academic coach

Juggling Tasks

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”I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what
I want to do, but I don’t know where to begin.“

Stephen Bayne – Episcopal Bishop

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This is one of my favorite quotes. I love the visual and auditory image of a buzzing mosquito trying to decide which fleshy, delectable blood source to stick her proboscis . . . Where to start? Which one to pick?

Are you feeling so swamped with projects that you don’t know where to start?

Indecision in the midst of opportunity is a common difficulty.

Many of the junior faculty, post-docs and grad students I work with have difficulty juggling tasks. As one junior faculty member put it: “When I focus on one project, the rest of my life seems to fall apart. But if I scatter my energy, I don’t get anything finished.

“I’m keeping up with my teaching and my departmental duties but none of my papers are moving forward. It is my second year on the tenure track and I still haven’t gotten articles out from my dissertation.”

Do you have this type of difficulty?

Many of us feel like we can only work on one major project at a time. Preparing to teach a new course keeps us from getting any writing done for weeks. Finishing a conference paper leads to unanswered email messages. Scrambling to meet a grant deadline pushes all other activities aside.

I call this the “No Clean Underwear Syndrome”. We focus with single-minded intensity on a drop-dead deadline and even basic life maintenance tasks fall by the wayside. Email inboxes overflow, phone calls go unreturned, exercise regimes are dropped, and our dirty laundry piles up until we don’t even have any clean underwear.

However, much of the time we face the opposite situation. We don’t finish large, important projects that lack clear deadlines because we’re so busy keeping up with day-to-day chores. The regular demands of teaching, service, and life-maintenance chores push aside scholarly research and writing. There is always something pressing that pre-empts finishing the journal article or working on the dissertation.

How can we effectively juggle daily demands and yet move forward on long-term projects?

1) First of all, plan and prioritize.
A comprehensive “to do” list can help you keep track of the multitude of tasks we face. And once your lengthy list is compiled, it needs to be prioritized. Which tasks are most critical to tackle?

2) Whittle and refine this master “to do” list.
What are the items that you can realistically accomplish today? I keep a complete list of projects, but choose a doable number of tasks to work on. Otherwise I get discouraged by the overwhelming size of the list and frustrated when there are so many projects still undone at the end of a day.

3)Carve out at least a small amount of time for the projects without deadlines.
When we work for at least half hour a day on long-range projects – the dissertation, the journal article, the exploratory research for a new scholarly endeavor – we chip away at our career priorities even as we keep up with the many short-term demands on our time.

4)When you’re stuck, start somewhere.
Don’t just buzz around without sucking any blood! Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the number of items on my agenda that I avoid facing anything. The impossibility of getting everything done kicks me into procrastination mode and I want to surf the web or crawl into bed. At these moments, I tell myself to start anywhere. I try to take a tolerable ten minutes to tackle my top priority. Sometimes, once I get started, it is much easier than I think to make headway on my projects. I feel less anxious because I am moving forward.

How do you juggle the demands of your work and personal life? Do you have systems for managing multiple tasks? How do you consistently move forward on projects that lack deadlines when there are so many pressing, external demands on your time? Do you feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp?

Write It Down

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“The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.”       

-----    Lee Iacocca

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Often we carry around in our minds a vague list of things to do and notions of our priorities.

I call this a “Rolodex mind” because we shuffle through our list of “shoulds”, spinning our mental Rolodex wheel and accomplishing little.

When we are trying to work on one project, we get distracted and overwhelmed by thoughts of all the other tasks yet to be done. It is difficult to focus on the immediate task at hand because we’re too busy worrying about other responsibilities and obligations.

A Rolodex mind is an unfocused mind.

A Rolodex mind can also be a defense against the anxiety of making a choice. We flip through mental lists, waffle about which one we’ll begin with, and avoid committing ourselves to action. We feel apprehensive or ambivalent about starting an important project, so we settle for something less challenging to act upon.

Should you work on the literature review or methods section? A difficult choice? Then why not check your email before you decide?

