As a composer-vocalist who works from home ~85% of the time, I’ve spent years of my professional life developing a system of time management that keeps me on task, on time, motivated, and mentally refreshed. Many of my friends and colleagues are now being faced with the obstacle of productivity when working from home. I thought I might share my own techniques with you in the hopes that they may offer some guidance or ideas that can be adapted to your own life.
Disclaimer: I do not have children and I make my own hours, so I am immensely privileged when it comes to constructing my own schedule. I do believe that many of these tools can be applied to a more rigid schedule, though it may be challenging to apply all of these tools to a schedule that must remain flexible due to child care or or health-related responsibilities.
Much of the structure outlined below is informed by Self Journal, which I highly recommend if you’ve got an extra $32 lying around to splurge on a templated notebook.
STEP 1
Determine your big picture. Your big picture is what you want to work on about yourself over the long term—how you want to grow even once COVID-19 has passed. My big picture has three components:
Meet my (composition) deadlines with calm, confidence, and truth to self.
Push my fitness forward.
Sing through the chaos: push my vocal technique and expression to new places.
STEP 2
Determine your mid term goals. These are the goals that you will need to meet in the coming month or two. My three biggest goals in the coming month are:
Plan weekly class for Carnegie Mellon (and adapt to online teaching methods).
Complete a commission for Ji-Hye Jung (!).
Submit my dissertation final draft.
STEP 3
Determine today’s targets. What is REASONABLE for you to achieve today that will help you meet both your mid term and big picture goals? The key operative here is REASONABLE. Be kind to yourself when setting expectations for the day, and be understanding of yourself if, at the end of the day, you find you are unable to meet them. My goals for this particular day were:
Work on lesson plan for Carnegie Mellon (get familiar with Zoom tech & audio settings, screen sharing, post all materials online).
Make progress on my dissertation (go for a thinking walk, revise conclusion, format footnotes).
Work out (run 4 miles, stretch—IT bands in particular, do abs & squats).
Ok so we’ve spent a lot of time digging deep and reflecting on why we’re working in the first place. The answer to why you are working may seem obvious, but without setting reasonable daily goals for yourself you run the risk of setting yourself up for negative self-talk. For example, you may have a project deadline looming that you thought you could meet by Friday, but once you got started you realized your personal progress was not on track with what you wanted it to be. If you break down the project at hand into manageable, attainable steps, you are then setting yourself up for a series of small successes rather than a sense of major daily failure. This sense governs your self-talk, allowing you to feel accomplished and satisfied with your progress rather than putting you in a spiral of guilt for not achieving the impossible.
STEP 4
So now it’s time to dig in and figure out how today’s targets are going to fit into your day. Here’s a photo of my schedule layout, which I fill out each morning before starting the day:
[photo of 2 bullet journal pages: the left side filled out with the day’s schedule on a grid (y-axis is time by the hour) followed by a morning gratitude list, the right side lists out the big picture goals, mid term goals, today’s goals, lessons learned, wins/successes for the day, and evening gratitude list]
I begin filling out my schedule by writing in the fixed aspects of my schedule, in this case: breakfast, dog walk, lunch, office hours (via Zoom), and dinner (the dogs like to be on a regular schedule, too). From there I fill in the gaps with short tasks that never last more than two hours. These tasks all serve my goals for the day. I make sure that this work is broken up with activities that are away from a screen, such as: walking outside, doing chores, and exercising.
I’m also careful to include DESIGNATED CHILL TIME at the end of the day. Perhaps the biggest risk of working from home is that you’ll binge-work for an entire 16 hour day and then the next few days find yourself totally burnt out and unable to work.
My average work day only includes about 6 hours of work-work. That may not seem like a lot, but those are 6 hours of very intense concentration with no distractions. Balancing out those 6 hours of intense work with other activities (especially outdoor activities) allows you to restore your mental energy and focus. (Watching TV does not actually restore your mental energy or focus, but activities such as: going for a walk or a hike, doing some gardening, reading a book, or getting some exercise do). You’ll be shocked what you can achieve in 6 hours when you are focused and refreshed. You’ll be shocked how little you can achieve in 16 hours of poking around social media, snacking, staring blankly at your computer screen, and letting your mind wander into existential crisis mode.
The goal here is to create habits that you can sustain day after day. So be kind to yourself. Each day should be a mixture of work, play, relaxation, socialization, and good hygiene habits.
STEP 5
At the end of each day, take a moment to evaluate your progress. Did you meet all your targets for the day? Even if you didn’t that’s TOTALLY OKAY. Ask yourself why you didn’t meet your targets. Were there disruptions that were out of your control? Did you set reasonable goals for yourself? Were you able to stay on task?
The answers to none of these questions should be self-reprimand. The answers to these questions are objectives truths, for example:
My dog had diarrhea so I didn’t get any work done this afternoon.
I spent 3 hours on Facebook instead of sending exhausting emails.
I was feeling depressed about the state of the world and had difficulty finding energy.
All of these are valid answers that are totally reasonable truths. However, how you react to those answers is key. Here are some examples of how to react to these truths:
My poor baby dog had diarrhea, so I will adjust my expectations for myself for today. Tomorrow’s targets will incorporate some of today’s targets, and I’ll make a new plan of attack moving forward.
Social media is really distracting to me. I’ll set up a browser extension to limit my social media time and I’ll place my phone in another room so I’m not tempted by it. I also shouldn’t have blocked off 3 straight hours to spend on emails. Next time I’ll break up my emailing over several shorter time blocks so that it’s not such a looming, terrible task.
Depression is very real—especially given the state of the world and our current public health crisis. If possible, get outside. Take a day to go on a hike and a picnic (but practice appropriate social distancing protocol). Allow myself time to feel human. I can hit the books tomorrow.
I do all my evaluating in two categories of my journal pages:
Lessons Learned: What did I learn today about my working habits? What can I change and do better?
Wins: What did I crush? What can I brag to myself about and feel good about?
STEP 6
One very last, important step is to focus on the idea of gratitude. Every morning and every evening I make a short list of the things I am grateful for. These can be small, seemingly insignificant things such as a good cup of tea or a sunny morning; they can also be huge, life-altering things such as a having sense of safety or a form of income.
It’s important to never lose sight of the things that make us human.
IN CONCLUSION: MOTIVATION
Time management is impossible without zooming out to determine your long term goals, and then progressively zooming in on your mid term and daily goals. For me, motivation resides in the notion that every action I do matters. If every single item on your schedule is helping you achieve your dreams, it becomes a lot easier to find your drive with regards to each of those tasks.
This idea applies to more than just the to-do list items. You can relax with a deeper peace of mind if you know that your down time is refueling your mind so you can tackle your dreams with greater ferocity tomorrow. You can attack your to-do list with more gusto if you know you will have earned your down time and glass of wine later.
Know your limits and be kind to yourself. You’ll thank yourself later.