Top 10 Tips to Thrive During Crunch Time

This week is the last week of my semester and like most academics, the end of the semester is an incredibly busy and stressful time! My classes are coming to a close, my students are hysterical, my colleagues are cranky, and deadlines are looming. In short, it's crunch time!

The End-of-Semester Crunch
If you're already clear about your plan to get from this moment to the end of your semester: CONGRATULATIONS!
But if you are like me, you may be feeling concerned about how all the grading, meetings, holiday parties, and writing deadlines will get completed without a meltdown. Typically, I can juggle all the balls in the air during a regular work-week, but the end of the semester always brings a few flaming objects into the mix. Because I believe that stressful times call for unique coping strategies, I have collected the wisdom of some of my mentors about how to maintain balance and sanity during the end of semester crunch. I hope you find these ideas as useful as I have over the past few years.

Top 10 Tips for Thriving During Crunch Time

Tip #1: Clearly communicate to others that it is crunch time

Let those who live with you and/or are impacted by your behavior know that the next week (or two) will be difficult, assure them that it's a finite period of time, and let them know you appreciate their support and understanding. I find that people are willing to assist me as long as I communicate my needs ahead of time.

Tip #2: Lower your standards in non-essential areas of life
I'm what's known as a "neat-freak" but during crunch time, I give myself permission to be a slob. It's okay because it's only one week. I love to eat out, but during crunch time, I'm okay with peanut butter and pickle sandwiches because I don't' have time for anything else. And that's okay because it's only one week of the semester. I sleep 9 hours per night. During crunch time, I sleep 9 hours per night! That's because sleep is not negotiable for me. The point is to ask yourself: what can I let slide a bit for the next week (or two) without negative consequences?

Tip #3: Ruthlessly assess what grading ACTUALLY needs to get done
Many students do not read comments that are given on final papers and projects. I ask my students to indicate if they want me to write comments on their final papers. Fewer than 10% request the comments and I save hours of grading that would never have been read, while concentrating my comments on the students who genuinely want feedback and will benefit from it.

Tip #4: Say NO to EVERY SERVICE REQUEST from now until the end of the semester
When it's crunch time, the worst thing you can do is to take on additional responsibilities. Refer back to "The N-Word" and "Just Say No" Monday Motivators if you need ideas on how to say NO!

Tip #5: Every day needs a plan
Use your Sunday Meeting this week to develop a task list and map each of your tasks onto a specific time slot on your calendar. If you don't have enough time for the tasks just delegate them or let them go. Then each morning, spend two minutes reviewing the items you need to complete for that day. This will keep you focused and confident that the truly important things will get done.

Tip #6: Write for 30-60 minutes each day
When we feel crunched for time, the first thing we are ready to sacrifice is our daily writing time. This semester, put yourself, your future, and your daily writing time into the non-negotiable category. There are other ways to be efficient than eliminating the one activity that is central to your promotion, tenure, and mobility.

Tip #7: Only check e-mail 1 time per day (max)
E-mail begets e-mail. When you have little time, one of the least effective ways to spend it is writing e-mail. I'm only able to restrict my e-mail to once-a-day during crunch periods. But for one week, it's unlikely to cause a crisis and typically works out just fine.

Tip #8: Sign off all listserv's until January
If you subscribe to any listserv's, sign off until the new year. Most people sign off during the holidays, so why not do so now? Listserv's create lots of e-mail in your in-box and very little is critical information that you can't do without between now and January.

Tip #9: Take Care of Your Body
Exercise reduces stress. When I don't have time to go to the gym, I take the stairs in my building, walk a few laps around the block at lunch, or just having extra energetic sex with my husband. Be creative! Whatever you need to do to get your heart rate up and your body moving will benefit you during crunch time. If you need stress relieving ideas, see the "How do you relieve stress?" thread on the discussion forums for some great ideas.

Tip #10: End Every Day With Gratitude and a Treat!
As each day comes to a close, take a moment to thank the universe for all that went well and affirm that everything in your life is working for your highest good. I insist on a treat every day during crunch time because I complete a huge amount of work in such a short period of time! If you need ideas for treats, check the discussion forum thread: "How Do You Treat Yourself?"