Should you begin your literature review with a description of theories or the history of the problem?  Why not search for a few more articles first to make sure you're not missing any relevant information on the topic?

Sound familiar?

How can we improve our focus, make decisions and take action?
The answer is deceptively simple: Write down our goals.

Far too often, we keep our projects and priorities in our mind rather than on paper.
Do you have a list of the research projects you are currently working on?

Have you made a graphic timeline for the semester that indicates all the deadlines you will be facing?

Is your “to do” list prioritized so that you can begin each day with important rather than anxiety-free tasks?

Do you have a schedule that includes blocked-out appointments with yourself for research and writing?

* Right now, try making a list of the most important projects you will work on this week.
* Rewrite the list so that your projects are ranked in order of their importance to your academic career.
* Now create a new list breaking down each project into concrete action steps. For example, “write the literature review” would be broken down into steps such as “write three paragraphs describing and contrasting Marxian and Hegelian views on property ownership.” “Write the methods section” might be broken down into “write a paragraph describing how subjects were recruited.”

Writing things down may help you stop spinning the Rolodex wheel and lay out a plan for activities in a linear sequence that can be tackled one step at a time.

If you tend to have a mind cluttered with the phrases “should do” and “must do” you may be surprised how writing down goals and action steps will free you to focus on your current task rather than on future anxieties.

Here’s the short version of this tip of the week:
Write it down. Then make it happen.

End Guilt

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“You can make a good case that guilt,
not agriculture or the wheel, may be the
foundation of civilization.”

Richard O’Connor, PhD.
“Undoing Perpetual Stress” p.145

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Did you do everything you thought that you should this week?
How did you feel about falling short?
Self-critical? Frustrated? Guilty?

If you tend to feel guilty about things done or not done, I would suggest that you try to shift those
feelings.

Contrary to what many people believe, guilt is not a good motivator.

Here’s how my internal dialogue sometimes goes:
“I really should get to work.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“But I have to.”
Then I just don’t do it.

Enter the specter of guilt.

When I avoid starting the most important item on my “To Do” list, I often find myself feeling guilty.

However, just as when another person makes me feel guilty, I find myself a bit annoyed and resentful when I feel guilty. The small sour drips of shame don’t make me feel more like working. Instead, the
feelings beg to be buried in a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies, or a nap, or a novel, or a little web surfing.
And so it goes. Leading to another day of unpleasant procrastination.

What’s the solution?

Try being kinder to yourself for the next seven days.
Push those guilty voices out of your mind.
See what happens. You just might find that you get more accomplished when you stop berating yourself.

Guilt may be the foundation of civilization. But don’t you think that it is a pretty unstable foundation?
I’d rather base my life on other feelings such as acceptance and gratitude. I feels so much better when I ease up on the nagging self-criticisms.

Good luck banishing guilt. And let us know if you have any tools to combat the evil emotion.

Monday Motivator: Focus on Finishing

Monday Motivator: Focus on Finishing

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When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put

it down until you get to the end of the row.

                           -Alice Paul

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Most faculty and graduate students contact me because they are having trouble finishing projects. Incomplete tasks keep faculty from getting tenure and graduate students from getting their degrees.

Academics who seek coaching often have several journal papers in process, can’t get themselves to complete a book proposal, have course ‘incompletes’ remaining from past semesters, or have been unable to finish their dissertation – often for years.

To become a successful academic you must learn how to

persist on a project until you complete it. The ability

to finish projects is a key ingredient to effectiveness

in your career and your life.

Becoming a finisher requires practice.  One of the ways to

develop the habit of completing projects is to break large

tasks into small goals and finish something every day. 

In a given work session, instead of trying to finish a

dissertation chapter, you could first aim to write three

paragraphs of your literature review covering a discrete

theoretical topic. 

Instead of trying to revise a paper for resubmission, you

could first try to address two reviewer criticisms. 

