🌪How I managed full-time job with Ph.D. and sleep well
Spoiler: challenging, but doable
👋🏼 Hi, I am Ellen and I am a nerd when it comes to time management and personal effectiveness!
🙅🏼♀️ 2 years ago, I did not use to sleep 6 hrs. I worked 4 years at Mckinsey and taught the theory of probability at Moscow State University at the same time, consumed up to 6 cups of coffee per day, took my laptop to the top of Kilimanjaro. All because nobody told me that how to manage myself is more important than what you are doing. I said “STOP,” it would not be better in the future, and it is a matter of choice, not abilities or “preinstalled features.”
What do I know about productive work?
I am actively looking for ways to master it in practice because I am: 👩🏼💻 Working full time in Silicon Valley, 👩🏼🔬 Working on my Ph.D. in Math, publishing abstracts and speaking at international conferences, 👩🏼🏫 Mentoring in Doing Business and Women in Tech, 🦹🏼♀️ Launching course, 👩🏼💼 Leading Mck Alumni in Valley and WomenChange communities, 👩🏼✈️ Travelling and moving (recently to Hawaii), 👩🏼🚀 Having an active Netflix subscription, nobody is cooking or cleaning for me.
And I am👸🏼 Sleeping at least 6 hours daily, to be precise, nightly.
📚I have read all existed books about productivity, personal development, and time management.
🌪️ What worked for me?
💪🏼 Strategically:
🧗🏼♀️ I have a KPI of doing what I love
🧘🏼 I am trying to live with imperfection, and I am okay with the fact that I will miss something, could be late, etc
🚫 I am not picking what to do. I am deciding what NOT TO DO
🏔️ What was changed tactically:
1. 💤 Fix the basics: sleep and rest enough. If you are burned out — stop reading and immediately focus on recovering process. Focus on doing what you love, loving what you do.
2. 🖼️ Picture Big or Big Picture: Know what and why you are doing what you are doing. What is the most important to do? What could be done only by you? What is your superpower? How does what you are doing now help to achieve that? Keep in mind the key goal of each meeting, activity, or task.
3. 🏆 Prioritize daily or 80:20: What is the highlight of the month, week, a day? Please write it down in the morning and stick to it. Do not think that urgent equal essential, so stick to the priorities and highlights.
4. ⭕ Iterations over perfectionism or Quick and Dirty. First of all, it is much better to deliver 1st ugly draft and get a feedback that makes something perfect but useless in a week without the ability to fix it. Second, it could be more beneficial to deliver 3 things far from perfection than 1 perfect, or even nothing at all! Who cares about perfection?
If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late — Reid Hoffman
5. ⛏️ What is the MVP (minimum viable product) of your task? Define the minimum-minimum deliverable and start right away in the next 5 min. It helps to avoid procrastination and start.
6. ⏳ Focus or help yourself. Go offline, block time in the calendar, turn off your notifications, start a timer for at least 25 min and ROCK.
7. 🍅 Be aware of the amount of time you have: I know that on my typical day, I will have exactly 16 pomodoros (or 8 hours), and I will try to plan no more than 75% of that time (12 pomos) to have a buffer for unexpected requests. That is my limit and nothing on top of that. I’ll estimate each todo before adding it to my task list and will make sure I started with the highest priority ones.
Stay tuned. We’ll share updates soon!
Share you favorite tips and tricks, I’ll appreciate it!