5 habit-forming, practice-developing strategies that you can work with during the upcoming month

I wrote the thread that originated this blog post on October 1st, 2022. I had not been able to blog for many reasons, one of the key ones was that I did not have time to blog.

Most of the time, I plan my entire month by the end of the previous one. I did not have the time (literally!) to do so, therefore had to spend some time doing so when I wrote the thread, at the beginning of October 2022.

Beginnings of months tend to be good times to start new habits. This blog post details a few practices that you might feasibly start within the next month, without pushing yourself too much, perhaps.

1) Starting (or renewing) your writing practice.

Whenever I teach academic writing, I tell my students that we need to aim for small, reasonable, attainable goals. Write for 15 minutes, write 50 words. Something tangible. This micro-goal-setting method helps me strengthen my own writing practice, or restart it when I’ve been away from my work for too long.

Just get some words down.

2) Starting (or upgrading) your To-Do-List practice.

For me, having a To-Do List is fundamental. But I need said To-Do List to be reasonable. To do that, I break down the work I have to finish in smaller pieces, which I tackle each one separately. Breaking down the work in “work aliquots” allow me to really plan according to my energy, time and health.

3) Upgrading your self-care practice.

As most of you know, I spent three months this summer with COVID, COVID sequelae, and pneumonia. Almost dying really made me rethink my practices. I’ve committed to prioritizing myself above EVERYTHING ELSE. I have upgraded my self-care practice, I hope you can do so, too.

4) Upgrading (or starting!) a reading practice.

READING IS WRITING.

We don’t HAVE time to read. We MAKE time to read.

The link above offers 8 strategies that might help you develop your own reading practice (we are all different and teaching loads can be insane).

5) Developing a planning and project management practice that works FOR YOU:

What works for me is to plan my entire year and then do monthly, weekly and even sometimes daily adjustments. I also need redundancies (digital + analog). The link above shows you how I plan across multiple timelines.