Instead of trying to send out your entire book proposal

to publishing houses, you could first aim to write one

chapter summary.

You’ll find that finishing a task creates a burst of

energy.  When you accomplish your achievable daily goal,

you’ll feel a mild surge of satisfaction and an increase

in motivation.  When you cross an item off your “to do”

list, you’ll experience satisfaction.

Finishing small tasks can also mitigate discouragement

about how long the large, complex projects take.

For example, today I had that common experience of

Tackling a project that seemed to become larger and more

complicated the more I worked on it.  After a few hours,

I felt frustrated and disheartened.  I thought that I’d be

able to finish, but instead I discovered new blocks to

completion.  When I noticed how cranky I was becoming, I

decided to switch gears and work on something I knew that

I could complete: writing a Monday Motivator. 

I find that these weekly emails are both manageable and

satisfying to send out (in part because some of you let

me know that you find my tips helpful.)

So, now that I’ve written this draft, I feel much better

about my day.  And I’m ready to return to the discouraging

morass that prompted me to write about this topic!

Let me know what you finish this week.

Until next Monday,

Mary

P.S. A graduate student sent me the opening quotation because

she had found a previous Monday Motivator particularly relevant.

I always appreciate finding great quotations to add to my

burgeoning file, and in this case I had the added benefit of

learning that Alice Paul was an important suffragist. 

Mary McKinney, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist and Academic Coach

Successful Academic Consulting

Visit http://www.SuccessfulAcademic.com

for more tenure track tips.

Visit http://successfulacademic.typepad.com

to read Mary's blog

It's a Great Job

Money Magazine rated being a professor the 2nd best job around.

I think that the first must be an academic coach.

I can't think of anything I'd rather do than what I do. 

Martin Seligman, father of the growing movement of positive psychology, and author of books like "Learned Optimism" and "Authentic Happiness," differentiates between having a job, a career and a mission.  I know a few academics who feel that they are fulfilling a mission when they teach or conduct research (even though it may feel like they are doing a mere job when they attend department meetings or write a grant.)  It is these fortunate, dedicated folks who find the greatest fulfillment and meaning in their work.

Interested in assessing your happiness and work/life satisfaction?  There are many self-tests available on Marty's web site.  I highly recommend taking some of the measures you'll find there and becoming more familiar with his work and the work of his colleagues.  It is a view of psychology based on strengths rather than deficits.

Long-winded Oratorical Lecturer (LOL)

On March 26th, at Mangalore University in India, a lecturer in applied botony finished a 98-hour lecture to claim the world’s record for longest classroom lecture, The Times of India and Inside Higher Education reported.

Annaiah Ramesh was aiming for 101 hours, but had to be stopped by his mother who became concerned about his incoherent speech.

The previous record, 88 hours, was held by a South African academic pontificating about democracy.

Perhaps we could get our teaching out of the way each semester by holding a long-weekend marathon lecture section.

Grants, grants, grants

One of the things that I advise graduate students and junior faculty members is to apply for grants early and often. 

Scientists are always taught that writing grants is a career essential - and hopefully receive help from their advisor when getting started.  Social scientists usually know that grant writing is important but may receive less mentoring.  Students and junior professors in the humanities seldom pursue grant opportunities avidly -- even though being a recipient of grant awards provides a notable career boost.

A good rule of thumb for grant-getting is to start small.  Look for little known opportunities that will have a better ratio of applicants to awards.  Look for specialized grants that mesh with your research.  For example, I recently saw this notice for  the 2006–2007 Paul P. Fidler Research Grant. 

The aim of the Fidler grant is to promote the development and dissemination of original research with the potential to have a national impact on college student success. I'm sure that many of you -- including those far removed from the field of education -- could tweak existing research interests to fit the aims of the folks doling out this pot of money.

Smaller grants, such as university-based funds, or grants in highly specialized niches, are easier to get but they provide more benefits than just the money.  Later, when you apply for larger, more established grants you'll already have an enticing calling card: a successful track record.

