Brian Tracy's book, Eat that Frog! is a quick read. I'd highly recommend getting yourself a copy, if only to browse through while you are doing laundry. You'll be done before your clothes are dry! It is so clear and bullet-pointed that you won't waste time reading pages and pages of fluff. And, he gives so much great advice, that some of it is sure to be helpful. Even if you feel really on top of things, I'd still pick it up to maximize your productivity.
His main suggestion is to prioritize what is most important/difficult (the "frogs" in your life tasks) first, before doing anything else. He suggests that you focus on areas that will give you the greatest return in reaching your goal. For us academics, and, particularly for a postdoc like me, it is easy to identify our "key result area": Publishing. So, he advocates starting the day by working on tasks that will lead to publishing, this would be writing. So start the day by writing if you want to get published.
Apart from that, I'd say his suggestions fall into three broad categories: Planning, Execution and Attitude. Planning is important in terms of identifying your goals, setting your focus areas, and making a list of what you want to achieve, breaking it down by year, month and day. He suggests planning your day the night before, so that you can subconsciously start thinking about what you have to do the next day. He also advocates a priority system for lists, so that you can start with the most urgent tasks first.
In terms of execution, as mentioned above, his biggest suggestion is to go for the maximizing task first, the one that will produce the results to get your goal. He also suggests "slicing and dicing," which is cutting up large tasks into smaller slices before tackling them. In writing this would be working on a section/paragraph/sentence at a time. Another method is the "swiss cheese" approach, which is not as methodical as slices, but just doing what you can to make some dents in the task. For us writers, this would be freewriting where we can in our document. Finally, taking it one task at a time, with a singular focus, gets you all the way to the end. This is the whole driving in the dark approach to writing -- when you get in the car, you can only see as far as your headlights, but it takes you all the way from start to finish.
As for attitude, he's a big cheerleader and motivator, and wants us to adopt a similar stance within ourselves, so we become what he calls "action oriented." Ultimately, Tracy suggests that one adopt the student-of-self posture. This appeals to us academics, because we like to study things. So study yourself, your habits, what works, what doesn't, and keep fine tuning yourself!
Exercise is the new coffee
Maybe this is about guilt over my additions, maybe it is just feeling appalled at how little I have accomplished so far in my academic life, but I've started a self-improvement overhaul for the summer. I'm planning to read more about time management, discipline, organization, and whatever else leads to reaching my full potential as an academic. This means you can expect more posts about time management and getting stuff done, including book reviews on such subjects.
I'm going to pick up the book Eat that Frog! from the local library today, which is all about procrastination, one of my MAJOR problems in life. One could argue that this whole self-improvement thing is a form of procrastination from the real work that I should be doing, writing articles and such, but once I get it in my head to do something, its too late, it has already become a project, and there is no way out at this point. Anyway, I'll let you know if the book is any good.
In the meantime, my mantra for this week has been "Exercise is the new coffee." Ecogeofemme's post about alertness gave me some ideas, and I tried exercising every day of the week for at least one hour. Getting myself to the gym is the hard part, but I'm hoping that once I get in the habit, it will become much easier. I used to only go twice a week, but every day is SO much better. More days of euphoric-post-exercise feeling = less cups of coffee needed to get through the day.
I'm going to pick up the book Eat that Frog! from the local library today, which is all about procrastination, one of my MAJOR problems in life. One could argue that this whole self-improvement thing is a form of procrastination from the real work that I should be doing, writing articles and such, but once I get it in my head to do something, its too late, it has already become a project, and there is no way out at this point. Anyway, I'll let you know if the book is any good.
In the meantime, my mantra for this week has been "Exercise is the new coffee." Ecogeofemme's post about alertness gave me some ideas, and I tried exercising every day of the week for at least one hour. Getting myself to the gym is the hard part, but I'm hoping that once I get in the habit, it will become much easier. I used to only go twice a week, but every day is SO much better. More days of euphoric-post-exercise feeling = less cups of coffee needed to get through the day.
post-deadline addiction assesment
On Monday, I triumphantly emerged from the other side of my accepted paper revisions. Since then, I've been to a week-long workshop. I decided that while workshopping, I'd try to cut back on my coffee consumption, which went up radically while working on revisions. The unfortunate result of this is that I've been a zombie for most of this week.
I hit a low point yesterday, when I had friends over for dinner, and felt like I was being an irritable hostess because I'd held off on my afternoon espresso. I used to give up coffee every summer, but I'm not sure I can do that anymore. I have a lot of writing that needs to happen this summer, and lack of caffeine doesn't help with productivity.
So far today, I've had a nice croissant and cappucino for breakfast, picked up some vegetables at the farmers market, had lunch with some friends and biked home. I'm functioning reasonably okay, but I could use more coffee already! What am I going to do with myself? What about you? How do you stop yourself from ramping up the coffee when you have a deadline?
I hit a low point yesterday, when I had friends over for dinner, and felt like I was being an irritable hostess because I'd held off on my afternoon espresso. I used to give up coffee every summer, but I'm not sure I can do that anymore. I have a lot of writing that needs to happen this summer, and lack of caffeine doesn't help with productivity.
So far today, I've had a nice croissant and cappucino for breakfast, picked up some vegetables at the farmers market, had lunch with some friends and biked home. I'm functioning reasonably okay, but I could use more coffee already! What am I going to do with myself? What about you? How do you stop yourself from ramping up the coffee when you have a deadline?
Reevaluation
Things are looking better now, since I've had time to get over the shock of my guest's arrival, cleaned up the sty a bit, made myself a good dinner and now, I'm ready to tackle the week!
I am not sure if I'm coming down with a flu or if it is just really bad allergies, but I am hoping that it is bad allergies, since lots of decongestant plus allergy meds seems to have improved my general outlook on life.
Things I have left to do before houseguest arrives:
Pick up some groceries
Make soup (this should be the #1 on all my to do lists simply because it always makes me feel better)
Do Laundry
Make her bed
Clean bathroom
Clean living room
Doesn't seem so bad anymore. Off to bed to get lots of sleep for whatever it is that is making me so miserable!
I am not sure if I'm coming down with a flu or if it is just really bad allergies, but I am hoping that it is bad allergies, since lots of decongestant plus allergy meds seems to have improved my general outlook on life.
Things I have left to do before houseguest arrives:
Pick up some groceries
Make soup (this should be the #1 on all my to do lists simply because it always makes me feel better)
Do Laundry
Make her bed
Clean bathroom
Clean living room
Doesn't seem so bad anymore. Off to bed to get lots of sleep for whatever it is that is making me so miserable!
Sick and swamped
Last night I started feeling the start of a fever, and this time my echinacea tea didn't do anything to stave off whatever it is that I'm getting. Adding to my troubles is the imminent arrival of a very young and naive house guest, one who needs to learn that 48 hours isn't enough notice! I have so much to do around the house, I have a deadline for accepted manuscript, and I am feeling sick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)