Focus
The last week or so have been a bit underdone. A weakness of mine, that is often a strength too, is that I work well under pressure. Give me a deadline and an external person to be accountable to, and I get it done. Not just done, but usually done to a pretty decent standard. The weakness in this trait is that I find it hard to work when there is no REAL pressure to produce something out of that work. When I say real pressure, what I mean is the kind where I am responsible for an outcome either in a public forum or to someone else’s expectations. It’s not real when I set myself deadlines and I am only answering to myself. In those situations, I’m rather skilled at making and then accepting some pretty crappy excuses…
Right now, my only deadlines are seemingly far ahead in time, and they each have the potential to be pushed back by spans of weeks and months. I suppose that is one of the sneaky challenges of undertaking a PhD; that is, being given a major task that is so flexible and not particularly time-limited. When also trying to maintain a life outside of my uni work, the easy option is always to push the uni work back. I’m working on not taking the easy option, but self-discipline doesn’t happen overnight.
Self-management
I’m generally pretty organised in my work environment, and have a lot of variations on the theme of “a place for everything and everything in its place”. The difficulty for me is not getting organised, but staying organised.
Lately, I’ve been lamely accepting barriers to staying organised. Here are some of my enlightened thoughts on the topic from the past week:
“I’m feeling sick.” “I can’t be bothered.” “I’ll leave it until next week.” “It’s not as important as I think it is.” “I’m wasting time pushing papers.” “I don’t want to do it.”
Enthralling, right? Lots of excuses, but not a whole lot of DOING.
The goal for this week is to DO MORE GREAT WORK. I’ve already started off in the right way, by taking all of Sunday to do a bit of Life Laundry and planning for the week ahead. These organisational tasks have already helped me to re-focus, re-align, de-clutter, and get myself back under control. Regularly applied, it all comes down to SUPPORTING the GREAT WORK I’ll be doing in the weeks and months and years ahead.