The author of What Now? recently wrote about her ambivalence over whether to apply for a highly competitive NEH grant.  Thanks to the great input from fellow acidemibloggers, such as Ancarett and New Kid, she has decided to go for it.

One of the main points made in response to What Now's post was that writing a grant helps you clarify and articulate your research goals.  It also provides a handy external deadline that will get you to keep your rear on your chair and your hands on your keyboard.

What can you do to develop your grant writing skills?  My favorite resource is provided by Joseph Levine of MSU via his Guide for Writing Funding Proposals.  He also provides an annotated list of related links where you will find additional, excellent resources. 

This is an area in which our academiblogging community could really work together:

What lesser-known or smaller grants would you suggest that folks check out?

What grants have you applied for an how has it gone?

I've got an idea to get you sharing your tips and resources: I'll present a prize to the best response to my questions.  It will be the First Annual Academic Coach's Grant Tips Award and will consist of a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate!

The deadline for applications is March 15th.

Go for it!

So-called Spring Break

As I mentioned over at "What Now", it has always amused me that so many Universities in northern climes call it "spring break" and have a "spring semester" that begins in January.

On the other hand, here in Chapel Hill, spring break comes in between the daffodils and azaleas. Much more civilized, don't you think?  

Right now, in my yard and neighborhood, the daffodils, forsythia, cherry trees, camellias, periwinkle, tulip magnolias, and ornamental pear trees are all full bloom.  The Carolina jasmine, wisteria, rhododendron, azaleas and dogwoods are getting ready to pop their buds and strut their stuff.  Jealous yet?

If so, stick your tounge out at me in July and August, when I'm either hibernating in air-conditioning or submerged in pools that have gotten too warm for swimming laps.

BTW - this would be a great time of year for a blogger meet-up in my fragrant neck of the flowering woods.

Making the World a Better Place...

Have you contributed to the world today?

Have you nominated our own Bitch, Ph.D. to be the next President of Harvard?  Be sure to suggest her for the position by adding your comment here at Iniside Higher Education.

Have you voted for Michael Berube in his quest to be the Most Dangerous Professor in America.  Go here to cast your ballot for our evil friend.

Most important, have you donated here to help with Annika's medical expenses?  To read more about her story, visit her mother's blog. You may also find other ways to help Annika, Moreena and the family at this site.

Go nominate, vote and donate. 

Then come on back and tell me how it feels to contibute to both light-hearted and life-saving causes.

Who Can Fill Larry's Shoes?

Scott Jaschik at IHE asked folks who should be hired to replace Larry Summers as Harvard's president.  The article appeared today.

As I told Scott, if the Harvard Board has any sense at all, they'll woo a woman scientist who has children.  I suggested Mary-Claire King, a professor of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington.  Last year she She was inducted into the National Academy of Science -- a big deal because only 187 out of 2,059 Academy members are women: less than 1%.  After all, Harvard usually likes people who are in the 99th percentile.

As I pointed out in "Breast Feeding Scientists" (my second blog post ever), one of the reasons I like Mary-Clare King was what she said when a reporter asked her what the largest barrier was to women in science.  She replied that “by far the biggest obstacle is how to have enough hours in the day to be the mother of a young child and do the work.”

King’s proposed solution to the difficulty of being a mother and being a laboratory scientist is the provision of excellent, on-site child care facilities.  King practices what she preaches (and sounds like an awesome mentor).  A year ago, she had three women working in her lab who were breast-feeding their infants.  She bought a breast milk pump (with NIH funds) and set up a special room in the lab where these scientist-mothers could go to pump and store their milk.  That way the women could keep breast-feeding after returning to work from maternity leave.

Sounds like she'd be a good Harvard President, right?

Please check out the IHE article and add your own nomination to the growing pool of candidates.  I'd love to see your additions to the growing list of suggestions from readers.  Please post your pick here as well so we can chuckle together...

Do you think that Bitch Ph.D. would be willing apply for the position?