Not That Kind of Doctor - Summertime

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05/18/2023 Added

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Summertime - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980 Productivity Template at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1165Wh30OBEad-BrxnBdwh1jwcrGJTy9DOLtCZUUJtOA/copy

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[00:00:00.037](upbeat music)
[00:00:08.800]How does it take 20 minutes to get
[00:00:10.020]from one side of Lincoln from the other?
[00:00:10.980]It's not that big of a city.
[00:00:12.870]Yet it is.
[00:00:13.890]I know, it's 'cause we have no freeway.
[00:00:15.360]But anyway, guess what?
[00:00:16.710]What?
[00:00:18.325]We're almost done.
[00:00:19.663]We're almost done with it.
[00:00:21.270]It's almost summer.
[00:00:23.040]Almost summer.
[00:00:24.030]I'm dressed for summer. That's it.
[00:00:25.980]I mean look, I'm dressed for summer as well,
[00:00:28.200]I'm just not as flashy, okay? (Guy laughs)
[00:00:31.768]This isn't the aesthetic that I go for
[00:00:33.720]'cause I can't pull it off.
[00:00:35.100]I don't have the personality.
[00:00:36.630]Hmm. Okay.
[00:00:40.260]So what are your summer plans?
[00:00:42.330]Oh, so many summer...
[00:00:43.440]Well, I mean, so okay, so first off.
[00:00:48.240]Yes.
[00:00:49.073]Time acknowledgement.
[00:00:50.850]As I'm thinking about like,
[00:00:52.080]what are your summer plans and also, hi.
[00:00:57.210]Welcome to Not That Kind of Doctor.
[00:00:59.850]I'm Nick Husbye.
[00:01:01.290]I'm an associate professor here at UNL.
[00:01:03.630]And I'm Guy Tranin and I'm a professor here at UNL.
[00:01:07.047]And so, okay, so time acknowledgement
[00:01:09.240]because summer is upon us, which is...
[00:01:12.870]Whoops.
[00:01:13.703]It's kind of like,
[00:01:14.880]have you ever seen "Tiny Toon Adventures:
[00:01:16.290]How I Spent My Vacation"?
[00:01:18.090]No.
[00:01:19.110]So there's this great musical number in the beginning
[00:01:21.360]where they're like, "It's finally summertime."
[00:01:23.250]And that's like what goes in my head every time.
[00:01:27.090]Sorry.
[00:01:28.770]Causing problems.
[00:01:30.990]Every time like May hits, like some summer is upon us.
[00:01:35.790]I'm going to get so much done.
[00:01:38.580]It's gonna be great.
[00:01:40.980]But there's the reality that I am a nine month
[00:01:47.250]contracting employee with the institution,
[00:01:51.570]with UNL, until I teach, right?
[00:01:54.120]I teach in the summer, so that kind of shifts
[00:01:56.580]the way that I think about my timing
[00:01:59.340]during the summer or my time during the summer.
[00:02:02.490]But if you are a nine month contract employee
[00:02:06.720]and you have no other extenuating contracts
[00:02:12.300]or teaching during the summer that compensates
[00:02:15.450]you for your time, your summer's your summer.
[00:02:18.870]Yeah.
[00:02:20.310]Like really, you should not be expected,
[00:02:25.860]you should not be expected, I shouldn't even hedge.
[00:02:28.020]You should not be expected to spend
[00:02:30.360]any uncompensated time outside of your contract.
[00:02:33.900]Yeah.
[00:02:34.733]And this is a little bit hard for us because many
[00:02:38.160]of our graduate students are teachers and the time
[00:02:45.180]of the year that they have a little bit
[00:02:46.620]more time to get ahead with their plans is summer.
[00:02:50.100]So they often try and push, for reasonable reasons
[00:02:55.200]for themselves, to meet, to get advice,
[00:02:58.980]to have some kind of interaction.
[00:03:02.070]And I think, if we think about this, and we know
[00:03:04.650]this is going to happen, we have some, at least I've
[00:03:08.430]developed over time, methodologies to deal with that.
[00:03:10.800]Including have the conversation early about,
[00:03:14.640]during the summer most faculty aren't here.
[00:03:18.150]If you are not going to be, if you are off contract
[00:03:20.460]during that time saying, I'm not going to be here.
[00:03:22.980]So if you want anything done,
[00:03:24.870]we have to prep it in May before we all leave.
[00:03:28.110]So you know what you're supposed to do and when you have
[00:03:30.810]the time, you can go ahead, but there's not going to be
[00:03:33.840]many committee meetings, defenses, all of those things.
[00:03:39.000]If you do want to do it and you run out of time,
[00:03:41.790]or there's something special, sometimes we make that choice.
[00:03:46.260]But in general, your time is your time.
[00:03:48.720]If you're off contract, please take the time off.
[00:03:52.080]Enjoy it and do whatever it is
[00:03:54.450]that you want to do during that time.
[00:03:56.940]Yes. Yes.
[00:03:58.380]Because there's this kind of unspoken,
[00:04:01.170]like, oh you'll do all your writing during the summer.
