Today was my department’s second scheduled “Focus Day”, but for me it is the first because I was teaching last week. My department is trialling Focus Days for a six-week period. Staff have expressed a desire for more time to have unbroken concentration on important but non-urgent tasks. For academics like myself, this will generally mean things like work in support of papers and grant proposals. So, it’s a license to switch off emails and turn down meetings so that you can buckle down and have some serious time to think deeply and work with focus.
Personally, this day was a success from the get-go. By 9:00 this morning, I was brimming with creative energy. It was almost impossible to pick something to actually focus on! Luckily, I had decided earlier in the week what I would be doing and I stuck to it. I chose two very different types of task to work on to minimize the drainage caused by ‘task switching’. One task was a concentration-intensive one; the other was just stuff that needed doing but needed me to be occasionally present. I also kept the list short to ensure success and that I feel positive about the outcome of the day by the end of it. The first task was simply to get some specimens I am working on into a bath of acid in the lab. This is digesting the carbonate rock off the fossils to extract the bones. These can sit in the acid for an hour or so before I need to go back to the lab. So, it was easy to schedule doing this stuff as part of a break from the other thing. That other thing was working on some long overdue co-author input into a manuscript I’m collaborating on about modern shark functional evolution. This is a project I’m super excited about. It was something I started years ago, but the vicissitudes of academic life had put it on hold. As it happened, another group was independently working on it and we’ve now joined forces. Thanks to their efforts, there’s a manuscript that should soon be getting submitted (once I get off my butt and do my part!). Again, I chose some very specific, finite and achievable tasks: a quick read-through of the MS and generate some action items in terms of re-writes or further research. I managed to very quickly identify those and set to work on them. The result was a major breakthrough in the progress of this manuscript and what I think will make it a more exciting paper. How did I prepare for the day? It is important to prepare for the day because without a bit of task management, old habits can creep in and, before you know it, you’re filling out an expense claim or writing a letter of recommendation. Here’s how I got started today: - Before starting work, I cleared out a couple of urgent tasks before starting my day. This isn’t something I’d recommend as normal practice for Focus Day. However, as Focus Day is a new thing I’m working into an existing work pattern, it was a helpful way to start this first one. A couple of household chores and a recommendation letter got done before I went to the office. - I decided to do my focus day in the office, because that would be most free from distractions. For some people, it will be the other way. - Ensured a good supply of coffee and snacks. Major key to success: I treated two 1.5-hour blocks of time the way I would lecture time. That meant that I: - Finite work hours. As noted, the main focus time was actually concentrated into two 1..5 hour blocks. So the time 'scarcity principle' was still at work. It meant I didn't dawdle around websurfing, but spent time moving the needle on important stuff. - Switched my phone’s notifications off (do-not-disturb mode) for the 1.5 hour periods. - Email and any instant messengers were closed/off. I always do this when working on anything anyway, but this will be the case for much more of today. Overall, this focus day was quite productive for me. I feel like I got more done than I would have had I tried to do this work on one of my regular morning ‘deep work’ sessions. The freedom to not have to deal with ad hoc communication kept my mind free of distracting ‘open loops’. What I noticed was the fact that I was having a lot more creative thinking—getting new ideas and piecing together disparate ones in new ways.
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Martin d brazeauPalaeontologist, fieldworker, sometimes phylogenetic programmer. Transplanted Canadian in UK. All views are my own. How to pronounce my name? Rhymes with "bureau" or "chateau". He/him/his. Archives
December 2022
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