This blog post has a terribly long blog post, but I think it’s worth including it in its entirety. I recently taught two workshops where I was asked about calendar management.
Two years (and a metric tonne of international travel and fieldwork) later, I found myself over-exhausted. Part of it was that I was trying to do the things I planned to do within the time blocks I had assigned so rigidly.
So I made my calendar flexible https://t.co/jEzqe9RHgM
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
I now have 5 core things in my calendar:
– my own writing time block (4:30am-6:30am)
– the writing time I spend with Amanda Bittner and the feminist mafia posse
– the writing time I spend with Jeff Guhin, Mirya Holman and the #FinishingOurBooks crowd
– my teaching commitments (I teach on Thursdays)
– meetings (with students, colleagues, etc.)
Why didn’t the “schedule every single thing into my calendar” approach work for me?
For a similar reason that the MEPFED approach stopped working for me.
In the before times, I used to Move Every Paper Forward Every Day. At the time, it worked.
https://t.co/a5wyBKQQQw— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
But, like everything, my life changed, so did my priorities, and so did my workload. While I still had a relatively freeing approach to working, where I Worked on One Paper Every Day (a different one, particularly with coauthors), WOPED ALSO stopped working at some point.
I noticed that switching up tasks, projects and research streams was making it incredibly hard to concentrate.
Yes, I work on a very broad range of areas: I study bottled water, transnational environmental activism, homelessness, policy transfer, research methods, etc. Switching bodies of literature, empirical research methods and fields makes it really hard to regain momentum. For example, right now I’m working on revisions to my book on bottled water. BUT I also want to read up on the politics of public health policy. AND on homelessness.
WHAT IS WORKING FOR ME NOW?
What’s working for me now (as of 2021, pandemic and all), is to block time to work on a specific project (my bottled water book, or R&Rs, etc.), and when I do, I JUST think about it and put other wonderful ideas I have or readings I want to do on the shelf for a while.
Having longer blocks (chunks) of time helps me too, I also have realized. Often, not available.
This is a complaint I have about academia (one I make regularly, even as a senior professor). We need time to think, reflect, absorb ideas, ruminate them) https://t.co/n4OKMTzuqD
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
I have full control of my calendar, though, and I am grateful for this. I can say “I prefer having meetings in the afternoon because I write in the mornings”, and the work-from-home approach has made it easier for me to schedule naps (which I require to function) and flex time.
Pandemic life has exhausted me, though. I’ve reconsidered how much time I ask my students to be on Zoom https://t.co/pXRJXJOAmY
I’ve made a lot of changes to allow them (and me) to have analog time, away from the computer. And I also refuse to have Zoom meetings “just for fun”.
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
My meeting times have shortened (though I have noticed, interacting with Mexican colleagues across other institutions, that for many, their own bad meeting habits have remained throughout the pandemic – making meetings longer than they should be).
Zoom tires me, though.
So my advice to those struggling with calendar management and project management is as follows:
1) Say NO to everything you possibly can, and say YES only if you have Time, Energy and Health for it https://t.co/LNzkzlc5ov
2) Remember you CAN drop projects you no longer can do.
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
3) In your calendar, block both the academic/scholarly/work stuff AND the personal stuff. The latter ALSO requires A LOT of time.
4) Allow yourself flexibility, insert buffers in your calendar, don’t over-schedule every single thing, note down the major commitments you have.
5) Extend yourself AND others grace. We are all struggling through the pandemic.
6) To the extent possible, try to work on projects of the same Research Stream/topic.
7) Remember: YOU DO YOU. Everyone is different, and we need to shun the neoliberal idea of “productivity”.
If you find frustrated and not making progress, an intermediate approach that also has worked for me is working in 30 minute chunks https://t.co/NBaJSEV5PH
and adding Quick Wins to your To Do List https://t.co/tszIMHgogM
Or focus on JUST #2ThingsADay https://t.co/SisKeE7eN0
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) June 17, 2021
I really do hope this blog post will be helpful to people. Also search my blog for a series I did on Project Management for Academics.
Thank you Raul, always nice to read your pieces of advice. This reminds me of the argument made by Cal Newport in his book Deep Work (focus on single tasks/projects, allowing sufficient time to really dive into it). Very much needed nowadays… But as you say, not always so easy also because of the context one is in (we cannot control everything around us)