i truly long to be a person who can do the same things, every day, at the same time. what discipline! what predictability! what stability!!! but, alas, my brain, body, schedule, life, and current status of “resident of planet earth, 2020” mean that it just isn’t in the cards for me.
but that doesn’t mean that i can’t have some sort of structure in my life - but it’s really hard to find a middle ground, a midpoint in the scale from “i put out whatever is most on fire, all day, every day” to “every minute of the next two weeks is perfectly scheduled”.
so i’ve come up with a model, and after some testing with clients, i’m ready to present it to the world:
you pick two.
yes, like that national chain of restaurants where you can pick between a soup, salad, or sandwich!
the idea is that there are three major parameters that you can use to structure your schedule:
time - how long you want to work
task - what things you want to work on
frequency - how often you want to have work sessions
and normally, we’re encouraged to pick a goal or set a schedule that controls for all three - 15 minutes of dissertation work a day, 2 hours of teaching every other day, etc. Instead, try combining just two of the elements for commitments that you can stick to. For example, you could:
read for your dissertation every day, but not worry about how long you do so
read for your dissertation for two poms, whenever you can squeeze it in
work on your dissertation for two poms every day, on whatever task makes sense
have 2 two hour work sessions a day, on whatever makes sense
work on your teaching every day, for however long you are able
write up one paper for your lit review every day (sometimes it’s shorter, and sometimes it’s longer!)
have a work session focused on a specific project every day, without worrying about how much is enough time.
It isn’t about no rules - just no structure that will instantly (or at least, rapidly) fall apart and leave you feeling like you can’t finish anything. and you can always revisit the rules, or switch things around! but some structure will provide some boundaries so that your time doesn’t become a soup of “everything all the time no rules!” without setting up a lot of structure that just doesn’t match where you are.