Dynamic School

Posts Tagged ‘Academic’

Time can be your friend or your enemy.  For many people who have “free time” to accomplish long-term projects or writing tasks, it is a merciless tyrant.  It is just too easy to allow the slightly harder task to slide, as you fill in your day with the humdrum and the emergencies.

The Enemy You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You

In Procrastination:  Why You Do It; What to Do About It by Jane Burka and Lenor Yuen, the authors suggest that procrastinators (which I’m convinced means most of us) have a strange relationship with time.  They engage in “wishful thinking:” they believe that they can magically pull and stretch time to meet their needs. They act as if time is not finite and limited.

So if time perpetually controls you, it may be because you don’t understand it.  You think that small tasks will be endless (so you put off doing them,) or you think big tasks will just take an hour or two (so you don’t leave enough time for them.)

As a matter of fact, research has shown that most people overestimate how much time they have actually spent on their most important long-term projects.

Another reason time controls you, according to Burka and Yuen, is that you have no idea how much time you’re already spending on tasks such as commuting, shopping, cooking or emailing.  Therefore it’s a mystery how much free time is available for the difficult yet easy-to-put-off tasks that seem so overwhelming.

Or maybe you’ve voluntarily overscheduled yourself due to your “endlessly-expanding” view of time.  Little by little you’ve used up your free time.

The Unschedule

How can you tame time?

Enter the “Unschedule.”  The Unschedule is a time management tool developed by Neil Fiore, the author of The Now Habit.

To create your own unschedule, either download from the link in my signature file below, or use a weekly calendar that divides each day into hours.

Here are the rules to make the Unschedule work for you:
·    Use a pencil to allow for later changes
·    Write down everything you must do in the coming week, NOT including your long-term project.
o    Include everything, including meals, sleep, commuting, appointments, and classes
o    Estimate when and how long each will take and mark it in your Unschedule on the hours you most likely will do each activity
o    Include recreation, leisure and social activities (crucial!)
·    Look at your Unschedule at this point to become aware of
o    How much unscheduled time is actually available
o    What’s missing from your life – do you have enough time for fun, socializing, and just decompressing?
·    As the week progresses, each time that you work on your Project for at least 30 minutes, mark it in your Unschedule (Fiore insists on 30, but I say 15 is enough.)  Remember, you don’t mark it in ahead of time.  It works best if you can highlight those time blocks in color.  You can then total the amount of time spent working towards your goal at the end of each day and week.

Why Fill In the Time Blocks AFTER You Work on Your Project?

This accomplishes several things:
·    You avoid being disappointed in yourself (as you may have in the past because you scheduled so much Project time and then let yourself down by not accomplishing the work.)
·    If you have a rebellious streak, you will not having anything to rebel against, since you haven’t filled in the times you MUST work ahead of time
·    You will feel good about what you HAVE done as opposed to bad about what you haven’t done
·    You will be reminded to reward yourself by switching to a more enjoyable activity
·    You will more easily be able to track how much you have actually worked on your project each week, as opposed to how much time you wished you would work on your project.
·    You will prove to yourself that small blocks of time DO add up, and are worth doing.
·    You can look for patterns – e.g., discover your best work times or days.

If working with a schedule hasn’t worked for you, if you recognize that you have a distorted relationship with time, or if you’re just a garden-variety procrastinator like most of us, then the Unschedule may be for you.  Try it!

Incoming search terms:

• now habit unschedule template

Are You Setting Yourself Up to Procrastinate?

“How can I stop procrastinating?”
This is by far the most frequent question that I get from graduate students and professors. As a dissertation and tenure coach, I’ve come to realize that everyone in academia, whether writing a dissertation, completing an article, or doing research, struggles with procrastination. Why is this so prevalent in such a well-educated, intelligent population?

You’ve Got the Wrong Attitude

Your belief system is what may be standing in the way. Most academics cling to the belief that they must set aside large chunks of time, do a lot of preparation, and be in the proper frame of mind to be able to write.
What this means is that when you finally sit down to write, it’s going to be an unpleasant marathon. You have placed such importance on this writing session that you feel anxiety about it living up to your expectations. And you know it’s going to be difficult. After all, there are thorny issues you haven’t addressed, articles you haven’t read or reread, and a lack of coherence to your thinking. You need to solve those problems. And if you don’t do it now you’ll be quite disappointed in yourself. How unpleasant! And how counterproductive!

What Should You Believe Instead? Or “Oh, The Irony!”

Research by Robert Boyce actually shows that first and second-year professors who participated in a study on writing productivity were able to turn out more publishable pages in a year by
· Writing 30 minutes a day
· Only writing on workdays
· Shoehorning that writing into small gaps in their busy schedules

The difficult part, it turns out, was convincing these professors to try this low-key method in the first place. Ironically, they all insisted that the only way to get real work done was to do it in the marathon way that I described above.
The second irony was that when Boyce actually measured the amount that they were writing per week (before the intervention,) it was less than 30 minutes per week! This was much less than their retrospective reports of how much time they had been spending writing.