[00:04:05.130]That's an essential part of my job.
[00:04:06.750]Like that's part of my job responsibilities.
[00:04:08.490]That's what I'm supposed to be doing.
[00:04:09.870]So if I can't get that accomplished
[00:04:12.360]in the nine months for which I have a contract,
[00:04:15.630]that's a systemic failure right there.
[00:04:19.260]Like, if that's literally part of my job
[00:04:24.870]and I can't get that done during the time with which
[00:04:27.030]I am contracted, that's a larger problem, right?
[00:04:30.720]And that's a systemic problem
[00:04:32.250]that individuals shouldn't be owning.
[00:04:34.560]Yeah, and well sometimes you should be because you need
[00:04:38.010]to audit your time and see, if I didn't have
[00:04:40.830]time for it, what else did I do with my time?
[00:04:43.620]Because I'm pretty sure that most, both
[00:04:45.330]graduate students and faculty, are filling their time.
[00:04:48.960]They're doing something during those very busy nine months.
[00:04:53.040]And so if you could not find the time to write,
[00:04:56.190]a few things are happening.
[00:04:57.090]One is your approach to writing is probably wrong
[00:04:59.700]because you're thinking there's going to be
[00:05:01.260]this magical time when everything comes together.
[00:05:04.560]It never works that way.
[00:05:06.270]All the research we have about writing says it doesn't work.
[00:05:08.064]I think there's a podcast on this, don't we?
[00:05:09.560]We do.
[00:05:11.067](Both laugh)
[00:05:11.970]Go back and look for it.
[00:05:13.015]Come back.
[00:05:14.190]And so this is a way for us to often,
[00:05:20.040]to convince ourselves that everything is fine when it's not.
[00:05:23.340]Because we're saying,
[00:05:24.173]"Oh, it's going to happen in the summer."
[00:05:25.740]If you have to rely on the summer and you are off contract
[00:05:28.470]in the summer, then something in your time plan is off.
[00:05:33.570]And that's really important to say.
[00:05:34.920]But, if you're like us and you are in May,
[00:05:37.530]it's too late to fix last year.
[00:05:39.330]But start thinking about how
[00:05:40.860]is it going to be different next year?
[00:05:42.480]Because otherwise you're gonna repeat that mistake.
[00:05:45.720]Yeah, so I think the, that time acknowledgement,
[00:05:50.070]I'm not saying that don't work on things connected to your
[00:05:54.690]research, don't work on things connected to your teaching,
[00:05:56.940]but it's up to you how and what you take on, right?
[00:06:03.210]So like when I'm thinking about summer,
[00:06:06.720]one of the things I mentioned in our Unstuck podcast,
[00:06:10.590]or like, as I like to call it,
[00:06:14.130]Nick loses his poop emoji podcast.
[00:06:20.700]Like, I've been able to start thinking through and planning
[00:06:23.580]for a lot of the work I've been putting off across
[00:06:27.420]the semester because I taught overload, stupidly.
[00:06:31.890]Students are great.
[00:06:33.120]Love you lit block, love you children's lit,
[00:06:34.920]love you science of reading doc students.
[00:06:37.050]You made my semester.
[00:06:39.420]But it was a lot of work.
[00:06:42.990]So I've got...
[00:06:45.600]So here's my process for how I'm thinking about summer.
[00:06:49.110]Because you know me, I love a good table.
[00:06:51.390]I love a good table
[00:06:52.350]As well you should.
[00:06:53.183]As well I should.
[00:06:54.240]But I always start by just mind dumping everything
[00:07:00.480]that I wanna get done, regardless of whether it's work,
[00:07:03.960]house, dogs, people, I wanna see, my garden.
[00:07:10.800]Like what is it that I want to get done in the summer.
[00:07:14.727]And I just make this huge long list
[00:07:18.630]and then I start coding it.
[00:07:20.010]Like, here's one version, you know, right there.
[00:07:23.190]Where I've just-
[00:07:24.276]That's all you have for summer?
[00:07:25.980]There's multiple pages.
[00:07:27.420]This is just the most recent page.
[00:07:30.420]I haven't categorized this yet, but I will.
[00:07:32.220]That's the next step. Don't ahead at me.
[00:07:33.426]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:34.590]Wow Okay. I'm sorry.
[00:07:37.821]He's not.
[00:07:38.716](Guy laughs)
[00:07:39.991]He's not.
[00:07:42.600]But yeah, so like I mind dump every single thing.
[00:07:45.780]So like the fact that I need my rec room painted,
[00:07:49.140]I need to finish that.
[00:07:50.190]I started in November,
[00:07:52.080]didn't have a chance to finish it yet.
[00:07:54.420]That needs to get done.
[00:07:56.340]I have all of these light fixtures
[00:07:58.350]all around my house that need to get swapped out.
[00:08:01.140]They're all purchased, haven't done it yet.
[00:08:04.170]Haven't had time.
[00:08:05.850]Like literally haven't had time
[00:08:06.930]to be home for the electrician.
[00:08:10.020]Hashtag single life.
[00:08:12.120]Dogs can't let them in, right?
