There's been a lot of difficult stuff going on - in the news, in our various institutions, in life generally. One piece of advice I picked up in the context of parenting was 'respond rather than react' - the idea being not to be caught up in the situation but to instead consciously choose to respond in line with your own values and priorities. Easier said than done, I think! Any tips or tricks to share to help create the setp back that allows you to respond are welcome. And/or report in on your motivations as well as goals from last week. How did that strategy go for you?
AcademicAmstr
1) TRQ teaching stuff
2) TRQ holiday stuff
3) exercise 3x; clean bunny hutch 2x
4) nightly check-ins.
Contingent Cassandra
1) work on conference follow-up
2) try to keep to reasonable sleep/eating/exercise if possible routine despite very full days
3)keep up with most urgent household/financial tasks
Daisy
1) Run 3 times
2) Finish data processing
3) Drag out 75% done paper that is languishing in file system and figure out what it needs to be finished.
4) Literature review, at least make some notes...
Earnest English
1. Make a list of Thanksgiving fixings to give to Absurdist Partner.
2.
Figure out a couple dates to tell our babysitter so we can hopefully
get a night out together in Nov-Dec. My real goal is actually two
nights before the end of the year.
3. Call back the doctor so I can get my cardiology tests scheduled even if they are several weeks out.
4.
Schedule taking in my car to get the winter tires put on and anything
else that's supposed to be done even if it is several weeks out.
5. Be excessively kind to self.
6. Don't freak out on colleagues and chair.
7. Get big administrative thing and big service thing done on Wednesday.
8. Keep grading.
9. Sneak in a little escapism, well-filling, or relaxation every day.
10. Nothing is worth killing yourself over. Move like water.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Write for 30 minutes 3x only on creative writing. Manicure as carrot!
Walk midmorning 7x, and mid afternoon 5x.
File the stuff left over from decluttering my desk for 20 minutes 5x.
Organize my next day 7x.
Good Enough Woman
1) By Wednesday, insert all notes/quotes into chapter, and get footnote
citations in order since I won't be able to take ALL of my books with me
on the writing retreat.
2) Exercise 3x, including yoga while binge writing.
3) Make Christmas gift list.
4) Find checks/call bank.
5) Make persimmon bread.
Karen
1. Writing conference paper - need a complete draft by the end of Thursday. Linked motivations - declutter time/garden.
2.
The gym trial I was thinking of isn't going to work with upcoming
travel, so I'm going to try out online yoga videos. If I do 3 sessions a
week in the trial period then I will subscribe.
3. Making a complete list of all Christmas presents. This is a kind of reward in itself as I do enjoy Christmas planning,
Susan
1. Prospectus in the email
2. Go back to book ms, work on footnotes
3. Second set of book orders
4. Contact person who will help with special class project for next semester.
5. Exercise 4 times.
6. Read a book before bed. (I'm wondering if a positive one will work better than the "no iPad" one.)
Topic: Respond rather than react. This is a very apt topic for me, given the firestorm of last week. I think I did a pretty good job of not reacting, but I need to respond a little more quickly. I am Irish-American, and very hot-tempered. When I found out that one of my staff lied to me, I wanted to scream imprecations at her for at least a few minutes, but I did not. I could not respond, and have not yet done so. I have written her up for insubordination, but I need to translate all the Anglo-Saxon that I allowed myself into polite words before I give it to her and send it to HR.
ReplyDeleteWhen my dean told me she had changed her mind, I wanted to quit and stalk out of her office, but I did not. I merely told her I did not like her decision, but that I had to live with it. Once I did leave her office, I took out my venom by happily not doing the extra job from that second on. “Oh, that’s not getting done--oh, that’s unfortunate, isn’t it?”
Over the weekend, I took the poison pen letter that I wrote my caviling, back-stabbing team, and transformed it into a thoughtful memo about how to solve the problem, urging everyone to calm down and think rationally. I’m really terribly pleased with myself about that.
I have a meeting with my dean this Wednesday, and I have written out talking points detailing how if my co-chair on the team had contacted me by phone or email, which she had in hand, I could have minimized the mistakes. I am not going to ask her to reconsider, counting myself lucky that I know now how she thinks.
