Where you are, where you are going

Hello darlings -

Welp, I guess that time progresses whether there is are 1000 ongoing crises and no tariffs or lots of tariffs and sad monkeys and Olympic joymaxxing or not!

It’s somehow the last week of February (what the fuck?) and that means that I’m getting ready to make my March plan. Ideally*, I’d spend 1-2 hours at the end of every month getting ready for the next one. Here’s how I do that in case it useful for you to see**! I have a reminder on my schedule to do this the last Friday of the month, but I did it early just for you, my delightful little research bebes.

*ideally because this only happens like 60% of the time because I’m lazy and / or overwhelmed and can’t imagine spending time on this shit when I need to spend every moment on my actual work and even though I know it will make my life better and easier, I cannot force myself to do the things that are good for me.

** as always, YMMV. Don’t read this if it is going to make you feel bad about yourself or hate me! What’s the fucking point of that??

You know when you are in an unfamiliar place and you go to the maps app on your phone just to see where the hell you are? That’s what we are doing. But, ya know, more miserable.

My first step on figuring out my monthly plan is to do an accounting of where the fuck I am at this moment. Where am I on various projects? What am I overdue on? What is the status of various tasks? I create “oh shit due right now” to do list and then layer in the “oh shit what do I want to do right now.” This is my current to do list. You’ll notice I put teaching and service on this (I don’t always!) because I had a bunch of stuff for both areas to do right now that I cannot mess up.

It is very very important that you don’t lie to yourself with this. List all the stuff out. Even if you are weeks or months or years late on it. LIST IT OUT.***

***this is why I don’t do this every month! It is fucking uncomfortable!

Here’s what that looks like for me (partial screenshot so you don’t have to see the whole car wreck) or here’s the full uncomfortable accounting via this link

Next, I like to look at the next month and see what deadlines I have. The goal here is for me to have a good idea as to what my concrete time commitments are. I put both work and fun on this as both are important for my available time!

Then I think about my research goals. Which of the projects highlighted during the “where the fuck am I” accounting I want to work on? This is both aspirational and reflects real deadlines. I often write out all goals, including reach goals. I focus here on research goals because teaching and service both have built in reminders and I will keep doing that work, while I will often skimp on the research.

(Then I look back at alllll the nonsense I listed where I am right now and think — can I cram more shit in here? Absolutely not! Will I try anyway? Yes of course!)

Link to those monthly goals

From there, I can then start to create weekly goals / daily goals / hourly goals. This also keeps me a little more oriented towards what I want to actually get done, rather than just rotating around like a sprinkler and/or only working on things where I will be super embarrassed to admit to coauthors that I didn’t get it done.

This doesn’t suit you? Cool! Here’s a post by Raul Pacheco-Vega about his process! Or here’s a “get back on top of your writing” plan! Or many what you really need is a month of reading! Kelly’s got you covered.

XOXOX

Mirya