[00:08:14.490]So like, it's just everything that I can possibly think of.
[00:08:19.410]And then I start coding.
[00:08:22.290]And normally with a highlighter I go through
[00:08:23.940]and I highlight like, oh these are things around the house.
[00:08:26.910]These are like my personal crafty projects.
[00:08:30.330]Like, I have a quilt that I'd love to finish this summer.
[00:08:33.060]I've got some goals for lit block, 'cause I have
[00:08:39.390]a grad student who's gonna come and learn about lit block
[00:08:44.700]and teach in lit block with me next semester.
[00:08:47.310]So I feel like there's some underlying
[00:08:50.040]structures that I want to build.
[00:08:51.960]I've got some research projects
[00:08:53.160]that I need to get materials ready for.
[00:08:56.880]And so I start coding, and laying out, and categorizing,
[00:09:02.820]you know, my writing, what kinds of writing
[00:09:05.850]do I wanna do this summer, what kinds
[00:09:07.620]of data analysis do I wanna spend some time with?
[00:09:10.380]What kinds of reading do I wanna do as I'm
[00:09:12.600]taking over the el-ed program coordinator position,
[00:09:16.830]like I've got books on leading more
[00:09:19.260]effective meetings, and giving and receiving feedback,
[00:09:23.370]and creating like, second brains.
[00:09:26.820]How do you manage so much information?
[00:09:30.060]What are ways that people can think about that?
[00:09:33.510]What is it that I wanna do personally with my summer, right,
[00:09:37.320]like that I haven't had time for.
[00:09:39.000]And then thinking through like what
[00:09:40.470]are the teaching things that I need to do?
[00:09:43.470]So once I have those kind of separated,
[00:09:46.560]then I keep thinking there are 24 hours in a day.
[00:09:52.770]I'd like at some point to get eight hours of sleep again.
[00:09:56.520]Okay.
[00:09:57.353]Hasn't happened all semester,
[00:09:59.640]but maybe this summer.
[00:10:01.230]Hope springs eternal.
[00:10:03.510]All right. Yeah.
[00:10:05.263]So what you're saying is you need
[00:10:07.710]to let that schedule breathe.
[00:10:09.420]The idea is not to cram as much as possible and-
[00:10:12.930]Well, so here's where I'm talking about the...
[00:10:15.840]So here's where I start getting the nitty gritty.
[00:10:17.490]So once I've got all my kind of things
[00:10:22.920]that I want to get done categorized,
[00:10:27.420]I can then start prioritizing based upon the fact
[00:10:29.880]that I have 24 hours in the day.
[00:10:32.370]Eight of those I hope to be sleeping.
[00:10:35.010]Which leads me to 16 hours, waking hours.
[00:10:38.070]In a week that's about 112 hours
[00:10:42.570]that I have at my disposal, right?
[00:10:44.940]I don't want those all to be working hours,
[00:10:47.040]but it gives me an idea of like
[00:10:50.550]how much time I actually have.
[00:10:53.160]Like time is not infinite.
[00:10:57.450]We have a limited amount of it.
[00:10:59.280]Okay.
[00:11:00.510]You following? Yeah. So far so good.
[00:11:03.690]We are we going delving into the Elon Musk
[00:11:07.380]time is the ultimate currency?
[00:11:10.620]I mean,
[00:11:13.169]I don't know. It is.
[00:11:14.002]I don't know that I love the capitalistic
[00:11:17.340]perspective like that veers into the, like,
[00:11:20.587]"What do you do with your side hustle?"
[00:11:22.980]No, that's not where we're going.
[00:11:25.560]No, but like things we know from research for instance,
[00:11:29.430]like people who have four hours, about four hours
[00:11:34.620]of control over their time are the happiest.
[00:11:36.390]People who have less than two hours of time that's under
[00:11:39.300]their control are the least happy, right?
[00:11:42.260]So like in the summer when I have all this unstructured
[00:11:45.090]time, before I start teaching,
[00:11:47.100]I like to lay out kind of what I want to be doing.
[00:11:51.210]And if I think about the fact that I have,
[00:11:53.430]there's literally, what, what did I just say?
[00:11:55.830]11 weeks of summer that we have before we're back on,
[00:11:58.776]before we're officially back on contract?
[00:12:01.770]I've got 112 hours every week.
[00:12:04.650]That's it. Yeah.
[00:12:06.870]It sounds like a lot though.
[00:12:08.220]For somebody who hasn't thought through that,
[00:12:10.290]112 sounds like quite a bit.
[00:12:12.540]Oh, to me, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's all I have?"
[00:12:16.710]Because think about like, my list of things
[00:12:19.200]that I want to get done is multiple pages, right?
[00:12:22.710]So like my eyes are...
[00:12:24.330]I feel like a kid at Christmas where I'm like-
[00:12:27.210]Yeah, there's going to be all this time.
[00:12:29.730]Well, and like, "Santa's gonna bring me all these gifts.
[00:12:32.850]I'm gonna get all this stuff done."
[00:12:34.200]Do you really want to talk about Santa?
[00:12:36.090]I mean look, I realize the audience, but
[00:12:40.714](Guy laughs) Santa was a thing.