Last week’s goals:
Write for 30 minutes 3x only on creative writing. Manicure as carrot! No manicure, sadly. Only 2x, although that is a good trend!
Walk midmorning 7x, and mid afternoon 5x. Yes.
File the stuff left over from decluttering my desk for 20 minutes 5x. 4x, which is a good trend.
Organize my next day 7x. Yes!
Analysis: I concentrated on what I can control. Rather than work over the weekend, I decided to take care of myself, reading, relaxing, cleaning house. I chose not to buy into the finger pointing and blaming that continued all week. I plan to take each and every minute allowed me to recover from my surgery in January. I will refuse to answer phone calls from work, or open work emails. The library can go hang until I come back.
Next week’s goals:
Write for 30 minutes 4x on creative writing or blogging. Still using the manicure as a carrot!
Walk midmorning 7x, and mid afternoon 5x.
File the stuff left over from decluttering my desk for 20 minutes 5x.
Organize my next day 7x.
I hope everyone has a productive, calm, responsive and not reactive week!
Wow! Sounds like you're handling things as well as they can be handled. Kudos to you. Concentrating on taking care of yourself, now and in January, sounds very wise, if only because keeping an even keel, at least when others are around, takes energy and concentration (at least it does for me).
DeleteI'm impressed with all your effective responding! And it sounds like you've got some good trends going this week.
DeleteGreat topic. My email drafts folder is currently full of things that I need to redraft from reactions to responses. The weekend has lent new perspective! I've also started counting backwards from 100 whenever things are getting tricky. I think the suggestion to respond inline with your values is really really important - I'll aim for that this week!
ReplyDeleteDidn't set any goals past two weeks. Really just been in survival mode for a couple of weeks - bit ill, overloaded with general work stuff, and spending a lot of time putting out the fires of other people's disorder.
This week:
1. Finish and submit gemstone paper
2. Write next tool for house project (needed for next week so need to get a move on)
3. Tackle the plan to finish acronym report.
It's going to be one of those weeks. I'm planning to hide.
I hope the week goes better than expected!
DeleteMy travails of the last week or two have only been of the ordinary, passing, busy-end-of-semester sort, but responding rather than reacting strikes me as good advice for teaching as well, especially at the end of the semester when I'm feeling anxious about being behind on one part or another of the grading (not too much this semester, but there are still definitely loose ends) and students are feeling anxious for the same reasons, and anxious about grades in both my class and others, and just generally anxious, which more than occasionally results in at least one or two students complaining that my instructions aren't clear, my feedback not sufficient and/or sufficiently timely, the entire structure of the course is all wrong, etc., etc. In such situations, it definitely helps to respond to the underlying anxiety (without naming it too directly unless the student has named it hirself) rather than reacting to the accusation, direct or implied, that the student would be doing better if I were a better, more conscientious teacher. Even if that's true (and sometimes it is), there are structural factors (e.g. an unreasonably heavy teaching load) that keep me from living up entirely to my own ideal of how I would like to teach the course, and I do, at least, try to conduct triage in a way that reflects both my values and my sense of what students need most (e.g. feedback on ongoing projects more than grades for fully completed ones, even if that results in some very slow grading).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how to apply those insights to my present TLQ goals, since so many of them are more internally than externally motivated, though it's probably good to remind myself that I did my best to respond rather than react to situations as they came along, and often managed to do so, and that if there are things I could have handled better, there are also thing I could have handled far worse, and, at this point, I can't go back and change the past, only respond to the situation as it currently exists.
Goals for last week:
1) work on conference follow-up
2) try to keep to reasonable sleep/eating/exercise if possible routine despite very full days
3)keep up with most urgent household/financial tasks
Acccomplished:
1) little to none
2) could have been much worse, but definitely could have been better
3) well, that qualifier "most urgent" helps -- yes, I think I did this.
