This advice is aimed at students and junior scholars, but it’s probably useful to some degree for everyone. I sometimes have to reread my own advice.
- (From David Allen’s Getting Things Done) If something comes up that you can do in two minutes, do it right then.
- Get started on things as soon as you know you know you need to do them. (ex. Have a paper due in six months? Start outlining it or generating a reading list or make a to do list.) Do not wait. Waiting starts to trigger anxiety. Working makes the anxiety go away, or at least subside a little, or at least not explode out of control at 2:30am. As part of getting started early, remember two-minute tasks (noted above); working on something for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or ten minutes counts! And it reduces stress because you’re showing your brain that you are in fact making progress and won’t flake out on something—the underlying cause of a lot of our deadline-based anxiety.
- Putting things off only increases your stress. At least in my experience, when I’m burned out and I think I need “down time,” there is usually something hanging over my head that I don’t want to do and the best “down time” is not playing Sudoku on my phone or binge watching tv, but just doing the thing I don’t want to do. So do the thing. Then give yourself a reward.
- Zero inbox really does help keep stress down. Assume you will spend 30-60 minutes a day managing your inbox. (However, I strongly recommend quitting/closing your email page/app when you aren’t actively processing your inbox. I also recommend turning off all alerts and dings (on both your computer and phone) to let you know when you have an email. These alerts are too distracting and, in most cases, you don’t need to respond right away. If you check your email three times a day (e.g., morning, noon, and late afternoon or evening), that should be sufficient to stay in contact and respond promptly. (I have tips on my website, in my Professor’s Planner, about how to clear out your inbox so you can clear your slate and start fresh. It’s much easier to maintain Zero Inbox from a Zero Inbox.) I also encourage you to not check your email on the go when you can’t respond or can only respond on your phone (so don’t check first thing in the morning or right before bed); I’d recommend finding times between 8a and 6p (or whatever you see as your primary working hours) and not beyond that window. I also encourage you to minimize your use of email over the weekends, say, between Friday 4p and Sunday 4p (unless you have some responsibility during that time, like a class in which a professor expects updates between those times).
- Track your time to see how you spend your time. You can do this for a week or forever. I’ve been doing it since fall 2015 and it’s been really useful. I have a model excel sheet on my website.
- Map out your semester. Excel works well. Note when you have deadlines, when you are traveling or have a conference. If there’s a time of the semester you always know is a shit show (e.g., weeks 5-11 for me), mark those off so you remind yourself they are coming. Have a column for each project or commitment. This is a good reminder that you have limited time and you can only do so much in a given week. Ideally, you will get less ambitious and more realistic in your planning the more you do this (although I’m still not there).
- Read productivity books. (I have a list of the best ones on my website, but I can recommend others.)
- Read books about writing. (Same.) You are not so good a writer that you can’t improve. No one is. Don’t be me in grad school (thinking I was too good a writer to need some pathetic advice books… yeah, I was an ass). Get over your ego and read those books! You will be a better scholar for it!
Ashley T. Rubin 