[00:12:42.913](laughs) I am sure it was.
[00:12:45.420]I was just checking if for, okay now.
[00:12:48.300]It Santa,
[00:12:49.380]I mean Santa when I was five, right?
[00:12:52.620]Yes, okay.
[00:12:53.590]Santa Santa when I was six,
[00:12:55.110]that was the year I collected all the mouse traps
[00:12:56.700]for a year 'cause he freaked me out.
[00:12:58.676](laughs) I do remember that.
[00:13:01.900]Like, the inadvertent stress of like stranger danger.
[00:13:07.410]I don't think my teachers realized how that impacted
[00:13:10.950]my poor parents and their like Santa scheme.
[00:13:16.110]Anyway.
[00:13:18.150]Back to summer. Back to summer.
[00:13:19.980]Back to summer, back to back to strategizing, right?
[00:13:22.890]So like I'm not gonna be able to get everything done.
[00:13:27.780]Right, like I've got all of these plans,
[00:13:29.880]all these things that I would like to get done.
[00:13:31.740]And it's when I start thinking about time as finite.
[00:13:37.350]And this, I feel is one of the things that went awry
[00:13:40.020]for me this last semester is I stopped thinking
[00:13:43.050]about time as finite because we often
[00:13:45.330]like to think about apportionments as percentages.
[00:13:48.510]And percentages are only valuable when we're thinking
[00:13:51.450]about them in relationship to the whole.
[00:13:53.781]To what is the whole?
[00:13:54.614]Is the whole 10 hours a day
[00:13:56.880]or 8 hours a day or 20 hours a day.
[00:13:58.437]And that doesn't really...
[00:14:00.780]It's always, "Oh, that's 30% of your apportionment."
[00:14:03.180]Of what apportionment?
[00:14:04.200]Like talk to me about like concrete...
[00:14:07.080]How many hours, numbers, right?
[00:14:08.827]Yeah, how many hours a week.
[00:14:10.530]And so I'm going back to kind of a...
[00:14:15.990]I'm gonna kind of nickel and dime my time, again.
[00:14:19.380]Because I failed to do that and look where I ended up.
[00:14:24.600]Look where I ended up.
[00:14:26.790]So for me, I work somewhat similarly.
[00:14:31.470]My summers are usually not my own.
[00:14:34.380]I teach in the summer and I usually have grants
[00:14:38.490]that pay for my time in the summer.
[00:14:40.440]So I feel like I need to put my time into those grants,
[00:14:46.080]into the writing that's connected to those grants.
[00:14:48.900]So it's an opportunity to do.
[00:14:50.340]But that's because my time is compensated.
[00:14:52.410]But I use the same methodology.
[00:14:53.850]That is I lay out tasks.
[00:14:56.550]I'm a lot more selective.
[00:14:58.110]So I've learned to be a lot less ambitious
[00:15:02.250]in summer and give my summer a lot of air,
[00:15:05.891]to just be in the garden, to spend time with my kids,
[00:15:10.290]to do nothing, to do a puzzle, whatever
[00:15:13.050]it is that kind of mellows me.
[00:15:15.810]That's the opportunity because usually,
[00:15:20.010]when I teach in the summer, I teach in short increments,
[00:15:23.580]short workshop, two weeks, three weeks, but not more.
[00:15:27.510]And that makes those times really, really busy
[00:15:30.840]and everything else a lot less.
[00:15:32.760]And I've just let it breathe.
[00:15:34.530]I also have a switch.
[00:15:36.270]My switch is the 4th of July.
[00:15:39.480]I have started thinking about the 4th of July
[00:15:41.940]is the end of summer.
[00:15:43.860]That is at the 4th of July, any task that I haven't
[00:15:48.480]already started is probably not gonna get done this summer.
[00:15:52.500]So if I've already started it,
[00:15:54.120]I'll finish it by the time summer is over.
[00:15:57.060]But if there's something,
[00:15:58.530]I haven't even started, unless it's a vacation
[00:16:01.170]or travel somewhere, which obviously I will do.
[00:16:04.260]But if it's something, a paper or something like that and I
[00:16:06.810]haven't even started it, I'm not gonna start it anymore.
[00:16:10.050]I'm just going to try and finish everything
[00:16:12.720]that's in process and whatever happens
[00:16:16.380]happens already in fall as part of my apportionment,
[00:16:20.010]going back to that idea.
[00:16:21.300]Yeah. And that feels pretty similar to what I do.
[00:16:25.380]The next step that I do after I've, like, laid out,
[00:16:28.710]here's the amount of time that I have.
[00:16:30.390]'Cause I'm not working this entire time.
[00:16:33.240]I'm not working the entire summer when teaching.
[00:16:34.773]It's not full-time job, eight hours a day.
[00:16:37.770]But if I'm thinking about, "Oh, you know,
[00:16:40.080]every day I can spend about four hours working on stuff
[00:16:44.100]related to my job, whether that's research or teaching.
[00:16:47.940]If I do four hours a day, what can I actually get done?"
[00:16:51.420]And I start breaking it down,
[00:16:53.550]week one, week two, week three.