This Week's Challenge
As we head into crunch time, I challenge you to:

• Acknowledge that the end of the semester is a stressful time
• Pro-actively create strategies to manage the stress
  
• If you've never tried a Sunday Meeting, go ahead and give it a shot!
• Spend two minutes at the beginning of each day reviewing your daily plan and spend two minutes at the end of each day in gratitude for all the things you accomplished
  
• Write every day this week for 30-60 minutes
• Say "NO" with confidence and grace
• Try visiting the discussion forum for some comfort, laughter, support, and community during these stressful times and/or join the December Writing Challenge.
  
• If you're finding yourself at the end of another semester without any significant progress on your writing projects, consider signing up TODAY for the last tele-workshop of the semester Writing, Procrastination, and Resistance: How to Identify Your Funk and Move Through it. The workshop is this Tuesday night, so if you've been telling yourself that you'll register later, please do so today.

Since this is my last week of classes, this is the last Monday Motivator for 2009. I'll be back in January and the theme for the Spring Semester will be The Most Common Mistakes New Faculty Make & How to Avoid Them. I want to thank everyone for your generous support and kind e-mails throughout the term. I continue to be inspired by all the positive changes taking place in your lives and deeply grateful for your willingness to share your struggles and celebrations with me. I hope that the Winter Break brings each of you a successful conclusion to your semester, lots of well-deserved rest, and tremendous holiday joy!

Peace and Productivity,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD
Associate Professor of African American Studies & Sociology
University of Illinois at Chicago
Phone: 773-285-4901
E-Mail: KerryAnn@NewFacultySuccess.com
Web: www.NewFacultySuccess.com
Blog: NewFacultySuccess.blogspot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/divaprof

Thanksgiving: Binge or Break?

This week contains two reasons to give thanks: 1) the Thanksgiving holiday, and 2) a few days off from classes, meetings, and campus activities! How will you spend your holiday break this week? Are you planning a writing binge or a writing break? Will it be a time of enjoyment spent with family and friends, or will it be a time where you are the sole inhabitant of your department floor, working away on your writing projects? As always, there's no right or wrong answer. Instead I want to encourage you to make conscious choices that meet your needs and reflect on how your approach to Thanksgiving Break is related to your daily work habits.

The Break-As-Binge Model

Many new faculty members view scheduled breaks in the academic calendar (Thanksgiving Break, Christmas Break, and Spring Break) as a time to catch up on writing projects that they planned to work on during the semester, but did not. These breaks hold the promise of writing salvation: large blocks of uninterrupted time, solitude (either at home or in a campus office without others around), and the leisure time to just THINK. Many imagine that they can finally go into a multi-day writing frenzy and come out the other side with their goals met.

Unfortunately, that beautiful imagined break often gets disturbed by the reality that holidays include travel, family obligations, and/or various types of personal commitments, all of which require time and energy. For many people, classroom and departmental obligations are often simply replaced by equally time intensive commitments with family and friends.

When the binge is successful, we feel back on track with our writing projects and a sense of significant professional progress. But the cost is often physical and mental exhaustion, and (if family and friends expect our attention) some strain on our personal relationships. When the binge is unsuccessful and we don't accomplish all we imagined, we may experience guilt, disappointment and shame over another broken promise to ourselves. While I have binged on many breaks in the past out of necessity, it has always felt like I lost more than I gained. For me, bingeing was simply an unsustainable way to work over the long haul of an academic career.


The Break-As-Break Model

For those of you who write every day and make slow-and-steady progress, holiday breaks are real breaks (as in a time to rest from work). If you have created a semester plan for your writing, paid yourself first every morning by writing for 30-60 minutes, and made consistent progress towards your writing goals, then treating the break as a break makes perfect sense. In short, the Break-As-Break Model is possible when you have successfully shifted from hoping for large blocks of time for writing to pro-actively creating small blocks of time in your daily schedule.