The third irony was that those who most adhered to the idea that you must write in large doses were the least productive.
The fourth irony was that although these professors considered writing a private activity, they did best when they were accountable to someone for maintaining their 30-minute writing habit.

Do It Already!

So what’s stopping you from learning from these professors and writing a small amount each day?
Here are typical excuses:
· It’s just not rewarding writing in small amounts. I feel like I’ve gotten
nothing accomplished.
· I have a big issue to work out. It will take more time than 30 minutes.
· I feel guilty if I don’t work more each time.
· I’ll never complete my dissertation/paper/research project at that pace.
· I’ve waited until it’s too late and I can’t afford the luxury of that small
amount of time per day.
· It just doesn’t feel right.
· I’ve got more time than that, I should be putting all my time to good use.
· It’s so overwhelming that I don’t know where to start, and by the time I
figure it out my 30 minutes will be up.

My answer to those responses? Bull! Except for the emergency deadline, there is no reason not to try this technique. Give it time to see if it works for you. If you’re like every other academic I’ve worked with, you will resist the idea. I suggest that the more resistant you are, the more problem you’ve probably had with procrastination in the past.

An Action Plan

Try it for a week. Select a time each day, preferably not the evening unless you’re a night owl, and write for 30 minutes, without email, reading or other distractions. Don’t listen to the voices in your head saying you “should be getting more done,” or “you should be writing more than this.” I’ll bet at the end of the week you’ll be pleasantly surprised at your output, and pleased with the increasing ease with which you can sit down to write. You’ll start to see progress on your dissertation or article and maybe come to believe that you will finish one day.

Furthermore, don’t forget about being accountable to someone. Let someone else know that you’re going to be doing daily writing. Perhaps you can find a writing buddy, or someone in your dissertation group. Or join one of my coaching groups – our listservs allow for lots of accountability during the week! My membership site, CafeAcademia.com (stay tuned,) will have a place for finding writing buddies.

Don’t forget, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Start setting yourself up for success starting right now!

Based on endless discussions upon the usefulness of University degrees, it seems obvious that undergraduate and especially graduate students around the globe constantly wonder what the outcome of their efforts will be. Since perceptions and goals differ, so does the interpretation of the word outcome, especially when the complex issue of knowledge and academic performance is evaluated. Inside the realm of a University’s environment, the outcome for most students is the actual value of their academic performance, the product of their intellectual exchange. Monetary or spiritual, the discussed value is usually interpreted as a product ready to be consumed by the private or public sector after the completion of the academic effort by the subject. But, is this interpretation a misconception, or the only outcome of contemporary Universities? Are students misusing the term or have they misplaced some of the values that used to govern the intellectual world?

In fact, making more money Hand reaching a desired social status are the main reasons that drive prospective students to pursue a degree. Future gains are considered to be the basic motivation that urges people to strive for superior academic performance. Moreover, the fierce competitive environment of every discipline forces the individual to identify new ways of excelling and increasing his/her bargaining power before facing an interested employer. This capitalistic notion of today’s reality has forced institutions to recognize the power of monetary gains and has made the academic world a microcosm of this obvious shift in values. Under this social transformation and having to deal with these strong socioeconomic forces, Universities are challenged to survive as intellectual entities. In this altered environment, the academic changes that many scholars have identified have transformed modern Universities into corporate agents.

Moreover, the meaning of excellence has been altered. Nowadays, it is considered a synonym with quality of studies and is used as a basic marketing tool. Through this generic term, prospective students can be attracted and applications collected. A change has occurred to the initial intention of an application. Students do not enter an institution in order to acquire the intellectual pleasure of a degree, to elevate their knowledge, and increase their critical understanding regarding the world, but rather to acquire the intangible asset of a University’s name as later this intangible asset will be translated in totally tangible outcomes. The most promising institution is the one which is most attractive to companies who wish to employ its alumni, since corporate managers have shifted their focus from what is taught inside a classroom to the physical location of that classroom. Thus, students who compete for the same corporate position tend to value differently the outcome of their studies. By evaluating their institutions’ after-graduate appeal, as well as the rating scores issued by academic journals, students tend to consider their degree as a commodity rather than a reward for their intellectual struggle.

But the fact still remains that students enter a classroom ready to discuss, listen and share their beliefs. Depending on whether the existing academic environment promotes this intellectual exchange, students will shape their characters and value systems. There is no misconception of the role Universities play today. As different values penetrate an academic institution, its stakeholders integrate academic and social roles. These global citizens can give birth to the altered University’s role, by accepting or rejecting the proposed changes during their time.