[00:16:57.090]I'm literally looking at my planner on Google Drive.
[00:17:01.110]I'll link a blank planner in the program notes
[00:17:04.110]in the video description.
[00:17:06.720]Where I'm like setting kind of targets for,
[00:17:11.100]look, if you really do have 16 to 20 hours this week,
[00:17:15.270]here's what I anticipate you should be able to get done.
[00:17:17.970]So that by the time, like July 4th is when my class starts.
[00:17:23.880]And so really any deep work, like you needs to be done
[00:17:30.870]by the time children's literature starts,
[00:17:32.910]'cause that class is intense.
[00:17:35.400]And so planning it out gives me a chance to make sure
[00:17:44.280]that I'm not setting myself up for failure.
[00:17:46.770]That I'm actually setting some reasonable
[00:17:49.800]goals and may actually be able to like,
[00:17:54.360]achieve a good majority of them, right?
[00:17:56.370]Like my grad school self would've been like,
[00:17:59.887]"I'm gonna get all this stuff done in the..."
[00:18:01.260]And would not have gone through
[00:18:02.490]that process of sifting stuff out.
[00:18:08.820]And that usually leads to better time management for me,
[00:18:12.390]better outcomes for me in terms of,
[00:18:17.670]you know, living my life,
[00:18:19.500]feeling like I'm not failing completely at everything.
[00:18:25.500]Just, you know, failing regular times.
[00:18:27.105]Occasionally. (laughs)
[00:18:28.740]You know, just instead of 13 failures a day, maybe just 2.
[00:18:33.240]So let me take you back.
[00:18:35.580]So we talked about what we do as faculty.
[00:18:38.550]What do you think about graduate students?
[00:18:40.290]What should graduate students think
[00:18:42.180]about when they're doing summer?
[00:18:45.420]And they may be taking a class, just like we teach a class,
[00:18:48.240]they may be taking a class, they may be teaching a class.
[00:18:50.760]How do you think about their time?
[00:18:53.940]So I think about their time
[00:18:54.870]in kind of the same way, right?
[00:18:56.970]Like, you've got, as a graduate student,
[00:19:01.530]your summers are really times to be,
[00:19:07.530]are there things that you wanted to read
[00:19:10.080]in your field that you haven't?
[00:19:13.144]Are there things that you want to revisit over the course
[00:19:17.250]of the last year's worth of coursework?
[00:19:20.520]Like, my advisor always encouraged me
[00:19:25.080]to think about summertime as like synthesis, right?
[00:19:29.580]Because you finally kind of have this break and in the just
[00:19:36.780]day, to day, to day, fall, spring semester kind of work.
[00:19:42.840]And that might be the first opportunity that you have
[00:19:47.310]to think about the connections between the coursework
[00:19:50.640]that you've had and identifying where are the gaps
[00:19:55.470]in terms of what it is that you want to do,
[00:19:58.080]what questions that you want to answer,
[00:20:00.030]and how you want to answer them.
[00:20:02.190]Yeah.
[00:20:04.530]So that's really how I think about, like grad summer
[00:20:10.260]as an opportunity to, if you're taking a class, great.
[00:20:14.100]Normally they're a little bit shorter, much more intense.
[00:20:17.160]You still have that like,
[00:20:19.200]let me pull these threads together.
[00:20:21.090]How is this all coming together?
[00:20:22.560]What do I need to do next
[00:20:26.220]as you prep for the next semester coming up.
[00:20:28.680]But also taking an opportunity to like recharge, right?
[00:20:34.320]Which was the nice thing about the synthesis idea was,
[00:20:37.717]"Oh, this is all stuff I've already read."
[00:20:39.240]So I don't really have to do much more new reading.
[00:20:42.300]I might have to revisit,
[00:20:43.290]look at my notes, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:20:45.090]But in terms of like stitching it all together,
[00:20:49.050]it's kind of a meditative-
[00:20:50.700]And that meditative.
[00:20:51.900]So I do everything backwards, or I learn post fact.
[00:20:57.420]And so I took all of my classes,
[00:21:00.210]including summers kind of in a row.
[00:21:02.430]My master's and my doctoral degree in about
[00:21:04.680]two years of four quarters, full on, all the time.
[00:21:09.330]That worked for me.
[00:21:10.260]But when you don't take the summer, there are repercussions.
[00:21:14.190]And the repercussion is I then needed to take a year,
[00:21:17.370]basically almost a full year, to synthesize
[00:21:20.040]so I can get to the dissertation phase.
[00:21:23.040]There was just too much.
[00:21:24.780]And so think about it this way.
[00:21:26.730]You either take the summers to do the synthesis,
[00:21:29.250]or you will need to take a time at one point
[00:21:31.200]or another because your committee will tell you
[00:21:33.060]you are not ready to take your comprehensive exam, or you
[00:21:35.550]are not ready to present to us about what you want to do
[00:21:39.180]in your dissertation because you have not synthesized.
[00:21:41.610]And so you're all over the place.
[00:21:43.050]One way or another, it's going to happen.