Ultimately, how we understand Thanksgiving Break speaks volumes about how we work on a daily basis AND how we understand the core of our professional identity. In other words, when my normal daily existence includes writing, then a "break" means a break from writing. But when my daily routine is spent serving everyone else around me, then a "break" means a break from meeting the needs of my students and colleagues and a time in which I can finally attend to my own needs. If you subscribe to the Monday Motivator, it's probably because you are trying to make that subtle but important shift in your professional identity from being reactive to the needs of others (and spending the vast majority of your time on teaching and service) to pro-actively establishing yourself as a scholar (by carving out time for research and writing). I know it's hard and I know it doesn't happen overnight. I also know you WILL get there over time as you slowly but surely make adjustments in your daily behavior.

I want to encourage you to spend this Thanksgiving Break in whatever way that your needs dictate. It's okay to binge and it's okay to take a break. And I also want you to ask yourself: 

1. What do my plans for Thanksgiving Break say about my daily work patterns?
2. Am I satisfied with my work life and productivity?
3. Is my current productivity putting me on track to get what I want (completing my degree, getting a job, tenure and promotion, disseminating my groundbreaking ideas, etc...)
   
4. Is it time to make some additional behavioral changes?  

If you want support over the break for your binge OR if you want to start making changes in your writing behavior, know that you have a loving community of support in my discussion forum. The forum is designed as a private safe-space to gather, communicate openly and honestly about your experiences in Academia, collectively problem-solve, engage in peer-mentoring, and share information. The honesty and wisdom that are shared in this online community serve as a pleasant departure from what many of us experience in our departments and often provide the context for making empowered changes in those spaces.

The Weekly Challenge

If you are unhappy with your productivity, I challenge you to:

• Honestly assess where you are and how you feel physically, emotionally, relationally and professionally.
• Based on that assessment, decide how you need to spend your break and do so without guilt, shame or judgment.
• If you hope to be in a different place by Christmas Break, take a few moments at your Sunday Meeting this week to start thinking what small changes you can make NOW to move in that direction.
• Consider joining the November Writing Challenge if you intend to binge through the break.
• If you need a jump start, consider signing up now for the last tele-workshop of the semester Writing, Procrastination, and Resistance: How to Identify Your Funk and Move Through it.
  
• Thank the universe for all your many blessings!

I am incredibly thankful to YOU for reading the Monday Motivator each week and forwarding it to others! My subscriber list has grown from a handful of my mentees to over 2000 graduate students, post-docs, and new faculty. I am also thankful for the amazing, supportive and inspiring group of writers that show up every day in the discussion forum. My own productivity has soared with the nurturing of this online community.

I hope that this week brings each of you the strength to honestly assess your needs, the clarity to make whatever adjustments are necessary, and the rest you so richly deserve!


Peace and Productivity,
Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD
Associate Professor of African American Studies & Sociology
University of Illinois at Chicago
Phone: 773-285-4901
E-Mail: KerryAnn@NewFacultySuccess.com
Web: www.NewFacultySuccess.com
Blog: NewFacultySuccess.blogspot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/divaprof
 

The Myth of the Muse

Several years ago, I met a young social scientist at a cocktail party here in Chicago. He had just finished his first semester on the tenure track, so I asked him if he was making time for academic writing. Like many new faculty, he told me that his first semester had flown by and he hadn't written a single word. I asked if he had ever tried daily writing and he looked at me as if I had suggested he try a daily colonic. Even after I argued that daily writing was an empirically documented strategy for success, he dismissed the idea as "impossible" because he was only able to write when he felt "inspired." His writing process involved being touched by The Muse, dropping everything in his life, and sinking into a multi-day writing frenzy. He assured me that this is how he got through graduate school and that he felt confident The Muse was right around the corner.


I have this same conversation with new faculty all the time. And each time, I am stunned that otherwise rational people -- who are on a ticking tenure clock -- feel comfortable waiting to be "touched by The Muse" in order to fulfill the primary requirements of their job: research, writing, and publication.
 
