Entries Tagged 'Rest' ↓

Some days you wake up knowing that you’re not going to get much done (today was one of those days for me). Popular wisdom would tell you to drink your joe, open up your work, and get to it. In this case, I think popular wisdom is wrong.

Let’s suppose that you’ve got a 20-page project that you’ve got to do. On a strikeout day, you’ll work all day and maybe get 2-3 pages done. Why? Because, dammit, there’s interesting news on Yahoo, you forgot to check your bank account online, a few friends wrote you, it was time to do the weekly vacuuming…in short, Procrastination has worked it’s voodoo on you.

Okay, so you’ve worked the full day, feel happy at the end of it, wake up the next day and look at what you’ve done. The words carry with them the malaise of yesterday, and the process of editing, deleting, and, in general, overhauling what you worked on yesterday saps most of the better part of your Flow time. At the end of day two, you’re all of a page or two further along than you would have been had you just not worked the day prior.

“Charlie, that’s total nonsense! If I were to do that everyday, I’d never get anything done.”

Okay, realistically, odds are you’re not going to do that. Also, realistically, you’ve been denying yourself some down time for quite some time. We all have to refresh our batteries, lest we burnout. Let’s talk about Pareto’s principle in our context.

Pareto’s principle, sometimes called the 80/20 rule, advances (among other things) that 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts. How is this relevant to your slacking for the day? Consider the inverse of the principle: 80% of our efforts advance 20% of our results. We can probably surmise that your days worth of procrastination and funk-fighting would fall within the latter 80% rather than the former 20%. In short, it’s a lot of squeezing for such little juice.

I’ll give two options for how to spend your strike-out days: (1) do something fun or enjoyable (you remember what that feels like, right), or (2) work away at some routine task that doesn’t require so much brainpower. (1) is good because you recharge your batteries and actually may be better able to work when it’s time, or, even better, you may catch some insight from not thinking about whatever you need to be doing (the “finding-the-remote-when-you’re-not-looking-for-it” syndrome). (2) accepts that not a lot will be accomplished on Project A, but Tasks B, C, and D, if completed, will allow you to more clearly focus on Project A, when you come back to it…and, without the psychic RAM being taken up by those inane tasks, you’re more likely to wind up in the Flow.

“Why do today what you can put off ’til tomorrow?”

Because, either way, you won’t be really doing it today. But what you don’t do today may help you do what you need to tomorrow.

Okay, so there’s a plethora of blogs out there about personal productivity (I personally enjoy 43folders and LifeDev). However, their appeal is either based on programmers, as Merlin’s is, or is too general. I’ve often found myself asking, “How the !@#@! do I translate this good stuff into my academic world?” Generally, by the time I figure it out, I’ve already wasted too much time doing so and am now in Crisis Mode, or have gotten distracted into another form of procrastination.

So, this site is as it’s titled: Life Management for Academics. Why not time management or some such? Time management is a small piece of one’s career in academia. Granted, it may touch other components, but there are other components that are specific to academic life that are not covered by the geniuses at the other time management sites. My suggestion is that academics are different from the general PP (personal productivity) population due to our having to manage the holy Triad: teaching, research/writing, and administrivia (committees, reports, and general paperwork).

There’s also this fact: academics are never done. A paper submitted here needs reworking for presentation there. After that presentation, it needs rework for submission to publication there. If it’s accepted there, then the seeds from it may start another presentation there. Even if it doesn’t start another presentation here, maybe, just maybe, the information you’ve presented will be relevant to another project you’re either working on or will start (better file this away there, mentally, physically, or digitally…just in case). We often accept that we’ll spend our life in project polish hell, but often forget that that’s only the fire; the brimstone comes from project residue.

And here’s the final kicker for why it’s Life Management rather than Time Management: calculate the time and psychic energy required to manage the Triad, and then throw more time and psychic energy onto the fire for keeping up with project polishing and residue. How much time and energy is left? Okay, then start thinking about family, hygiene, subsistence, and sleep. Still have time and energy left? Maybe a little. What if you’d like to do anything fun or to just plain relax and do nothing? Good luck with that one.

Clearly, something has got to give. We can (A) get less to do, (B) complete all that we have to do more efficiently, or (C) quit. Granted, any of the options are up to us, but it’s unlikely that people will take the last option. After all, how long did you spend in school to do what you’re doing? This blog will focus instead on the first two options.

Here’s what you can expect to see on this blog:

• Commentary on books having to do with time management, creativity, and personal productivity
• Reviews on software and hardware that may help you manage your life (this will be Mac-Centric), especially software and tips that help with project polishing and residue
• Posts about developing yourself as a teacher and as a learner
• Tricks and best practices to help you heal the administrative pains that ail you

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