[00:21:45.480]So if you have the opportunity
[00:21:47.700]to do it in the summer, do it in the summer.
[00:21:50.760]And that way you starting the next year
[00:21:54.030]with some synthesis already done.
[00:21:56.520]And being able to build on that instead
[00:21:58.770]of what happened to me was I took all of the courses
[00:22:03.450]and then I had to take all of the courses
[00:22:05.730]and put them back together in a meaningful way.
[00:22:07.980]And that really was a complicated task at that point
[00:22:10.890]because I didn't build as much along the way.
[00:22:13.470]And so I think that's important.
[00:22:14.970]That one thing that I would suggest, especially if writing,
[00:22:18.630]if you don't come with a lot of experience doing writing,
[00:22:22.230]is if there is a writing retreat of any kind for a short
[00:22:26.280]amount of time, that is something that I always advise
[00:22:29.220]doing because it's an opportunity to sit with other writers,
[00:22:32.100]learn from their process, do your own process.
[00:22:34.860]You can use it to do some of your synthesis.
[00:22:37.170]You can do this just to practice and to set you yourself
[00:22:41.400]up for an easier lift off the following year.
[00:22:46.175]The other thing I think about graduate student
[00:22:48.180]is if you are approaching your last year,
[00:22:50.340]this is your best time to organize your materials.
[00:22:54.360]Look at our previous shows about going on the market
[00:22:59.460]and preparing your materials.
[00:23:01.350]This is probably one of the best times
[00:23:03.180]because you're not stressed by a semester.
[00:23:05.700]You can do it slowly.
[00:23:06.750]You can make sure you have everything.
[00:23:08.400]And then, as you are getting closer
[00:23:10.620]to the end of your program, you already have
[00:23:12.347]all of your materials to be able to send as adds
[00:23:16.170]go out at the beginning of fall into early winter.
[00:23:21.780]But you already set most of what you want to create.
[00:23:25.050]You need to still craft the specifics,
[00:23:27.750]but you can have the two or three versions
[00:23:30.810]that you want to send out more or less finished.
[00:23:33.930]Right.
[00:23:34.763]And I think the big thing for me within all of that is,
[00:23:42.630]so in summer you have kind of this unstructured time, right?
[00:23:46.500]Because just way that the university works
[00:23:51.000]and functions shifts and changes.
[00:23:53.550]And so one thing, once you have an idea of what it is you
[00:23:59.490]wanna accomplish, think through and about how you need
[00:24:03.210]to organize your time in order to make those things happen.
[00:24:07.380]So I tend to start with, in my calendar,
[00:24:11.460]I have a calendar that's my ideal summer week.
[00:24:15.870]And I lay out within that calendar what I would like my week
[00:24:21.180]to look like in terms of, "Oh here I'm working on teaching
[00:24:25.350]stuff, here I'm working on research stuff, oh, here I'm
[00:24:27.510]out in the garden, here I'm taking a walk, here I'm going
[00:24:29.760]to the gym, here I am cleaning my kitchen," right?
[00:24:33.150]Like laying out and kind of accounting for,
[00:24:38.040]I have all this stuff that I wanna do.
[00:24:40.470]When am I actually gonna do it?
[00:24:43.020]And what does that look like week to week to week?
[00:24:48.480]And then when I start scheduling things, when I start,
[00:24:53.730]you know, "Oh, let's go for dinner," yada, yada, yada,
[00:24:57.150]then I know where I have some deviations in my ideal week.
[00:25:01.530]But I don't tend to leave my calendar clear.
[00:25:07.560]I tend to make sure that I have reserved blocks of time
[00:25:13.170]in order to get those kinds of things done so that I know
[00:25:19.380]that I can actually, again, accomplish this stuff.
[00:25:23.400]So for me, because most of my work is happening in teams,
[00:25:27.390]and you're working with a graduate student
[00:25:29.040]on some of the things that you're planning for next year.
[00:25:32.610]But because I work on teams, the way I check in,
[00:25:35.640]at least to things related to work, not to home and all
[00:25:40.160]of that, is I schedule just sometimes just check-ins.
[00:25:45.810]15 minutes and I stick to that 15 minutes,
[00:25:48.480]Five minutes on, "Hi, how are you? How's summer going?"
[00:25:51.060]And then 10 minutes, "What did we accomplish?
[00:25:53.220]What's our next task?"
[00:25:54.840]And sometimes I just schedule writing time with people
[00:25:58.140]and we sit together and we write and then I'm done.
[00:26:01.530]The advantage of that setup is it's in my calendar
[00:26:05.010]so it doesn't need to be on the back of my mind,
[00:26:07.950]and when am I gonna get to this?
[00:26:09.840]I end up feeling of guilty about not doing this.
[00:26:13.230]There are times, this is what's designated for that,
[00:26:16.020]and when we're done, we're done.
[00:26:17.790]I'm not piling onto that three more hours of work.
[00:26:22.080]We sit together for an hour and a half,
[00:26:23.730]we get wherever we get on the text, and until next time.
[00:26:27.480]Yeah, no, and that's, I mean,
[00:26:29.640]I think we're talking essentially the same thing, right?