Unfortunately, I received a crisis call from this particular faculty member three years later. After receiving a critical third year review, he realized that his writing-when-inspired plan was not going to win him tenure. While his department found his service and teaching exemplary, they made clear that his publication record was below expectations. Facing an extremely small window of time until he would be reviewed for tenure and promotion, he realized he would have to make quick and dramatic changes in order to meet his institution's publication standards.

For this faculty member, the writing strategies he used in graduate school were fine for that particular stage of his academic career. But as he moved from graduate student to professor, he encountered greater responsibilities, new pressures, and competing demands for his time. The reality of life on the tenure-track left him feeling exhausted far more often than he felt inspired. Because he was still relying on old assumptions and behaviors that were no longer functional, he came up short on the most important determinant of his institutional evaluation, his marketability, and his long term reputation in his discipline. He (like most of us) had to consciously move from "hoping" that inspiration would strike, to doing the one thing that productive academic writers do: write every day.


YOU Control Your Writing


I think that some tenure-track faculty cling to the Myth of The Muse because they conceptualize writing as an externally driven process that is beyond their individual control. When I hear new faculty say they only write when they are "inspired" to do so, it signals to me that they have not yet internalized the fact that writing is our job. We don't wait to be "inspired" to teach our classes, and I've never heard anyone say they must be touched by the "Meeting Muse" before they can attend a committee meeting. We just do these things as normal everyday activities.

This week, I want to encourage you to critically engage your core assumptions about the writing process and consider the idea that you control your writing. Academic writing doesn't just happen in sporadic fits of inspiration. Instead, articles and books get completed when ideas meet hard work over sustained periods of time. And as any daily writer knows, inspiration and creativity burst forth while you are actually writing. You just have to show up at the designated time and get started, because the flow of ideas is catalyzed by the physical act of writing. If you are currently operating under the Myth of the Muse, that's perfectly fine. If it works for you and you're publishing prolifically, that's great! But if you're only writing when you feel inspired AND you aren't as productive as you need to be, then I encourage you to gently and lovingly ask yourself:

1. Is this working for me?
2. Where did I get this idea about writing?
3. Is it effective at this stage of my career?
4. Am I likely to meet the expectations for publication at my institution by relying on The Muse?
5. What would it take for me to consider writing as an everyday activity (just like grading papers or attending meetings)?
6. What's holding me back from being the writer and thinker I imagine myself to be?

For me, the best way to interrogate my assumptions about the writing process is to listen to (or read) successful writers reflect on their writing process. This week, I want to suggest my three favorite sources for such inspiration: 1) an amazing audio clip entitled A Conversation on the Writing Life, 2) bell hook's insightful Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, and 3) one of my favorite books on writing, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. Each is a great source of inspiration!


The Weekly Challenge


If you are unhappy with your productivity, I challenge you to:

• Take time at your Sunday Meeting this week to consider why you perceive writing as an exceptional (instead of normal) activity in your professional life.
• Write every day this week for 30-60 minutes.
• Give yourself a treat for everyday that you meet your writing goal. If you need ideas about how to treat yourself, we have an entire thread on this topic in the discussion forum!
  
• Pay yourself first by writing in the morning before you start meeting everyone else's needs.
• Consider joining the November Writing Challenge for support and accountability. We will cheer you on as you make the transition from being a muse-dependent to independent daily writer!
• If you're in a serious writing funk, consider signing up now for the last tele-workshop of the semester Writing, Procrastination, and Resistance: How to Identify Your Funk and Move Through it.

I hope that this week brings you the confidence to know that YOU control your writing, the strength to carve out time for writing each day, and the satisfaction of knowing that you are moving forward in your intellectual work!

Peace and Productivity,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD
E-Mail: KerryAnn@NewFacultySuccess.com
Web: www.NewFacultySuccess.com
Blog: NewFacultySuccess.blogspot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/divaprof

30 Days Until Finals: Time for Plan B

I don't know about you, but I realized during my Sunday Meeting that I will be giving my last final exam 30 days from today! As we head into the late-semester sprint, I want to encourage all of us to pause, review our semester writing goals, and assess the probability of completing them in the next 30 days. If the probability is high that you will meet your goals, congratulations on your ability to create reasonable goals, sustain your daily writing habit, and stay on target! For the rest of us, it's time to formulate Writing Plan B.

