Time and Task Management:

Reflections on Post-Coursework Years

Chaos. Regret. Stagnant. I think that is the best way to describe what these last few semesters as a Ph.D. Student and Ph.D. Candidate have felt like. I don’t have classwork to complete, classes to go to, or a true schedule to complete for accomplishing my tasks and goals for the biggest piece of writing I have ever done and it feels hard. Sure, I was able to keep up with preparing for comprehensive exams, but I had regular meetings with my committee members to keep me moving along. And I mean that in the sense that it is much like a class because I had tasks to complete and notes to send before the next meeting.

And life keeps going during this time. Last year I closed on my first home and successfully defended my dissertation prospectus within a week of each other and when it was done it was quite the weight lifted. I began the summer of 2023 with my three-week summer research trip looming large (more on that to come) with an aggressive goal of having a dissertation draft completed in one year. We are approaching that year mark and I am certainly off of that goal, with the hope that it will now be one year from now, in early Spring 2025 when I will finally defend. I know that I can do it, but I also know that if I allow myself to become complacent like feel like I have been. And I don’t want to dwell too much on the time that I feel like I wasted, so I have to take some time to take stock of why my progress might have been so stagnant so that I can actively plan to fix it. So here goes nothing:

1. I tried to bite off more than I can chew
   1. So I will take projects weeks by week and even day by day, setting realistic goals to accomplish each day
   2. On the advice from my advisor, I stopped thinking about my work in terms of the chapters I need to finish or the number of words I need to write. I think about sections. He suggested that each chapter should have 5-8 sections, each ranging from 500 to 2,000 words. So I sat down and broke up each of my chapters into those section headers. So now I can say, let’s work on a section, a small piece of writing that feels manageable. After a decade in grad school while working on four graduate degrees I feel like 2,000 words is an easy task for me. It keeps the workload feeling manageable while also making sure that my sections and chapters don’t take too many tangents and get away from the center of my story.
2. I spent too much time on social media
   1. I need to actually listen to the screen time limits that I have set for myself, but ignore when they pop up while I am doom-scrolling TikTok
3. I didn’t establish my priorities
   1. So I will establish my priorities and plan my week and days accordingly
      1. This includes things like sleep, working out, meals, cleaning and organizing in the new house, and of course, my dissertation
   2. I allowed myself to get distracted during times when I had time to work
      1. This is probably my biggest roadblock and I don’t yet have a solution for it
      2. I think that time-blocking and clear to-do lists are the best ways to motivate me. This is unique to everyone. But I also like fluidity. If something takes longer, a meeting gets canceled, or I finish something super fast I don’t want to feel like I have wasted time blocks. I have really liked the tool SkedPal over my testing period over the last couple of months, which allows me to input tasks with how much time I want to give them and when they need to be done and it will look at my iCal and find time for me to do them and then go and put them on my calendar for me! If something gets done early or takes too long, I just adjust the to-do list and refresh the calendar, and boom, it reconfigures. It is a paid tool but might be one of the few tools I am actually willing to pay for to help me get things done.
   3. I do not get enough sleep, or regular enough sleep, which has messed me all the way up and made afternoon naps a common occurrence, which is the death of productivity
      1. Prioritizing 8 hours of sleep at regular hours will make me feel better and more ready to take on the day
   4. I am going through periods where I don’t work out and it makes me feel more tired, sluggish, and inactive, all these bad emotions because I truly enjoy it
      1. One of my resolutions this year is to achieve my custom Apple Fitness goal each month, and these kinds of gamification should help me keep out of a slump
   5. I eat too much takeout, which means bad gut health, sluggishness, weight gain, and stress about the finances of fast food
      1. Find simple meals that I love and that I can make a lot of. I have quite a few of these, it might just be needing to write them down on index cards and attach them to the fridge.
   6. I need to drink more water!
      1. I know that I will drink enough water if a cup of water with a straw is placed in front of me, so bringing a big cup with a straw with me places will help achieve this goal.
   7. I am overwhelmed by the tangible things in my life. I feel like clutter has given me decision fatigue.
      1. One of my biggest goals this year is to minimize, and by that, I don’t mean living in an all-white home with no photos or decor, I mean in my routines. I only wash my face once, so pick a cleanser I like, get rid of all the others, and only buy that one. No need to choose. As odd as it sounds I am on the hunt for the perfect travel tote bag that I can use to travel to conferences and events and then while I am there. I have a pile of bags that meet 80% of what I am looking for and so for each trip, I have to pick a bag based on the 20% I am willing to not have. I am currently searching and testing to find the 100% bag so I can get rid of the rest. I did this a few months ago with a toiletry bag before a barrage of travel over the last three months. I found one bag that had everything I wanted, spent the money, and then literally got rid of all the others. I love the bag, don’t have to “choose” one for each trip, and don’t feel like there is wasted space in my bathroom filled with variations of products that I only use one of at a time. Wow, this is getting long… perhaps I sense a future post on conference and academic travel guides??

Wow, that was a lot, but it was good to get it on paper, and dear reader, I hope it inspires you to do some thinking about your habits and what you can improve on. I know that as I was doing this it really helped me to phrase the list as the two pieces, the problem and my solution, and to do so in a way that it reads out loud like a single sentence.