[00:26:32.430]Like, I tend to build my really
[00:26:35.910]heavy stuff into the morning.
[00:26:37.710]We tend to be most productive in those hours.
[00:26:40.290]We tend to have less resistance to productivity
[00:26:45.390]in those first few hours of the morning.
[00:26:49.500]We're not as tired, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:26:51.690]Maybe? I don't know.
[00:26:53.700]And then the rest of my day is a little bit more loose
[00:26:57.000]until I start teaching children's literature,
[00:27:00.662]and then my ideal week changes, right?
[00:27:03.660]Because I have to be responsive to students,
[00:27:05.850]and feedbacking, and it's an online class
[00:27:08.280]so there's just lots of stuff to do there.
[00:27:12.840]But I think with...
[00:27:16.650]I think in order to avoid disappointment,
[00:27:22.890]you know, as summer winds down, like,
[00:27:25.147]"Oh, there's all this stuff I didn't get done."
[00:27:28.200]You gotta make a plan to get it done.
[00:27:31.350]And I would add to that two things.
[00:27:34.740]Make a plan.
[00:27:37.440]Be realistic about this plan.
[00:27:39.120]So don't push, as we talked about this, don't push
[00:27:42.150]everything you didn't get done through the year
[00:27:44.460]and say, "I'm gonna push it forward," because this
[00:27:46.710]pile will grow larger with this methodology.
[00:27:50.070]This is where the 112 hours is really, really important
[00:27:53.550]What's reasonable.
[00:27:54.630]And then, if you don't accomplish everything that you've
[00:27:57.750]promised yourself that you were going to do, be ready to let
[00:28:01.020]it go, at least on our schedule, at the beginning of August.
[00:28:05.100]Because you've got a couple of weeks.
[00:28:06.870]This is our schedule, I know different places,
[00:28:08.820]different countries, it can be earlier, it can be later.
[00:28:12.210]But two, three weeks before the beginning
[00:28:15.420]of the year, this is where at.
[00:28:18.180]let go of everything else because otherwise you're
[00:28:20.910]just dragging that feeling of failure into a semester.
[00:28:23.700]This is no way to start a semester.
[00:28:24.870]Yes, and again, I feel like you and I have sometimes
[00:28:30.120]had these conversations about like when you focus
[00:28:33.780]in on the fact that you have 112 hours a week, right?
[00:28:35.860]Like, are you micromanaging your time?
[00:28:40.260]But without that, how do you know what time
[00:28:43.980]you have to actually get stuff done in?
[00:28:46.980]Like it's a finite resource.
[00:28:49.380]And how you feel in August is going to be directly
[00:28:54.450]correlated with how you spend those resources
[00:28:58.950]during those summer months, right?
[00:29:01.260]So like, there's a really good book,
[00:29:03.457]"Time Management for Mortals," that talks
[00:29:08.670]about the fact that time is not finite.
[00:29:15.150]And once we stop treating it as finite-
[00:29:18.210]Or infinite.
[00:29:19.650]Or Yes. Thank you. (Guy laughs)
[00:29:21.390]Once we stop treating it as infinite, right,
[00:29:24.570]Then it does two things.
[00:29:26.730]It allows us to plan better and it allows
[00:29:28.770]that time to have more meaning, more value.
[00:29:32.670]And so if we're thinking about ways to make our summers
[00:29:35.700]valuable, not just in terms of the work that we do,
[00:29:38.610]but also our personal projects, our personal passions,
[00:29:42.480]our what we enjoy, once we start thinking
[00:29:48.990]about how we're thoughtfully using that time,
[00:29:54.930]or thoughtfully not using that time.
[00:29:57.360]Like, "Oh, this is my two hours
[00:29:59.490]to do whatever I want," right?
[00:30:02.305]Like that becomes more meaningful, which is super nice.
[00:30:07.770]Right? Absolutely.
[00:30:10.519]So that's where I'm at.
[00:30:11.679]All right. That's where I'm at.
[00:30:12.512]I'm currently like trying to figure out-
[00:30:14.700]So, summer is upon us. Summer is upon us.
[00:30:16.034]Plan for it.
[00:30:18.150]Plan for it, but be reasonable.
[00:30:20.970]Yes. Because again, your time is finite.
[00:30:23.430]What are your high priority projects?
[00:30:25.590]Like, not everything from my master list of stuff
[00:30:29.220]I want to get done is gonna get done this summer.
[00:30:31.920]I have 112 hours a week and I'm not using all those to work.
[00:30:36.630]So there's some stuff I had to let go of.
[00:30:40.170]Oh, it'd be really nice to do this,
[00:30:41.790]but I'm not going to have the time.
[00:30:44.130]I have to let go of that.
[00:30:46.260]It stays on a list, but it's not my summer list.
[00:30:51.630]See, I can be pragmatic at times.
[00:30:53.550]I can be reasonable. Yeah.
[00:30:55.603]I can be reasonable.
[00:30:56.760]Especially when you're not taking an overload.
[00:30:59.010]I mean, we're still in it, but we're almost done.
[00:31:00.959](Guy laughs) It's so close.
