Unlearning masochism.

I'm feeling myself slide into that all-too-familiar state of burnout. Like an engine run at redline a few miles without oil, I went from drumming along fine last week to being absolutely drained this week. A few weeks ago I began to notice this sinking feeling every time I sat down and planned out my week: "Who am I gonna screw over this week because I overcommitted?" My students? My advisor? The students she charged me with organizing undergrad research? My friends? It's almost always the last. Because it's a positive feedback loop: you cut social engagements because of your workload, and disappear from the lives of your loved ones for long periods of time. They learn that it's futile to call you because you never answer.

This is where you fight back.

Last semester I experienced full-blown psychosomatic revolt --- one weekend, my body refused to let me get out of bed. This semester, the rebels are threatening to burn down the presidential palace and execute me by firing squad if I don't concede to their demands.

It's too easy to replicate the way that your fellow grad students, co-workers, and bosses valorize burnout, as though it's proof you're a hard worker. It's not. It's proof you're a spineless idiot and a poor planner. Ironically, it's the grad students who served in the military that have the least masochistic attitudes to work. One I know works 30 hours a week while pursuing a doctoral degree, and still somehow finds time to bike across the country. Utterly, unspeakably badass.

The biggest valorizers of the burnout cycle seem to be those who still have something to prove. You know, like me. No more. No more.

Time tracking v. 0.9 (beta)

So, in line with the adage 'what gets measured, gets managed', I've resolved to rein in the sheer amount of time I spend uselessly fucking around, and squeeze as much quality time out of each day by tracking my time.  This is just a beta, by the way: I want to see how it works out in practice, and I'll post the aggregated weekly numbers up on this blog to keep a measure of public accountability.

I hope this will be of some use and value to anyone who wants to better manage their time, particularly for anyone who wants to maximize their productivity while reserving enough time to do other things with their lives, like have friends and hobbies, without unfairly prioritizing one over the others.

Here's an example of what my time tracking template looks like:

Today was a bad day. Normally I spend much less time fucking around, but today I was in kind of a weird mood and didn't need to urgently get anything done. My goal is to get that number in the middle, the 'Fucking-around-to-getting-shit-done' ratio, as low as possible. Today it was 2.1 --- two hours and twenty minutes of fucking around for every one hour spent productively. Yesterday wasn't so bad; that number was more like 1.8. The day before was good until I got derailed: that number was 1.1. Tomorrow, I'll see if I can't at least achieve at least parity.