plan what I want to achieve over the course of the coming week.
Towards the end of the day, I start stressing out and berate myself for not making a big enough dent in the list for the week.
I’ve got a number of things happening this week. I’m nervous about one of them in particular. But, I’m trying to reframe Monday as a day where I set myself up for a successful week, rather than day in which I complete a week’s worth of tasks.
Happy Monday! What can you do today to facilitate a productive week?
I’m not doing my weekly review at the moment. At first it was in part because I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t yet unpacked my apartment (it’s done now). But also, I showed up to the coffee shop to work with my mentee and something exciting had happened to her, and she said, “I just had this feeling, when I woke up, that I should get here as soon as possible”. So she did. And she was there in time to make a great connection with someone.
That exchange inspired me to go with my feeling of leaving the week open to see what happened. In fact, a meeting came up and Ali (my TA who is taking over) and I ended up writing a proposal for a conference on my workshop. It was good – I had a productive week.
I’m using Health Month to track my health and fitness goals, and what I’m realizing is that I used to use my weekly plan to balance the different areas of my life. Volunteering, work, studying. At the moment, I have no different areas of my life. It’s pretty much the gym, my thesis, and hanging out.
This is pretty nice – and probably very necessary at this stage in my masters. And it makes goal setting in that way overkill. There’s something freeing about deciding the day before what my one important thing is, and then working on that.
I still believe in goals. I still believe in structure. But – if there is only one significant thing to work on, arbitrary goals can be a distraction. It’s actually about progress. I don’t know what I will get done on my thesis next week, but I do know what my next task will be.
Meanwhile, I’m just going to keep ticking along, carving out my space and routine in this new place. AY has this idea called “restful acceptance” – I love it. She says, your todo list will still be there tomorrow. I just think, I can make a new list, tomorrow, if I need to. But when what I need to do is this clear, and I don’t. Why bother?
At Ignite Waterloo a guy gave a talk about “Why All My Ex-Girlfriends Are Crazy”. Of course, I was dying to know why.
The reason? They were women who having achieved at university and then started their career had got to a point in their lives where they no longer had the same level of stress professionally, so were creating it in other areas of their lives. Really, what the talk was about was that we all have a level of stress that we like to operate at and we seek out new stress if we are at a level that is too low.
This resonated with me, to the point that when I went to the chiropractor the following week and they asked what my stress level was I said,
High. And that’s how I like it.
Cue two people looking at me in absolute horror!
However, it’s completely true! Knowing this, I can be more aware of where I am creating stress and try and do so productively – i.e create stress in ways that does not negatively affect others (e.g. not by arguing with my significant other, but by taking on some new challenge instead).
Because of this search for stress, I’m always looking for the next challenge, the next thing. When things seem too good (by which I mean, quiet, post-achievement) I worry that everything will come crashing down. Maybe that’s why I focus on what’s next, rather than what is.
Sacha wrote a lovely post after our conversation last week about feeling like you’re living in a Greek tragedy – that things are too good and everything is going to fall apart. She is an inspiration because she thinks that things can just get awesomer and awesomer. She’s is a genuinely happy person.
I am not. At the moment I am – optimistic, productive, energized – about what I’m doing.
I wouldn’t describe myself as happy. I have happy moments, but I don’t know if I want to be happy in general. In fact, I worry that would kill my drive. Recently I wrote about how I’d prioritized an interesting over a happy life, and I still do. I think I fear an awesome life, because I worry that I would become complacent. Content. I’d stop jittering from task to task, inspiration to inspiration, and just be.
Oh the horror.
I realize that this may sound ridiculous. But I regularly have conversations with people where they say, “Cate, you do so much” and I look at them in blank bewilderment because compared to what I want to be achieving, what I think I should be doing. What I do barely registers. Because I’m always pushing forward to the next new exciting thing, the next challenge I rarely stop and take stock of what I’ve actually done.
So I fear being happy because I fear being in this moment rather than chasing the next moment.