[00:31:02.730]It's so close.
[00:31:05.580]But yeah, I think the, for me personally,
[00:31:12.480]prioritizing that list, just getting everything
[00:31:15.330]out that you wanna get done, prioritizing
[00:31:16.830]that list based upon the amount of time that you have.
[00:31:18.930]And then building in actionable blocks.
[00:31:23.340]Block scheduling that out.
[00:31:24.540]What is your ideal week during this unstructured time
[00:31:27.900]and sticking with it as best as you can.
[00:31:31.080]And allowing yourself to re-plan.
[00:31:35.100]Right, and ooh, one more tip before
[00:31:38.539]before we're done. Before we're done.
[00:31:40.110]Like, so I have my priorities, right?
[00:31:44.190]Like I've identified the things that I absolutely
[00:31:46.200]have to get done and I've built in time
[00:31:49.620]plus about 20% just in case stuff goes over.
[00:31:53.520]And then I have my medium level.
[00:31:55.380]Like, it would be nice if this got done,
[00:31:57.390]but it doesn't have to get done.
[00:31:58.830]So if I find myself with, I don't know,
[00:32:03.090]a two hour block where I'm like, "I'm bored.
[00:32:07.050]I can't read, I don't wanna listen to another podcast."
[00:32:11.010]Unless it's this one. Unless it's this one.
[00:32:12.203]Because this one is super witty, super smart.
[00:32:17.490]Then I might look at one of those like, short term,
[00:32:20.520]medium importance tasks and knock that outta the park.
[00:32:24.390]Just in case.
[00:32:26.070]Just in case, you know.
[00:32:29.820]But yeah, I think
[00:32:33.270]I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about summer.
[00:32:37.707]All right.
[00:32:38.910]Cautiously optimistic.
[00:32:40.530]We'll see how it goes.
[00:32:41.363]We'll see how it goes in August.
[00:32:43.830]Yeah, we'll be back in August for series two.
[00:32:46.920]For season two.
[00:32:49.200]Crazy that we've been doing this for academic year.
[00:32:52.529]Yeah.
[00:32:53.850]How have you put up with me?
[00:32:55.860]Well, it's been hard at times. (laughs)
[00:32:58.440]I am a jerk.
[00:33:02.040]But you are not that kind of doctor.
[00:33:04.440]I'm not that kind of doctor.
[00:33:08.880]Neither am I. So that's okay.
[00:33:10.890]I mean, that's okay.
[00:33:13.770]I did hear again this semester
[00:33:19.140]that I have resting B voice.
[00:33:28.560]Can I say that on YouTube?
[00:33:29.820]I don't know. I don't know.
[00:33:31.590]Or Spotify?
[00:33:32.670]So that's been interesting.
[00:33:33.630]So as I've thought about that comment,
[00:33:36.150]I've been thinking about, "Oh, poor guy's
[00:33:37.860]been listening to that all semester."
[00:33:40.286](laughs) This is your podcast voice.
[00:33:46.020]This is my podcast voice, as opposed to like,
[00:33:48.840]this is my ASMR voice.
[00:33:51.084](Guy laughs)
[00:33:52.380]Maybe that's a new episode that will start a new series.
[00:33:55.530]ASMR doctoral graduate school.
[00:33:58.590]Fun things.
[00:33:59.430]I don't know. Probably not.
[00:34:00.750]Probably not, but-
[00:34:02.580]I need more caffeine.
[00:34:03.870]All right. But, so yeah.
[00:34:05.250]I think that wraps up season one.
[00:34:06.930]If you have things that you want us
[00:34:09.300]to tackle for season two-
[00:34:11.040]Let us know.
[00:34:11.940]Not That Kind of Doctor podcast planning.
[00:34:14.340]I've got like three hours allocated
[00:34:16.830]to this somewhere in the next 11 weeks.
[00:34:18.360]So sound off in the comments.
[00:34:20.370]Say hi, and we'll see you in August or September,
[00:34:25.530]somewhere around there?
[00:34:27.420]We haven't quite worked out that timeline either.
[00:34:29.220]Probably the beginning of September.
[00:34:30.900]It's a sub-item on that checklist.
[00:34:34.080]Like, once I get all the sub-items done,
[00:34:36.510]I can check off the whole thing.
[00:34:38.280]It's very satisfying.
[00:34:39.600]All right. Very satisfying.
[00:34:41.580]So thanks for a great season.
[00:34:44.940]This has been fun.
[00:34:46.200]And thank you, Dan for doing
[00:34:48.390]all the work behind the camera.
[00:34:50.940]Dan is amazing.
[00:34:53.040]Whenever I mess up on something, like drop my microphone,
[00:34:57.600]he comes and saves me.
[00:35:00.060]So we appreciate you, Dan.
[00:35:01.440]You can't see him, but he's there.
[00:35:03.180]He's a standup guy.
[00:35:05.610]He's also not that kind of doctor.
[00:35:08.190]All right, friends.
[00:35:09.360]Plan for your summers.
[00:35:11.460]We will see you in the fall.
[00:35:12.792](upbeat music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Summertime

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