Introduction:

Hey friend, the time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours or Dr. Lacy where we talk about how to finally master this time management thing so you can stay on top of it without losing your mind. Every Wednesday you can find a new episode wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure you hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode. I'm Dr. Marvette Lacy, your dissertation writing strategist here to be with you along every step of the way and I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode. Hey, one quick thing before we get started with today's episode. Have you downloaded your Qual Scholars plan of study yet? You know the plan that walks you through step by step so you can go from feeling stuck, confused, and overwhelmed, to feeling like you finally have your shit together. I tell you exactly what you need to do for more discipline, consistency and structuring your dissertation process. All you need to do is go to Marvettelacy.com/plan to get your copy today. Now for real, let's get on to the show.

Happy Wednesday everyone. I am coming to you actually live, the day of this being released. Um, so I usually batch record episodes and I thought I had an episode for this week and because things have been a bit hectic lately, um, I have, haven't had, I used to have someone who was helping me with the podcast so that I could be ahead of schedule that hasn't been happening. Um, I do have someone who's coming on to help me and so we will get back onto this regular schedule. I mean, this doesn't affect you but it affects me in terms of we will get back on a schedule where I'll be doing things way more ahead of time. Um, and I would be able to catch things like this of like you thought you had an episode for today, but I, there's, it's not there. It's not there y'all. I don't, I went to the garage band, I was about to upload it so that you could have it. And then I realized there's no episode and maybe that is why the universe woke me up so early this morning. I've been up since really like 3:30 on and off. But I finally decided to get out the bed at 5:30 and... (*Phone dings) that is so rude y'all I didn't even cut off my phone. We family. Yeah, I got me. So, um, if you are listening to this in real time, then I invite you to come hang out with me on Sunday, December 22nd at 2:00 PM Eastern time I'm going to be hosting a planning workshop and it's called Getting It All Done. Um, and it's how can you get it all done and make a plan to finish your dissertation without burning yourself out.

First 30 Days:

Uh, we are talking about what are we doing for the first 30 days of 2020. And that's what I want to spend a little bit more time going deeper into for this episode. And if you like anything that you're hearing here, then you absolutely should come on Sunday and join us for that workshop. Um, just email me contact@marvettelacy.com and let us know that you are interested and we will get you signed up. But y'all know, you hear the cars in the background, y'all imma figure this out. That is one of my um, goals for the, for this upcoming break of for December. Um, I currently work as a postdoc at the university of Maryland. Um, and the benefits, um, most of the time of working in higher education is that you get some time off in December and so we will be getting some time off at the end of the month and I have all sorts of plans for that time. So one of those plans consists of figuring out, okay, how can I record this podcast without all of the noise that I have outside of my window? It's so annoying. You hear it on the podcast episodes. I'm sure you follow me on Instagram, which is Marvette Lacy by the way. You follow me there? I am always talking about like I just wanna I just want to be great and record without all of the exhaust noises that you hear up and down the street. And I'm really confused why in the middle of rush hour the people are doing all the things. But anyway, that's not what you came here for.

So I want to talk to you about 2020, um, next week's episodes. Um, and yes, there will be an episode next week. So if you need an escape from family or you're not, you're like, I mean, not everyone celebrates Christmas. Not everyone, not, it's not a joyous time for everyone. Um, and so if you need something, there's definitely gonna be an episode. You want to listen. I'm going to be releasing, I'm going to be talking about reflecting on our year. Um, I do think that's an important piece in planning, in terms of, um, thinking about the level of progress that we've had. And so absolutely, listen to that today though. I want to talk about 2020, and particularly, I want to talk about the first 30 days, right? So, of course we get into this time of year, folks are making all the plans of I'm going to do this, it's going to be new year, new me, I'm going to do all the things. Right. Um, and maybe you even found yourself saying, you know, I want to do these goals in 2020, these are going to be my new year's resolutions. And maybe you're like, well, I don't believe in new year's resolutions. I'm just thinking about my goals and intentions, you know, same thing, tomato, tomato, um, and even me, like I've been thinking about, I do things like I reflect on my year and now it's fun to reflect in a decade, right? Cause we're going into a new decade. Um, I think about what my word of the year is going to be. My word for 2019 was simplify and it has definitely served as an anchor in all areas of my life.