Yes, OK, bizarre – but it seems to be what works for me.
Optimistic. Productive. Energized. Sounds about optimal.
I checked off everything on the list last week. It wasn’t even down to the line – at 1400h on Friday all that was left was one kickboxing class. I hung out, caught up on some reading, watched an episode of Scrubs and then went out for dinner.
And I thought about how it was that I’d achieved this, how far I’d come since I wrote this post. Had I scheduled better? Been more realistic? Said no?
Yes, possibly all these things. But here’s the biggest one:
I’m happy.
Things are coming together – submitting my first paper, getting this internship, nearly being done with school (next week I will complete the tedious seminar requirement – I can’t wait). But more than that, I’m full of ideas for this summer and looking forward to it so much. I’m engaged in my research – I know exactly what my next paper will be about and I’m looking forward to writing it. The classes for the course I’m taking are a little dull, but I genuinely enjoy testing so the assignment I’m working on is fun and I like the readings too. My fitness has improved too – I kickboxed (at 7am) Tuesday and Thursday, again on Friday and went to Body Pump Saturday morning. I’ve realized that with the amount I have on and the aggressive goals I have, I need to work out first thing in the morning because later in the day I start thinking “no I need to finish this before I go to the gym” – and that’s OK, because getting up at kickboxing at 7am is not as unpleasant as I’d remembered.
All that stuff – the organization, the lists, the goals. They help keep what I need to do in mind when I’m discouraged or overwhelmed. But I’m so excited by life right now I wake up every morning knowing exactly what I’m working on that day. And I’ll keep on top of them, because I do have a lot going on and it’s quite possible I’ll need them again soon.
But being happy, and feeling progress being made in every aspect of my life – that’s the biggest productivity boost of all.
Having thought all this through, I came across this article – The top 5 new Rules of Productivity – I’m not alone in this feeling! And next time I’m feeling overwhelmed, maybe instead of thinking “how can I be more effective”, I can just think about how I can be happier, instead.
Monday: Going to the DV and exchanging my license – surprisingly painless.
Tuesday: Going outside.
Wednesday: Laundry, paying bills.
Thursday: Dealing with insurance people.
Friday: Going to Carleton
How Was It?
Not as bad as I thought it would be, most things were less awful than anticipated (apart from going to Carleton). Even though I never want to go outside in the morning, I enjoy the walk into school because of the thinking time it gives me – also, it’s not been that cold this week!
I couldn’t go with the exercise live frog because I’ve been ill all week, but I realized that my live frogs were often just things I wanted to procrastinate on because I think they’ll be unpleasant. In some cases that was justified – in others it was nowhere near as bad as I anticipated.
Worth Continuing?
Yes, but maybe on a smaller scale. Just taking one thing I want to procrastinate on and forcing myself to do it first may be helpful for me.
Reflecting on Sunday’s post on Effectiveness and Time Management, and my reluctance to eat live frogs in the morning, it’s occurred to me that:
I don’t tend to have a “most important task”, because most of my tasks are fairly open ended. Each day I have something that I want to make some progress on, and normally I do. This is working OK.
I don’t tend to start the something in the morning, either because it requires me being in my office, or I have other things that I want to clear out the way so I can focus on it.
In general, the afternoon is my peak work time for these kind of tasks – provided the morning goes well.
Whilst my most important task may be a live frog, there are other live frogs that are not necessarily the most important task.
Getting better at eating live frogs first thing, may improve my self-discipline and this will flow to other areas of my life.
To this end, I’ve made a list of my live frogs. And I plan to eat one first thing in the morning every day this week. Here they are:
Exercise. I like exercise, I do, but not first thing in the morning because I worry it means I don’t start work until too late and it makes me hungry all day. Also, I think my metabolically-optimum time for working out is mid afternoon (ideally around 4ish). But I can’t always work to that so I should just get up and go swimming instead. Normally, though, I don’t – I did this morning though, and I feel better for it.
