This past week was the last week leading up to my winter break off from teaching.  I finished up my last two school performances, turned in my last two papers and was finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel from this long and hectic semester! As much as I wanted to just shut down early, I knew that if I did I’d have an even bigger pile of work awaiting me when I came back in January. Even though my motivation was waning, I had a lot of meat tasks to get through like planning out my teaching time-line for the next quarter, designing worksheets for my students to help them with their new music and making further progress on an ongoing research project for grad school. Boy, I did not feel like doing any of this!

When we finally force ourselves to begin meat tasks we don’t want to do, we tend to start one, work on it until it gets difficult and then stop and move on to another task. Then we work on that one until it also gets to a difficult point and move on to another one. In the short term, we feel good about ourselves because we have mustered up the motivation to start all these tasks we really didn’t want to do, but in the long term we’ve made it much harder on ourselves. Now, all the easy parts of the meat tasks are done and we’ve got nothing but difficult parts left! If we thought it was difficult to motivate ourselves before, now it’s going to be doubly difficult because we know the easy parts are done and we’re left with the tough things to chew through.

It was very tempting to just do all the easy parts of my meat tasks before winter break and save the tough parts for January, but I knew that would just make me spend my two weeks off dreading going back to work. Instead, when I hit my first speed bump in a task, I forced myself to push past it and keep going. We all know what that’s like when we are beginning a big task and we hit that first major stumbling block. There is a pivotal moment where we can either stop, or push past it. When you catch yourself getting to that point, and you know you just want to stop and save the tough stuff for later remind yourself that it’s not going to be any easier to finish later. You don’t have to finish the whole task now, but if you don’t at least start on the tough part, it’s going to be so much harder to force yourself into “work mode” again.  Spreading out your meat tasks over time is important, but deciding how to break up the chunks is even more vital to managing your motivation.

So we all know that a day rarely goes by when we don’t have to add something to our choose-to list by mid-afternoon. That is all part of being flexible. However, in some cases adding something to the list is a bad idea. When a new task pops up during the day, if it takes less than 5-minutes, don’t add it to the list. Just do it now. You’re not going to feel any more like doing it later and it’s better to just do it right now before it sits on your list forever. These little few-minutes tasks are usually vegetable tasks, and as any 7 year old can tell you, putting off eating your vegetables doesn’t make them disappear! It just makes them that much more disgusting to eat.

This happens to me with paperwork at school all the time. I’ll check my mailbox and there will be some new tax form the district needs me to fill out, or a quality survey or some other sort of paperwork. It is really tempting to just grab it, put it on my desk, and add it to my choose-to list for another time. I know if this happens, it will just get covered up with other things and I’ll completely forget about it until the school secretary has to call me and ask why I haven’t done this simple thing yet. Since I couldn’t say I’ve been too busy, (because- let’s face it- everyone has at least 2 spare minutes in their lives to fill out a form) I’ll have to tell the truth and just say I didn’t feel like it. This makes me look really flakey and wastes the secretary’s time. Instead, I never let paperwork like this touch my desk. I fill it out as soon as I get it and it’s done. It never takes more than a few minutes, and I don’t have to worry about it.

The 5-Minute Rule is especially important if the task you need to do directly affects someone else’s ability to move forward on a project. For example, the other day I was working on some homework when I noticed a professor had emailed me asking if I could write a 2-3 sentence quote for a grant proposal he was writing. My first thought was to email him back and say that I’d have it to him by tomorrow. I’d finish my homework, have lunch and then sit down and figure out what I wanted to say. But then I realized that he was probably working on the proposal right now. It would only take me a minute or two to figure out something to say and send it back. Grant proposals can be lengthy and have firm deadlines and I didn’t want to hold anything up. So, I took a few moments away from my paper, wrote out a quote for him to use, and sent it off. Done. Now I can get back to my work and he can send off his proposal. Nothing is worse than having to delay a deadline because you’re waiting on things from other people. Especially when you know that the thing you’re waiting for doesn’t take very long at all.