Analysis: I'm in the middle of conference period, and once again remembering just how exhausting the whole process is. The good news is that, by making conferences much longer in the last few years, and providing all feedback during or just after conference (in a quick post-conference writeup), works quite well, and (mostly) keeps the grading from piling up in the way it did when I tried to read the papers before shorter conferences. So this is a system that works; it just leads to there being several weeks a semester when I do nothing (really, nothing) but hold student conferences, drive to and from campus, and try to sleep and eat on a regular-enough basis to sustain the other activities. It's not fun, but it'd predictable (schedulable, in fact), and it does work, and I don't feel guilty about not providing students with sufficient feedback (in part because whatever I can manage in a 30-minute conference and 15-minute writeup clearly has, given my student load, to be enough). But I can pretty much count on getting almost nothing else done during those weeks, since, even when I have a weekday off, I collapse, and/or move very slowly through the small, practical tasks that pile up very quickly (I guess that partly answers what I do when I'm home all day for more days of the week; although I don't feel all that efficient, I do manage at least a level of household maintenance that becomes evident in its absence).
And goals for next week:
Delete1) conference follow-up, and also follow-up on a new professional project that began this week
2) make use of Thanksgiving break to catch up on sleep and perhaps exercise a bit
3) cook a bit if time (Thanksgiving is at a restaurant, so I don't need to cook for that, but my soup stores could use replenishing)
4) catch up with neglected household chores
5) deal w/ most urgent financial tasks, and plan when to tackle more TLQ-ish ones
Note: I still have conferences on Mon. and Tues. of Thanksgiving week, and W/Th/F of the week that follows, but last week was definitely the most intense conference week, and then I had to go to campus for meetings on Friday.
Thankfully, I have relatively calm waters in my life these days. One helpful strategy for me is to try not to take on other people’s stuff. When someone is rude or unpleasant or needlessly critical, I try to remember that their antics are not necessarily about me. Just take a breath and disconnect from my own stuff. As a friend says, if you’re in a pointless tug-of-war, what would happen if you just drop the rope?
ReplyDeleteTwo weeks ago:
Write every day: Yes, until 15 November, but not since
Finish book review: No
Read one chapter or article for book project: Read bits
Catch up on obligations for conference planning: Yes, finally
My time management has been crap lately. I end up pushing through the weekend to get things done, then it’s Tuesday by the time I make time (and get enough done) to post here, and it feels like I’m showing up late so I don’t post (Arriving on time, one of the other things I’m working on).
Writing every day for 15 straight days was great. I stopped writing when I found myself spending far too much time figuring out what to write, or write about, instead of just writing. I couldn’t really invest that much time in thinking about writing, and got behind on grading. Oh the balances and imbalances.
But giving thanks for the Thanksgiving holiday, when I will have five days to work, rest, and play (I typically don’t travel but take the holiday as a happy retreat). So for the week ahead:
Do something research/writing related every day
Print out first chapter of revised book project and determine its status
Finish the book review, finally
Read two chapters/essays for book project
Catch up on grading
Happy and relaxing week ahead, especially for US folk who have family and travel obligations.
Topic(ish): motivations from last week. When I mentioned external motivation a couple weeks ago, I hadn't been thinking of incentives at all. I really meant that I'm motivated by some kind of external accountability (in its basest form, people pleasing). I only got through writing the dissertation because I arranged to check in with my advisor monthly (and being in this group). The fear of humiliating myself by doing nothing before a check in was highly motivating. I will always choose to do things that I'm responsible for that have to do with other people before I do things like practice an instrument or write. Hiring a personal trainer was the best move for making my exercise habit work. So the thing I've been neglecting lately that I don't want to neglect is my children's book writing. Even checking in here hasn't been enough to keep me motivated on that front. So I enlisted the folks in my critique group to have a check in blog (like this one) specific to our writing goals. I've already had good success with those goals!
ReplyDeleteGoals:
1) TRQ teaching stuff--yes, still lots more grading to do
2) TRQ holiday stuff--yes, people go presents for our very early Christmas celebration.
3) exercise 3x; clean bunny hutch 2x--yes!
4) nightly check-ins--huge help!
