If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that I've been playing around with Notion as an alternative to my current task management system. And if you're a newsletter subscriber you also know that I was exploring ClickUp and Asana as alternatives back in September... what can I say, I love this kind of stuff 😄.
Read MoreIf you're a regular reader of my blog you know that my dad passed away in November, and then we had another family emergency come up in December that was also really difficult.
While my days and weeks are usually very structured, rigidity has not been what I’ve needed these past few months. From November through mid-January my schedule and planning processes shifted dramatically, mainly because I didn't do any planning (at least not the level of planning that I usually do). Once winter term started in early January I did need some sort of structure to help balance all the things, so I slowly started to incorporate more structure planning back into my regular routine.
Read MoreWay back in April 2019 (which feels like ages ago), I wrote a post about the things that were working (and not working) for my brain. I thought I’d do an update to that post about what worked for my brain during the summer months, aka the current productivity tips I’m trying out. Summer has such a different feel to it, that it really seems like there’s an adjustment period once it’s in full swing (which is July for me). Which might be why, during August, I felt the need to adjust some things in my/our daily routine. This summer, my days were spent working on a few papers and a systematic review, course prep, 4th year tenure review prep, and building a relationship with a new collaborator. In non-tenure track related life I was working on the blog, plan(it)*, helping out someone in the personal finance realm with her online community, spending time with Mike and Ellie, and also trying to take it easy (ha!). I hadn’t really planned on the summer being filled to the brim... I just kept adding things on and here I am (I’m noticing a pattern 😒). Despite being packed, it was fun! Here’s what’s worked, along with where I’ve struggled.
Read MoreWe traveled back east in June and followed that up with a 5 day camping trip at the beginning of July. While all of those things were wonderful, they were terrible for our daily routine. We came back refreshed from camping but couldn’t get ourselves back on a schedule. Mike and I were in bed late (between 12:30 - 1:00a most nights for no reason in particular) and Ellie wasn’t sleeping well (at night or napping). During the day we all felt like zombies. To add to that, I always felt like I was rushing around but never getting much accomplished. After a particularly hectic week in early August, I thought to myself... I can’t do this anymore, something has got to shift.
Read MoreMondays are for... all of those little administrative details that I just don’t want to do (across research, teaching, and service), catching up on emails, and planning (which I always want to do!)! In my mind, I’d prefer to start my week with my “hardest” work - lots of writing and thinking big thoughts! However, in reality my weeks haven’t been playing out this way. Instead, I’ve been starting the week with all the little things I put off at the end of the previous week. They aren’t necessarily mentally taxing, but when they pile up they can take a significant amount of time. Plus, I usually experience a bit of an uphill climb to get back into work mode after the weekend. Easing into the workweek suits my general work (and life) style!
Read MoreI’m ending the planning series with a look at how I plan out each day. Here are all the links to the previous posts from this series: my yearly intention, yearly goals, quarter planning, to do list, and weekly planning. Usually each day of my work week is highly structured and I leave the weekends open (other than events that are scheduled for specific times). Since I’ve already done the work to schedule tasks for each day during my weekly planning session, I don’t actually have that much to do for daily planning besides reviewing my schedule and adjusting as needed (e.g., if something else comes up that needs to get done or I finish something quicker than expected).
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