Going outside. The thing that stops me starting on my “most important task” earlier is often that I have to psych myself up to go outside because it’s sooooo cold. That’s the difference between fall and winter for me, in the fall I can make it into my office by 10am easily. In the winter, I’m doing well to make it in by lunchtime.
Grocery shopping. I hate the grocery store, and this also involves going outside, so double whammy. Thing is, the quickest time to make the trip is in the morning because the store is less busy.
Dealing with people. There’s a reason why, where possible, I schedule all my meetings for afternoons. I don’t really like talking to people in the morning, so I avoid them.
Laundry and other household chores. We have a washing machine in our apartment (rare in Canada) so I don’t get to moan about this too much, but I hate hanging it up and putting it away when it’s dry.
Looking at this list, it strikes me that none of these are “work” tasks. But they are things than can potentially take me away from my afternoon productive time, if I let them. Or cause problems if they don’t get dealt with. It annoys my boyfriend that I can’t have a conversation in the morning, for example, and it’s a pain to have no clean clothes or have to stop work early to clean the apartment because people are coming over.
Your list will be different, of course. Join me in the Live Frog Challenge? I’ll check back in with you on Friday to let you know how I’m doing.
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.
This post is for my friend Rachelle, who emailed me earlier this week saying,
How do you stay sane with all that you do? Is the trick to carve out mini-relaxations/blow off steam whenever you can? Maybe I just haven’t given myself permission to do that enough and created a bigger problem now.
First off, I’m not super-woman and I’m struggling as much as anyone else! In fact, I was thinking earlier that I was completely unqualified to write this as I’m more crazy busy and losing my mind! However I took some time to chill out, and now I’m going to share what I’ve got. That was a preview – because an important part of it is recognizing when you can’t go on!
I think there’s this line between busy-and-super-productive and busy-overwhelmed-screwing-things-up. I crossed that line sometime in the last week, and I’ve recognized that I can’t go on like that and I need some time for me. I’ve also been trying to put some things in place so that my load becomes more manageable.
I’m in a really fortunate position, because I’m not as broke as your average student. Some things I’ve expended money on to make them less effort/happen at all, but I’m going to try and list some cheaper alternatives.
1. Plan your R&R like you plan anything else
I decided at the start of the week that come Sunday I’m taking some time off – but I know I’ll find it hard to stick to it so I’ve been coming up with ways to make sure I actually take some downtime.
If you’re like me, when you’ve started reading a novel you won’t stop until it’s done. Treat yourself to one, set aside some time, and start reading (cheap).
Organize going somewhere with friends, I was talking with some about going to the Diefenbunker, which is a good half-day out. A half-day out is much less stressful than a full day (mid-price).
Wednesday, I was approaching meltdown; I’ve wrenched my shoulder, the week isn’t going to plan and I was feeling sick after getting the swine-flu shot. I couldn’t wait until Sunday to take a day off, it had to be tomorrow. So I called a spa and got a package (mud-wrap, facial, massage). In the end, I couldn’t get in for Thursday, so I booked it for Sunday, but having that to look forward to is making me feel better already (expensive).
2. What can you let slide?
I might be just about holding it together in public, but our apartment is a tip, we have no clean dishes and I won’t make it to the gym the 4 times this week I wanted to. If it’s just a crazy week or two, what can you cut corners on? My trainer (more on that later) bugs me about it, but I rarely cook anything – the last couple of weeks I’ve probably eaten more often at my desk in my office than at home!
Alternatively, what can you make that will last for a while? I have soup recipe and a chicken dish that keep well, and just make enough to last several days (I’m not much of a foodie, so I don’t mind eating the same thing several days running).
Instead of going to the gym 5 times, can you go 3 times and work out for a little while longer?