I've finally figured out a daily schedule form that's been working for me (just a table in a Google Doc with half-hour increments). I fill out the week ahead, but only print two days, so it's easy to modify for my nightly check ins. Let's hope it lasts.
I only managed 2 days of exercise during the week, but we've been in a beach house for the weekend with extended family, and I've managed to run (with lots of walking interspersed) every day so far. Not that it makes up for all the pie I've eaten.
It's Thanksgiving week, and the kids have the week off, so I'll have minimal goals again, but keeping up habits is good!
Goals:
1) TRQ teaching stuff
2) nightly check-ins
3) exercise 5x, bunny hutch 2x
4) write down what I eat
Responding instead of reacting. What a good topic! I'm embroiled in a number of big gnarly discussions with colleagues, so this is apropos. Two discussions significantly affect teaching and have to do with fundamental assumptions that also deprofessionalize my discipline, so I've got my back up, but have transformed much of my frustration into productive planning about how to approach the problem. Still it makes me want to avoid my colleagues for the duration, which I think is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I want to bring up here is how necessary sleep is to being able to choose one's response rather than just react. I finally got some sleep on Saturday afternoon, and wow if I didn't end up inching forward on unpacking the boxes in the library and going through the drycleaning. The next morning I made huge headway on this little article I have that is due at the end of the week. I also graded four projects last night. This sleep thing is really amazing! I recommend it! I hope it will keep me from snapping at the people who are on my list and deserve to be snapped at. (Yes, I know each person has his or her story, but some people who do absolutely nothing on service committees really do deserve to be snapped at.)
Last Week's Goals
1. Make a list of Thanksgiving fixings to give to Absurdist Partner.: DONE!
2. Figure out a couple dates to tell our babysitter so we can hopefully get a night out together in Nov-Dec. My real goal is actually two nights before the end of the year. IN PROCESS
3. Call back the doctor so I can get my cardiology tests scheduled even if they are several weeks out. Not yet.
4. Schedule taking in my car to get the winter tires put on and anything else that's supposed to be done even if it is several weeks out. Not yet, but it snowed 8 inches on Saturday so this needs to be done asap.
5. Be excessively kind to self.: Mostly.
6. Don't freak out on colleagues and chair. Mostly
7. Get big administrative thing and big service thing done on Wednesday. DONE!
8. Keep grading. Taking Saturday off was the best thing I could've done!
9. Sneak in a little escapism, well-filling, or relaxation every day. Oh yes. I'm committed to this one.
10. Nothing is worth killing yourself over. Move like water.: This means not rushing around and panicking, but being more intentional. I'm doing okay with this one.
This Week's Goals
1. Have a nice Thanksgiving with Absurdist Family.
2. Call dealership to schedule tires, etc.
3. Call cardiologist and get that scheduled.
4. Grade a significant amount and hopefully get mostly caught up on two classes.
5. Continue some reading for Big Project.
6. Address next step for Little Project.
7. Finish Tiny Article.
8. Get Big Service Thing ready for Monday.
9. Move like water. Smile and laugh.
Amen to both the value of sleep and its necessity (at least to me, too) for maintaining a non-snapping stance, even when snapping would be entirely justified. As a contingent faculty member who would actually welcome the chance to do a bit of service (in exchange for the same course reduction my tenure-track colleagues receive, of course), I'm especially tempted to snap at your non-service-doing colleagues for you.
DeleteOooh and the relaxation book I bought is called The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook by Davis, Eshelman, and McKay.
ReplyDeleteUseful! thank you!
DeleteDidn't check in last week. Not very motivated (I'm with the Dame - who blogged about it here - in not being good at that sort of self-management, though I will try her doodling thing, sounds appealing. Although I am also bad at transitions so may find doodling distraction.