And I'm quite like, well pleased with it. I mean, I'm still doing some reflecting, but yes, so far I'm like, yes. Simplify. Absolutely. That's what I've been doing and I'm really excited for my word for 2020, which I think I should do a different podcast about that. Um, because this, we're not there yet. Um, but today, so the first 30 days of January, well its 31 days, but you get what I'm saying? We need to think about that now. Right? Uh, and real time, it's December 18th, 2019 and yes. Um, if you wait until January, right then you are not able to fully maximize your time in a way that you could if you started planning now, um, a lot of times we, we think about planning as this like, Oh, so for, you know, by the end of January I'm going to have chapter two done. Let's just say that that was your goal, right? Because you are pushing towards defending your proposal before spring break, let's say. And so you think, Oh, it'll be a good benchmark to have chapter two done by the end of January. And then most people would just leave it there. Right? It's like, Oh, it's very clear cause it is clear, you know exactly what you want to get done, you want to finish chapter two. By the end of January you have a deadline. Um, it's realistic to do that, uh, chapter two in a month.

Um, and so, you know, people talk about smart goals and that, um, you know, as long as it's measurable, it's very clear. Um, it's realistic, it's attainable, you know, all the things right. That it's a good goal. And I would say yes, it's a good start. Right. But when that's your goal, that's your destination, what about your road map to get there, right? Like what does it look like when you go to sit down on January 1st or whenever you plan to sit down? I'm assuming that most folks will be sitting down somewhere between the first and the third to like really okay, like what does my schedule look like for the spring semester? What do I need to do? Um, cause if you are on the schedule where classes begin around the second or third or somewhere around that or you have to start reporting it back to your assistantship or your job or your position right, you have, you are more than likely going to spend that Tuesday, that Thursday looking over things. Um. And so what, what are you going to do right? Like January 1st you sit down. Okay. I'm working on chapter two.

What's Step 1?:

What's step one? Is step one: I'm just gonna download all the articles even though you probably have folders and folders of articles on your laptop right now collecting electronic dust? Um, is the first step to outline your chapter two and get really clear. And then what type of outline is it? It's it just a very broad outline. It's an annotated bibliography type outline. Like what does that look like? And then if you did download articles already, what's your approach? Are you gonna just, just start picking it up one by one? You're going to start reading it? You got to read them in their entirety? You're going to take some notes? What is your note system going to be? How are you going to transition from taking notes to um, writing? And I don't, I don't ask you all of these questions because I, I'm trying to, you know, stir up more anxiety for you as you all of these questions because these are some things that would be helpful to think about right now. Umm, people, um, and they, a lot of people do spend a lot of time here. I'm not talking about that camp right now. I'm going to get to you.

However, some people don't think about, okay, what does this look like? Right? How do you, how do you, um, break this larger goal of finishing chapter two by the end of January? How do you break that up into smaller goals? And I don't mean, I'm not talking about the fluff. I'm talking about how do you break it up so small that when you go to sit down on January 1st you're like, all right, I know exactly what I'm doing. And not that you had to have the whole picture figured out, right? Because it's going to change. That's the hope point. But at the very least, can you have the first few steps planned out, like to get yourself started? Because if you're anything like me, Wednesday, January 1st, it's going to come, you're going to sit down and you're going to look at your goal, and I'm like, all right, by the end of January I am going to have my um, chapter two done. And then I would sit there and stare at my computer screen. I would just stare at a blank document and be like, I don't get how I'm supposed to do that. So I've learned my lesson. I don't do that anymore. Instead on the, when I'm thinking of the goal, I am also thinking, okay, what are the quick, what are the next three to five steps that I can take that's going to get me to that end goal, right?

Brain Dumping:

And so I, I think I like, um, so I'm going to ask you to do this. Go press pause right now. Go get a piece of paper, go get a notebook or something. And I want you to on this piece of paper, I want you to just brain dump, right so you know your goal is to finish chapter two. I want you to brain dump every possible step you can think of that would get you to the goal of finishing chapter two. I don't want you to go, you don't need to go look up anything. You don't need to go buy any new planners. You don't need to go download any articles. You just need to sit your bottom to a chair, have a piece of paper, something to write with, and just set a timer for 10 minutes and just write out everything that comes to mind when you think about how can I finish chapter two? And even if you are saying, I don't know, just write, I don't know, and just keep writing. What, ask yourself the question, if you did know, what would you do? And whatever comes to mind. I don't care how random or tangential it is, I want you to just write that down. Write it down. So this, these are everything, all the steps I possibly could think of right now for what I know that I would need to do.