Developing Attainable Writing Goals

One of the most difficult time management skills to learn is how to develop writing goals that are attainable in a specific period of time. The difficulty is that many of us create writing goals based on what we hope (or even dream) of accomplishing in a given time frame. This is done by pulling numbers and end-products out of thin air without the slightest idea HOW or WHEN we will do the work to achieve such lofty goals.

As yet another manifestation of academic perfectionism, we often set audacious writing goals, because making reasonable ones seems so...uhm.... small and uninspiring. But when we create unrealistic goals, we are setting ourselves up to feel disappointed, discouraged and demoralized. I often see people set unattainable goals and they tend to result in one of two outcomes. Some faculty set such big goals (i.e. "finish my book"), that they never start writing because it all seems too much to do in 30 minutes a day. These same faculty find themselves at the end of yet another semester with unmet goals, unfinished projects, and the feeling that they aren't moving forward. Others are incredibly productive, but because they have set semester goals that are literally unattainable, they don't meet them. Then they end the semester with feelings of failure and frustration, despite having made significant progress.

Consider a PLAN B That Connects Your GOALS To TIME

I want to encourage you to start your Sunday Meeting this week with a review of your semester writing goals. I know it's difficult, but let's take an open and honest look at our goals without criticism, judgment or guilt. Instead, start by appreciating the optimism that you felt when you wrote your goals and acknowledging all the work that you HAVE completed this semester. I am inspired by the progress many of you have made in:

• prioritizing your research and writing
• developing a consistent daily writing habit
• learning to say "no" often and without guilt,
• identifying what is holding you back,
• ceasing habits of self-flagellation
  
• starting to think about your career as a book with many chapters
  
• interrogating your perfectionism, and
• releasing yourselves from the need to be super-professor

As you revise your semester goals, try a new strategy: map your writing goals onto your calendar. Go through the next four weeks and block out all of your classes, meetings, and daily writing time. If you don't have a calendar, download my free one to get started. Take a long, hard look at your remaining goals and try to map the tasks necessary to complete them onto your calendar. If you planned to draft a new article, figure out what specific days and blocks of time that writing will occur. The truth is that if you are unable to find the time, then you are unlikely to achieve the goal. If you are not sure how long it actually takes to complete various tasks, take your best guess and then multiply that guess by 2.5. Still can't find time for all the work necessary to complete that new article? Then it's time to get real and prioritize. I know it's painful, but doing this now beats feeling like a failure at the end of the semester. You will feel better having scheduled and completed several tasks that move you closer to drafting the article then you will avoiding the whole thing and starting the new year with no progress. Patiently and lovingly ask yourself: what can I realistically accomplish in the next 30 days? Then carve out the time in your calendar to accomplish the tasks that will move you towards reaching your goals. This is your Plan B, and I will be very proud of you for accomplishing it!

This Week's Challenge

This week, I challenge you to:

• Hold a Sunday Meeting 
• Review your semester writing goals (if you posted them in the discussion forum, they are just one click away!). If you still haven't written any, then go ahead and take the time to draft goals for the last 30 days of the term.
• Honestly ask yourself: can I complete these goals in the next 30 days?
• If the answer is "no," patiently revise your goals based on what you CAN realistically accomplish by writing every day for 30-60 minutes.
• Go through the remaining weeks of the semester in your calendar and block out your daily writing time.
• Re-commit yourself to 30-60 minutes of writing every day this week.
• Try paying yourself first by writing in the morning before you do anything else.
• Consider joining the November Writing Challenge for support and accountability. The writing challenges happen every month on my discussion forum. 

I hope that this week brings you the courage to assess your semester goals, the creativity to revise them, and the discipline to write every day!

Sincerely,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD
www.NewFacultySuccess.com