It’s that time of the year…
Hello Qualitative Mind,
I absolutely love March. The days quickly get longer, snow starts melting, and excitement for the warm seasons (in Canada) starts building everywhere. Despite all these amazing things, March is a very busy month for most people involved in post-secondary education and research. It’s time to submit proposals, essays, as well as meet deadlines for thesis defence and graduation.
In the past few years, especially after becoming an entrepreneur, I started using some strategies and tools to organize my life and schedule priorities, and today I will be sharing some with you. The blog post “Habits: How can they improve your research trajectory?” was very well received; therefore, once in a while I will write something related to habits, time management and productivity.
In December 2018, on the week my daughter had her first round of chemo, I received my Enthusiastic Change Maker (ECM) Planner in the mail. Amid tears and a lot of stress, I promised myself I was going to use the planner to support my spiritual, mental and physical health, as well as my family’s. And I did. I have told Amanda Zaal (the designer of the planner) that ECM was the structure I needed when everything else felt outside of my control. It was a blessing that came in the mail exactly when I needed it.
“If you don’t prioritize your life someone else will”
Fast forward nine months, I went back to graduate school and started using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner, and can never go back to my old ways. The Full Focus Planner has many features I like divided between goal planning and execution and today I will focus on the “Weekly Preview.” In this preview, we have dedicated sections to reflect on the past week and list three biggest wins, what worked well and what did not work. I confess the previous week review is not my favourite part because it feels tedious. Plus, I am a doer who tends to move towards the future way too fast (not saying this is a good thing).
Then we move to the weekly overview. There we list personal and professional tasks, deadlines and events, and transfer them to a week calendar...I know this is not novel and many other planners have more or less the same feature. The part of the weekly preview that I like the most is identifying my “Weekly Big 3” which means the top three goals I have for the upcoming week. Ideally, weekly BIG goals are somehow connected to your quarterly and yearly goals so writing them down requires reflection and thinking. It usually takes me 30 minutes on Sunday night or Monday morning to complete my “Weekly Preview.”
In an era of social media, emails and too many electronic devices, it becomes very easy to let other’s priorities infiltrate and dictate ours. The physical planners I started using last year reduced the outside noise, and helped me to prioritize my life. If you are definitely not a physical planner person, I recommend listening to Episode 306 of The Life Coach School: Monday Hour One. It is full of ideas and insights that are inspiring yet challenging for those of us who have taken pride in saying “it is on my to-do list”. The Full Focus Planner has also a podcast called Focus on This which can give you more details about various sections of the physical planner.
Last but not least, university work, graduate school, qualitative research and writing can feel lonely and stressful. Building time in your schedule to reflect and plan might help you to better identify successes that are worth celebrating, and stressors that are worth working through before moving forward.
Talk soon,
Maira