Top 3:

Once you have done that and the paper is full and everything is out of your brain, I then want you to go back and review that brain dump of all the possible tasks, right? And I want you to choose just three, choose circle three, circle the three that you feel would make the most significant impact for you right now. Like if you were to do these things, if you could accomplish these three things, it would move you the furthest along towards finishing your chapter two and by the end of January, right? So we have our goal, we have our piece of paper, we did the brain dump, we circled the top three things that we think would help us the most, right? So you have those three things. Now I want you to either flip to a new sheet of paper or get a new sheet of paper, write those top three things out and then I want you to break those three things up like into even smaller steps, but this time I want you to do it through the lens of each step that I write, that how I'm breaking up these three top three goals, each of these things would take me roughly 20 minutes to do. Why 20 minutes? I feel like 20 minutes is enough time to do like one small task, but it doesn't give you this feeling of like, Oh, I have all this free time to go do this extra thing over here. It's like, Nope, I just have 20 minutes. Maybe I can do in this 20 minutes it's download an article. Maybe I like, I hope you don't hear my stomach. Maybe all I can do in this 20 minutes is read a paragraph and and read over that. Maybe all I can do in 20 minutes is check my citations. Like you want to think about what are things or maybe all can do in 20 minutes is send out an email to my chair, whatever that is. I want you to look at those top three goals and I want you to break them down into 20 minutes increments. Okay. Now like and the goal would be to at least have 12 tasks where each of those top three things like you know, tennis, well this is not an exact science, but for the people who are like, no, how many more structured in that then that's what you're doing.

Smaller Tasks:

Your goal is to come up with 10 to 12 tasks for each of the top three, um, that you're writing down. So, um, off the top of my head, an example would be, okay, if our big goal is we're going to finish chapter two by the end of January, maybe the top three things is that I'm going to write an outline, I'm going to download 20 articles and well, I'm going to review 20 articles. And the third thing is I'm going to give an initial draft to my chair by January 15th. Let's say she has so that I can make sure I'm on the right track. So then if I was to take, those are my top three. So then if I was to take, um, I'm going to review 20 articles, right, that's if I was going to break that up into 12 tasks. It may look something like I'm going to, um, I'm going do an initial search of, around my keywords. Uh, right, cause it doesn't take long. I'm just doing a search and I'm going to take the first 10 articles, um, that I see. Uh, maybe another thing would be I would email or go online to the web, the library, like website or maybe I'll go into the library and I'll schedule a time with the reference library. And uh, maybe a third thing would be, um, sit down with librarian to see what other things come up in a search. Because when I would do that, that didn't take me longer than 20 minutes. Um, once I told them what I was doing and they looked it up for me and then they gave me the link, that's usually how it worked for me. Um, uh, another thing would be I would read one article, review it and write notes on it, right? Or, 150 summary of it. That would be article one, you know, like, so just to give you an idea of like breaking it down into smaller tasks, right. And so once you have 12 of those for each of your top three, then you go into your planner, right? And you look at, okay, like look at your schedule, look at your planner and say, realistically, how much time am I going to dedicate to this goal of writing out this chapter two? I usually tell clients to come up with a schedule of 10 hours a week. And I mean, only 10 hours, not a day, I mean, for real, 10 hours a week where you are working not when you feel like it, like you are doing this ahead of time.

So if you are in the Write Your Dissertation, formerly known as Write Away program, right? We meet on Wednesdays and Sundays for three hours each. So for my clients that's already six hours done it's determined you had six hours of dedicated structured writing time. And so then I usually tell them to find one to two more days to spread out the remaining four hours that they're going to work. So now that you have your schedule on those days in your planner, you plug in three of the tasks that you, so let me back up, right? So we have our overall goal. We have our top three goals that we broke our larger goal into. And then for those three goals, we now have 36 smaller tasks because we broke down those top three goes into 12 tasks each. I hope you're following me in my math, right? So now you have 36 smaller 20 minute tasks. When you have determined your writing schedule of 10 hours and you have your designated days of the week that you're going to work and use those 10 hours. Now you want to go to your list of those 36 tasks in each of those writing days or for each writing session, you want to identify three tasks of the 36 that you're going to do each day, right? So if my first writing time is Wednesday, January 1st I'm going to write, I'm going to go to Write Away cause it's on a Wednesday. I'm going to go to Write Away or Write Your Dissertation for at from 7 to 10 pm my top three tasks, like the first things that I'm going to do is that I've got to do my initial search. I'm going to send an email out to the reference librarian and because it's the first and nobody's probably at work and I'm going to download the first 10 articles I see. Those are going to be my top three tasks and if I have some more time, which most likely I would have more time, then I'm going to go back to that list of 36 and start with the next thing.

