Ever wear your to-do list like a badge of honour?
I do.
And I don’t think I’m the only one.
If I’m not careful, anything other than a jam-packed to do list can be seen as a sign of failure or of laziness. Sometimes without realising I fill my day to the brim with tasks, dancing from one job to another every 30 minutes, never truly settling into any of them.
Are you the same?
Do you approach your PhD in the same way? Constantly flirting between different tasks as a way of filling your day and satisfying a need to feel busy?
Then you’ll know that by jumping from one job to the next, you never really find any flow. Just when you get in the zone, then comes along the next appointment.
Snapping out of a flow state is easy. Getting back in is hard.
This stop-start workflow is doing nothing for your productivity. Try this instead:
Block off several hours for a task that you may have previously divided into smaller chunks and spread over numerous days. Keep it whole, allocate a whole afternoon to it and find that focus and flow. You’ll work more efficiently and you’ll get more done. Find flow, stay there and get the project finished.
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