Making a plan

Some thoughts on how to make plans to get things done, especially if you’re in a state of overwhelm. Remember that every time you make these types of plans and lists, you are practicing managing your own emotions, setting boundaries, and reinforcing priorities.

I like to start by making the laundry list of everything that’s on my mind. If I’m really overwhelmed or have minimal resilience, sometimes that list leads to a spiral of doom, so it’s good to have a plan to take a walk or meditate or something after making the list, to rebalance. Other times I can operate off that unordered to-do list, but I’m more likely to miss a time-sensitive item.

To help prevent missing deadlines for time-sensitive things, or to continue managing overwhelm, I like to re-organize the list by a) importance, and b) urgency (aka the Eisenhower Matrix). When deciding importance, factor in your personal and professional values and goals (e.g. I want to have a career doing research that addresses real world problems, currently in the setting of academia…therefore I need papers and grants aligned with those goals).

I also try to be realistic about what other people would think I need to do vs. what I think I need to do, because sometimes I make unnecessary deadlines for myself. To put it another way, I have a mentee right now torn between preparing a presentation of findings and finishing analysis. My argument is that they are required to make the presentation, during which they could say “this is a preliminary analysis based on coding ½ of the data”, but they are not at the point where they’ve accepted or internalized this possibility. I’ve learned over time that drafting manuscript outlines or presentations in the middle of analysis can actually help the analysis progress – because it’s all important thinking that helps me toggle between big picture and weeds. But my skill at this has grown a lot over the last 6 years. I’ve gotten better at doing this on the fly, so now my regular to-do list is organized by urgency/importance based on my values.

Next, if I’ve got large tasks on my to-do list, like “finish and submit paper”, I break that down into smaller and smaller pieces. I prioritize based on what is in my control (I need to write an outline) vs. what isn’t (waiting on analyses from a co-author).  

There was a time where I made extensive gantt charts to map out timelines for one (read: a handful) of research projects/papers. I’ve moved away from this – it took me too much time and I was always way too optimistic. If you’re adding a time estimate to your to-do list, triple whatever you’ve got so far unless you’ve spent a lot of time in your career tracking how long things take you.

Then I make a new, small to-do list. You’ve heard and seen me do this before, if you’ve been reading these for awhile. This is my daily list of must-dos: One wellness task, one first-author research task, one service task, but I try to have the first-author research task be the largest each day. This doesn’t work as well for urgent large tasks (like finishing a grant) but does help with daily task management.

A key part of all of this: recruit help. I’ve gotten stuck thinking “I just have to do this one thing and then I can send it to coauthors” and it’s slowed me down by 6 months or more because I am doing too many other things. I’ve tried to protect myself against this by putting comments in margins of papers (or the equivalent) acknowledging all the things I am planning to do.

Finally, get out in the sun (or fog) for some fresh air and new perspectives.