Why Top 3?:

And that is how you get so clear on your planning that you know exactly what it is that you need to do. I encourage my clients to have a top three every day. In the top three are three tasks, each task takes 20 minutes or less, but it moves you closer to your goal and I encouraged them to do it the first thing in their work time because at least you know that if you don't do anything else that day, right? If you get sidetracked talking to someone, you at least know that you did those three things and it's closer to your goal. You can, you can measure your progress, right? Because you can check things off. You can say, Oh, I produced this thing because I wrote it down in this way, right. When we do the alternative and we're just like, Oh, I'm just going to finish chapter two by the end of January, and you don't have a plan exactly of what you're going to do when you sit down. Then you go to sit down and you spend way more time trying to figure it out and you're more likely to get frustrated because you already had to hype yourself up to sit down and do the work. Now you got to like spend more energy to hype yourself up to plan out the work. And I know the way I'm set up, that doesn't, it doesn't work for me because by the time I like hype myself up to sit down, now I feel like I need a reward. So now about to go on Instagram or Facebook or do something else other than the thing that I said I was going to do during that work time. But now when I come and I sit down and it's time to work and I look at my planner, I'm like, Oh, yup, yup, I got to do that.

Top 3 Example:

And I had written in my planner for today thinking about this missed podcast episode that I needed to just schedule the episode because I absolutely knew that it was already to go because all the other episodes are ready to go. So now I'm just curious what my mind was doing. I think I was doing too much, which is a whole different podcast. Um, but because I, I've written down a system of how record the podcast and edit it and get it up. You're going to get this on time because I've planned my life in 20 minute increments. So I told myself I would record this for 20 minutes. I'm going to spend 20 minutes on the editing. I'm going to spend 20 minutes on the uploading and getting this scheduled and you will have your episode and that will just take me an hour. Whereas before it used to take me hours and hours and hours to get an episode out.

I now have a system I now have planned it in a way that makes it more attainable and reachable and I just want you to treat your dissertation like your business. Your dissertation at this point is your business. So how can you make sure that you plan it in a way that you know exactly what to do. Another way to think about it would be how can you plan out your goals for the first 30 days of January and all days really, but how can you plan out your goals in a way that if you gave someone else your planner or your to do list, they could follow it exactly and know what to do. What would it mean for you to do that level of detailed planning? How much differently would you show up if your planning was like that? How much more would you get done if your planning was like that?

True Freedom:

I also hear other people, I hear people in my head, I'll say here, people like, I don't cause I used to say it, it's like I don't want to be rigid. I don't like routine. I want to be free and that's just bullshit. We're going to be honest, is it, I you waste more time like that and true freedom friend, true freedom is when you're getting your shit done and you still have free time and energy to do the things you really want. That's true freedom. Not that you spinning your wheels all day trying to figure out, okay, what is it that I'm supposed to do? How am I supposed to get there? Mm mm, let's do that now. So if you're like, okay, I feel you, I'm hearing you. I want more, I want more of this. I highly, highly encourage you then to come to that workshop on Sunday.

And if you are listening to this episode later, after this point of it being recorded, I'm, I'm more than positive that there, there's something on the website or workshop or something. I'm hosting something. There's something available for you to help you plan out your goals and it's very clear way. So that's a sneak peek into products that are coming out of 2020 but yes, I am taking this planning thing to the next level.

I Care:

I care about you. I care about your dissertation and I'm tired of you wasting your good time and your good energy doing things that are not serving you and it's not a good use of your time. So come to the workshop if it's after, come to MarvetteLacy.com. Get your life. Get into the planning workshop now so you can make the most of the next 30 days. Okay? That is all for today. I would love to know your thoughts. Come on over to Instagram and MarvetteLacy.com and I will talk with you there. Have a good Wednesday. Happy hump day. Bye for now. Thank you for joining in for today's office hours. Make sure you come on Instagram and tag me @Marvette Lacy, let me know what your thoughts were on today's episode. Until next time, do something to show yourself some love. I'll talk to you next week. Bye for now.