ReplyDeleteI'm stressed, and fraught, and closing in on myself in survival mode. Whilst I was sick, whether nominally working reduced hours/from home or nominally actually off on sick leave, I kept up with stuff. Looking at my done lists I reckon I was clocking in 25-30 hours a week - note, my 80% contract is nominally 30 hours a week - of actual work. However, that leaves me woefully, desperately behind, made worse by still being unable to lecture or run a discussion class on the hop with more than 5-6 students, which means I'm converting a lot of stuff to online (recording multiple short lectures in small creaky voice etc.) and having to preplan and prepare slides and handouts for classes I'd usually wing a bit. Plus... this semester has new teaching in it, it relied on me keeping ahead and using the study week to set up new material. So being sick and "only" keeping up rather than getting ahead has given me rather a nightmare situation.
Yes, I AM on 'phased return' and 'amended duties'. No, that doesn't actually seem to mean anything. though to be fair I haven't pushed really hard- because I agree with the people above me, there are no good solutions, and whilst one could say they would have to manage if I was dead/in the hospital, I'm not, and there are only 4 weeks to go...
Gonna be throwing money at Mr Amazon again to manage Christmas, and sending cards late and short on letters, but I don't have kids to let down by doing that. All _I_ want for Christmas is to not have to go anywhere or do anything for a month, but I will be off to parentville and back to paperwork city as per usual, so...
Whinge whinge whinge.
DeleteI like this week's topic, it's something I have been working on this year, and sleep helps a great deal (as does not being unwell, but hey...). I am really fed up at the moment with a lot of things beyond my control which are going to cause all manner of change and disruption and unnecessaries and little bits of grit in everyday life in the months to come, but which aren't clearly enough known to be able to start planning or adjusting or just imagining (I like to think stuff through well in advance and get it into my head before I have to do it, because I am a bit difficult like that. I do NOT do well with vagueness). This is really annoying! What with the inevitable speculation, statements about redundancies being a last resort (and probably not in my part of the organisation, but my anxiety doesn't accept that as a reason to shut up), and a 'best possible' plan which is definitely more of the 'least worst' type however much it's tied up in pretty ribbons, and the fear I always have around being unwell and what-ifs and no-one-else-will-ever-employ-me thinking - it's bloomin' hard work sometimes shutting my mind up!
Anyway. Respond. That means, sometimes, shutting up. Not my forte! But I'm using my phased return as a reason to mostly not go to the meetings and not to work in the office every day, which helps a bit.
This week: teaching, which has kept me busy all weekend preparing and recording stuff (I'm juuust ready for tomorrow, but have some major work/new design of practicals and datasets (sigh) to do for Thursday's classes), and being on an interview panel (for two posts which supposedly started 1st October. Organised is not the local forte) which meets all day Friday as well as some other bits. Very little TLQ time, but I need to claim some anyway.
goals:
1) be reasonably nice to me, sleep, accept done as good enough
2) Write 50000 words of NaNoNovel by the end of the month (I'm cross with it right now but I know I'll feel bad if I don't finish and the exercise of writing it is therapeutic and makes a nice transition from work at the end of the day - and I only have 8k to go)
3) Spend an hour revisiting my paper list, setting some small goals, and picking One Thing to work on in December (I already have the PERFECT thing to do over Christmas - I've been asked to write a book review for a fancy Beach Studies journal of a 'general audience' book in a field I teach occasionally, took a specialist course in as a grad student, and find very interesting, but which is not my research area - and it has lovely arty photographs of coastlines in it. It's due 1st Feb, so reading it over Christmas will be my 'conscience box' (as we used to call it in grad school - the box of work you lugged around with you whenever you went away, to work on 'if you had time')).
4) recommit to 5 portions of fruit & veg a day (that's slipped some days, when I get... lazy isn't the word. There isn't really a word for finding the thought of actually chopping up a carrot insurmountably arduous, and daunting, but it happens. It's sort of part of being depressed?).
5) go to the gym once.
6) not be too jealous of US-ians getting Thanksgiving off!
apologies for the jealousy-inducing mentions of Thanksgiving. At least the Canadians have already had theirs.
DeleteAnd I get the no-will-to-chop-a-carrot thing. Depression can certainly do that, but so, I think, can sheer exhaustion/overwhelmedness. Add in depression, and it can be truly daunting (and not truly necessary on any one day, so easy to put off until tomorrow).