I have some lovely CHI straighteners, but I haven’t used them yet. Wearing my hair curly is quicker and looks just as good. Earlier in the semester I wanted to look more “pulled together”, though – giant knee brace was greatly limiting my wardrobe choices and I was always wearing my hair in a pony tail. If I’m just going into my office I’ve been known to just wear sweats but I won’t go and teach a tutorial like that! I went to Clinique and got a base with more coverage (I was just using city block), switched to a darker mascara and started wearing eyeshadow every day. Result – 2 minutes extra to apply makeup, and the more pulled together look I wanted – without spending more time on my hair! And I let the jeans slide, so I didn’t have to go shopping for things that would hide the stupid brace.
3. What do you need to do to keep you sane?
For me, it’s exercise and blogging. Make time for the stuff that you need to function – even if it’s not as much as usual. This evening, I just needed to watch Desperate Housewives and stop thinking about all the things I have to do. The constant guilt really takes it’s toll!
4. How can you reduce the time you spend coordinating with people? Encourage people to contact you in the way that works better for you.
The students I TA made me realize this – they’re smart about it and often they email me in English, it doesn’t make a huge difference whether I read the email in French or English, but the difference is I can reply in English. This means they get a faster response – it takes me a while to write in French and I can’t just dash off an email in French on the go – I need a dictionary!
Because of the time of year, I get a lot of requests for appointments for help with assignments/general understanding. So, I made an webpage (that’s not linked from any other page on my website), embedded my schedule using Google Calendar and now I respond to requests for an appointment with the URL, letting them know I don’t typically come in on Mondays and Thursday. I had to make my calendar public, but Google Calendar allows me to just share my free/busy information. And this makes it a lot easier for me to schedule things.
5. Sometimes you need to say no.
This is a huge one, and one that frankly I still fail at. But if someone asks you something and you genuinely can’t do it – say so. Much better than just postponing it, or not getting it done.
Or, say yes – but on your terms. For instance, the other day I got an email from a student saying they couldn’t make it to my office hour, with a list of seven (yes, seven!) questions – on the day the assignment was due. I actually put aside what I was doing and started to answer it, and then I realized that I had two things to do that were higher priority, and shouldn’t let someone else’s last-minute request distract me from that. So I replied saying that I couldn’t respond before my office hour, so she should come if she could make it, and if not I would try and respond later. I did respond – but on my schedule and I was booked up until 10pm that night. Do I wish I could have responded sooner? Yes. But I have a <24 hour response time for my students, which is frankly better than anyone else gets and this was within that. I understand that some stuff gets left to the last minute – but I can’t always compensate for that.
Alternatively, learn the art of the passive aggressive (just use it lightly, you don’t want to be a passive aggressive – they’re super annoying and hard to deal with). I suggest you only use this on passive aggressives, because frankly I’m not sure how else you can deal with them.
6. Reduce your cognitive load.
Every time you switch tasks, there’s an overhead whilst you refocus. Try to minimize this switching and you should improve your productivity. Turn off notifications, because each one causes a distraction, a switch to the task, and a switch back to what you were doing before. People can spend an insane amount of time on this – thinking that they’re being productive. I turn off email notifications, and whilst I monitor what comes in through the day, I then process everything together to reduce the overhead. Which basically means stuff sits in my inbox for ages, but as I mentioned at the top – I’m still working on all this! On my new laptop, I have not set up email. It’s amazingly liberating!
7. Carve out the time you need to be productive.
Tim Ferriss is somewhat evangelical about this – meetings damage your productivity. But they’re inevitable and some things about them are difficult to replace. For instance, we have meetings for WISE and yes, perhaps they could be replaced by a Google Wave conversation but for us, I think the camaraderie and the accountability of promising action in front of a group of people on something that is essentially optional is important.
However, then I look at my calendar, and it’s full of stuff, and the time that I have stuff is the time when I’m not Getting Things Done. But most of it is necessary so I just try and manage it. One thing I do is schedule things together. This means I’m running between things, but it reduces the amount of times that I sit down in my office and have less than an hour that I just don’t know what to do with. The most important thing, though, is that it leaves me the big chunks of time (4+ hours) that I need to work on the things that are important.