Ah, Thanksgiving weekend. A time when both regular diets and Time Diets traditionally go out the window as we gorge ourselves on pumpkin pie and spend the rest of our time napping, shopping, or watching football. The best part of this holiday weekend is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with suspending your Time Diet for a few days. After all, for many of us those 4 days are one big giant “dessert” in our schedule that we’ve looked forward to since August. The problem is when your enjoyment is interrupted because you start feeling guilty about not doing work. Don’t fall into this trap! Feeling guilty about not doing work when you are on vacation accomplishes nothing. You neither get work done nor enjoy your time off.

Think about it like this: At Thanksgiving dinner, many people eat more food than they would ever think of eating at a normal meal. Feeling guilty about it the next day does nothing. You can’t exactly put back what you ate and what is the point of indulging once a year if your guilty conscience won’t let you enjoy it? Instead, if you decide you are going to allow yourself to indulge at this holiday meal, then just do it and be done with it. The same is true for your Time Diet. Remember, good time management skills only come when you are in control of what you do. If you decide to take these 4 days off, great! Do it and don’t look back. Everyone deserves a break once in a while and if you decide you can afford it now, don’t feel guilty for taking one. I have a ton of reading that I need to do for next week and I was going to take it with me on our Thanksgiving vacation but I forgot it at home. I’m glad I did because it turns out I didn’t feel like working at all and knowing my reading was sitting up in my suitcase would have made me feel guilty for sitting with my feet up by the fire.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with the ones you love. The holiday season can be a busy time but you want to make sure to keep your stress level in check so you can actually enjoy it. Make sure to check back every week for more tips on maintaining your Time Diet in this famously hectic time!

The Time Diet is based on the idea that you are the one in control of your time. The problem is that sometimes it doesn’t feel like that! Have you ever been in the middle of something and been interrupted when a friend, colleague or family member asks, “Hey, do you have a second?” Before you even have a chance to answer they will launch into whatever it is they need from you and now your focus is interrupted. Also, I guarantee that it will take longer than a “second.”

It’s not that these interruptions are trivial. They are often questions or problems that someone would like you to weigh-in on. The Time Diet recognizes that the needs of others are important and that it’s unfair to put off a task that directly impacts the productivity of someone else. However, it’s important that fulfilling the needs of others does not constantly interrupt your own work. The next time someone asks you if you “have a second” when you’re in the middle something, just say no! After you politely but firmly explain that you are in the middle of a task, set up a time to talk to this person later. This could be as simple as asking them to email you their question, or telling them that you’ll call them after dinner. It is important to say when you’ll give this person attention. Just telling them to “wait until later” sends the message that their needs are unimportant.

By the same token, don’t catch yourself being the person that’s interrupting! It’s important to respect other people’s time just like you want your time to be respected. If your question is not urgent and you know the person you need is working, leave them a note or quick message instead. Your friends and colleagues will thank you for it!

Part of a successful Time Diet is remaining in control of your schedule and your attitude toward time management. A good way to do this is to anticipate when your hectic and difficult times are going to be and plan ahead for them. For example, I know that every year toward the middle of October, I start to worry about how I’m going to get everything done before the semester ends in December. The reality of all these impending deadlines starts to set in and I start to go into panic mode. Luckily, I know this is going to happen so I can plan ahead to deal with it.

The second half of a semester is usually more stressful than the first, so I try to get as much done ahead of time in the beginning of the semester as possible. I may have a lot of things to do in December, but at least I’ve started them! I also know that by the time mid-October comes around I am desperate for a get-away, so my husband and I planned a 3-day trip to San Francisco. There was so much work I could have been doing during those 3 days, but this trip was a much-needed “dessert” and it was well worth it.

When do your hectic times occur during the year? Is there anything you can do now that will help ease the stress and workload of those times? If nothing else, you can at least look back on all the hectic times you’ve survived in the past and move forward with the knowledge that you’ve gotten through it before and you’ll get through it again. As for me, I know I’ve gotten through other stressful Octobers before and by the time December gets here I’ll have everything done that needs to be done. Besides, if I’m not working, I want to be relaxing, not worrying about what deadlines are coming up!