Topic: Respond, that is a good way to put it! I don't tend to do too much reacting in person but I'm prone to writing hasty emails, especially in response to things that make me really angry (like copy and paste off the internet in papers etc.). So my rule for emotionally charged or annoying emails is that the response has to sit in the draft folder for a few hours (without an address so it cannot go accidentally) and after a bit of thinking I am allowed to send it. This generally works well, sometimes the whole thing gets deleted when I decide it is not worth it.
ReplyDeleteLast week's goals
Ongoing goal: 1) Run 3 times DONE
2) Finish data processing DONE
3) Drag out 75% done paper that is languishing in file system and figure out what it needs to be finished. LOOKED and put it away again...
4) Literature review, at least make some notes... NOTHING
Not bad, not great, also behind on various things that I'm actually supposed to be doing, so this week will be a catching up one. And organizing travel for later, accounting for past travel, and a bunch of rehearsals for a concert.
This week's goals:
1) Run 3 times (Ongoing goal)
2) Program development editing that has sat on back-burner for 2 weeks
3) Professional organization writing and editing that has sat right next to 2 above...
4) Make travel arrangement for lab visits
The running shoe purchase goal is working well, mainly because I am too lazy to try and find a store in town to get them so I want to get them in the visiting town so I have to hit the goal :)
I like your email method. I tend to draft them in Word first (so they really, really, can't be accidentally sent), and sometimes that's where they stay.
DeleteGood job on the running!!!
DeleteHi all
ReplyDeleteThe past couple of weeks have been a bit crazy for me, with sickness and conferences, hence no check in last week. Responding not reacting is important - great topic. I have been thinking about this as a way to reduce stress the past couple of days, re taking more charge of finding solutions that work for me. So, I am planning to: work at home much more frequently over the next few months, to reduce some interactions which take up a lot of time and require a lot of energy to manage well, and create gaps in which I can 'creatively think'.
I didn't meet my last check-in goals, so for this week, here goes again:
1. Finalise CR draft
2. Finalise other draft and send around to co-authors
3. Eat purposefully
4. Do not overwork beyond my work hours.
5. Say no to at least two things.
aw
It sounds like you're heading toward productivity by making decisions about your environment that you can control.
DeleteI work hard on the "respond not react" thing. In person, I don't often realize my reaction, so this is more an issue on email. But I do try with sensitive things to wait on emails so that they are more useful than not. And sometimes that means listening and letting people think aloud. But I'm also trying not to do the woman thing of taking emotional care of people who don't do any care work. So some not reacting is not making things easy for people.
ReplyDeleteGoals from last week:
1. Prospectus in the email - no, but I finally have a complete draft!
2. Go back to book ms, work on footnotes started
3. Second set of book orders DONE
4. Contact person who will help with special class project for next semester. DONE, but haven't had a response.
5. Exercise 4 times. Three; I had a chest cold, and there was one morning when I just couldn't move.
6. Read a book before bed. (I'm wondering if a positive one will work better than the "no iPad" one.) Three days.
Analysis: Well, I decided that before I went away for Thanksgiving (sorry JaneB) I HAD to get the prospectus done. Unfortunately, my computer crashed on Monday, so instead of working quietly at home all day, I took my CPU into work where our IT people helped rescue it. But that took all sorts of extra time (and I still haven't rescued my bookmarks). Still, on Monday, I decided to just blitz it, and got a draft done. Today I will sit down and revise it, and then send the whole darn thing off tomorrow. And I will give thanks. As for the rest, well, life, and everything else. Fortunately, most of my procrastination was productive.
Goals for the coming week:
Limited, because of holiday stuff and staying with family -- toddlers are charming, but distracting.
1. Work on footnotes, plan work for trip to UK
2. Send off prospectus
3. Submit grant for internal thingie
4. Start work for surprise external application that will take a lot of time.
I'm also trying not to do the woman thing of taking emotional care of people who don't do any care work. So some not reacting is not making things easy for people.
ReplyDeleteOh- YES. I think this is in large part why I need a break from some at work. aw