8. Don’t neglect your network.
It’s easy to put social things on hold, or refuse to help someone because you’re “sooooo busy”, but you know what? Everyone’s busy and sometimes when you’re busy you need people to help you. I know, some people just take, so this doesn’t apply to them (I’m fairly brutal on minimizing those people’s presence in my network – thankfully there aren’t many of them), but for the others – make as much time for the people that need your help as you can, because it’ll come back around.
For your friends, you don’t want to be thought of as a flake. Keep cancellations to a minimum, and give as much notice as possible.
9. Delegate.
WISE had an event on Tuesday, and honestly I was in a Giant Panic because I was being used as an example, typing up my assignment had turned out to be more work than anticipated (all the assignments for this class have been like that, I should have learned) and finally I discovered that I’d missed an email and – as a result – a deadline.So I emailed the other girls, admitted I was panicking, and they pitched in. Everyone did one <30 min task, and I managed to get the overdue task done because all I had to do was pick up sandwiches.
Missing the deadline was what made me realized I’d crossed that line – the one between busy-and-super-productive and busy-overwhelmed-screwing-things-up. And I freaked out – because that’s not me. Recognizing that I’d crossed that line was super important, because it made me realize that the only way to get my productivity and being-on-top-of-things back, was to take a break. And ask people for help – because I clearly couldn’t do it on my own.
I’m coming back from my knee injury and trying to get back into shape. It’s hard after such a long break, and frankly exercise isn’t fun anymore because I’m not allowed to kickbox (other things seem tame by comparison) and it hurts. So I got a personal trainer – I’ve delegated the motivation (which I’m just too busy to have) and also, I’m tracking everything I eat and drink and she’s monitoring it – so I’m delegating a good chunk of the guilt and will-power as well. A training buddy who will hold you accountable is a cheaper alternative.
10. Sometimes good-enough – is good enough
I handed in an assignment this week, and as I was finishing it up, slightly at the last minute, I realized there was a small mistake – most likely in the data I was using. I briefly thought about going back and redoing that (small) section, and then I didn’t. So what if it’s not perfect? That mistake is not, I don’t think, a big deal. It’s an assignment, not heart surgery! If you a juggling a lot of things and trying to achieve perfection, perfection on some things might mean less-than-good on others. Learn when good enough, is good enough. When the return on the time you spend on it is not worth what you’ll get in return, stop.
Some tasks require you to be a perfectionist. Be honest with yourself, though – not all of them do.
11. Find Great Mentors
One of the most inspirational women I know works three jobs – good jobs, too! One full time, two part time. Recently, she was telling me about an art show she was doing – as well! Of course I was really happy for her, but later I confessed that I felt woefully inadequate by comparison and asked how she was doing it all? Was she superhuman?! Did she sleep?! She told me her secret was micro-progress, she’s been working on the art show project for months, making a bit of progress each time. Treena is great too – when I have slight meltdowns on Twitter she sends me messages reminding me, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”, and sympathizes with my frustrations about university bureaucracy etc.
Find people who will take the time to listen to your doubts, and tell you their secrets – and reassure you that they’re not super-human.
12. Stop beating yourself up
The most unproductive and unhelpful thing you can do is berate yourself for what you haven’t achieved, for deadlines you haven’t met. Celebrate your achievements, forgive yourself the things you miss, and get up tomorrow and try and do it all over again.
I know it’s hard, but I’ll try and stick to this too – stop telling people you’re busy (for starters, it’s annoying) and instead focus on what you’re achieving. You’ll come across more positively, and seem more proactive. Talking about how you’re busy probably won’t achieve anything, talking about what you’re doing might – and then you’ll have something to celebrate!
Finally…
This is just what’s working for me, and what do I know? I’m not super-human either. So work out what you need, and what makes you productive, and then go for it.
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talks about this – your deadlines, your priorities need to reflect your values, not just be jerk reactions to events.
