Imagine this: The idea of a writing retreat without the hassle of navigating airports or a long road trip to a distant location. 

In late November 2023, I had the opportunity to participate in the three-day RED Writing Retreat while staying in a hotel in my hometown of Mildura. This meant that I was involved in an online retreat with over forty people while staying right I am. You might wonder, “Why a staycation?” and “How did it go?” 

Well, let me share my experience! 

Why a Staycation?

When I was thinking about how I could be most productive during the RED Writing Retreat, the idea of taking a staycation provided me with the perfect solution. 

While the idea of a staycation – or vacationing in your own town or city – might seem odd to some, it offers several benefits. First, it provided another way to switch up my writing routine, offering a refreshing change of scenery without sacrificing the comforts of home. Second, there was no need to research possible destinations or navigate unfamiliar surroundings. I could soak in the calm and familiarity of my hometown without the hassle and cost of travel. And, finally, it gave me a quiet environment and dedicated space to focus on my writing without my usual home and work distractions. It was the perfect blend of ease and productivity that I needed.

Planning for a Staycation

Effective planning was the key to my successful staycation writing retreat.

1. Choose the Right Accommodation: I chose a quiet, comfortable hotel with kitchen facilities and windows that opened for fresh air. It was essential to have a space where I could write for long periods, including a decent desk, chair and reliable Wi-Fi. The hotel was also within walking distance of all the essentials: coffee shops, a supermarket (to replenish snacks), local restaurants and a walking track along the Murray River.
2. Outline your writing goals: Be clear on your goals and what you want to achieve during the writing retreat to give yourself direction and purpose. To keep myself on track, I created daily goals and a checklist to keep me motivated, track my progress and provide a sense of achievement.
3. Plan your days: Before the retreat, the RED Team sent out a schedule of writing blocks and break times over the three days, which helped me to develop a clear plan aligned with dedicated writing hours, balanced with breaks for meals, relaxation and sleep.
4. Pack Accordingly: Even though I was in my hometown, I packed as if I were going on a regular vacation but with all the essentials – laptop and chargers, printouts and reading materials, stationery, favourite coffee cup and drink bottle, essential oil diffuser (clarity and focus blend for concentration), exercise clothes, yoga mat and bath bomb. Going back home, if I forgot something, was not an option! 
5. Communicate your goals to work colleagues, family, and friends to ensure minimal interruptions during work hours.

Making the Most of Your Staycation

Once you’re there, it’s all about balancing work and rest to be productive in your writing. 

Prioritise your most critical tasks during your peak concentration hours and share your progress with others during the scheduled breaks. The days are long, and the intensive writing sessions are hard. 

Schedule breaks, take short walks or engage in activities that refresh your mind. In my case, I packed my yoga mat and walked along the river in the afternoon to clear my head and stretch my legs after long hours of sitting at a computer. You can explore local coffee shops and restaurants during leisure time, and even discover hidden gems that you’ve overlooked in your hometown. Use the hotel amenities to unwind in the evenings, ensuring a good night’s sleep to boost productivity the next day. This balance kept me motivated and energised throughout the three days.

Wrapping Up

My staycation turned out to be a valuable and motivating experience. The change in my writing environment helped minimise distractions and enhanced my creativity and productivity, all while in the shared online company of fellow academics. So, if you are considering a new way of escaping the mundane of your usual writing space without venturing too far, consider a staycation writing retreat. Your writing will thank you for it. I’m already considering where to stay for next year’s RED Writing Retreat! 

—————————-

Tara Williams is a Nurse Academic at the Mildura Campus of the La Trobe Rural Health School with teaching experience and curriculum development in community nursing and primary health care. 

Tara completed a Master of Public Health in 2016 and is currently undertaking a PhD investigating how rural communities reduce loneliness through volunteering. Tara has a strong interest in rural health, the social determinants of health and cross-sector collaboration.

The post My staycation experience: an online writing retreat in my hometown (Tara Williams) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Starting a new year brings forth a flush of good intentions and vistas of possibility.

More often than not, however, there are plenty of tasks that accumulate across time and are still hanging around at the end of 2021, and are even now outstaying their welcome at the beginning of 2022.  Ironically, considering the topic of this post, one of those things I had to do was finalise this piece and have it ready to go when we started publishing the RED Alert again in February – and here that task still is! Ah, well. It happens to all of us!

Back in December, I asked some La Trobe colleagues how they ensured they started a new year of work effectively. It can be hard at the end of a year,  particularly the second COVID one, to pull together the power to plan the what comes after the summer break. These wonderful colleagues came through for me and shared their strategies and planning moves for heading into a new year – do they chime with what you do?

The most common response was that many researchers did a ‘clearing of the decks’ late the previous year (before people walked out the door on their holidays) or first thing in the new year.

ARC Future Fellow Mandi Cooklin from the Judith Lumley Centre said she liked making sure she had the ‘gremlins’ off her plate and no nasty surprises lurking as she starts her work in the new year. Danilo de Oliveira Silva, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the La Trobe Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre, says:

At the beginning of the year I block some time to organise and “clean” my computer folders and files aiming for a fresh start. This makes my whole year more efficient and motivates me. My rule of thumb to check if I am organised enough is “I need to be able to find any file in my computer in 40 seconds.

Alicia King, a PhD researcher in Social Work and Social Policy, shared:

My biggest fear in starting the year is opening my computer on the first day back and not knowing what I’m doing. I usually have a few things at the end of the year that I know will take more mental space and energy that my colleagues or I have. It’s my practice to keep a running ‘to -do’ list during the year and, in the final weeks of the year, I earmark those things that can wait until the new year. 

On my last day of work, I rewrite a fresh list, so I know what I’m doing my first day back. I also try to be realistic and don’t expect to get focussed work done the first day back (or any Monday in a normal week) as it’s usually about making plans, responding to e-mails and getting the ball rolling on any collaborative tasks.

However this process happened across people’s contexts, a core element of enabling effective work had  consistency: having informed control of what needs doing.

Knowing how you’re going to give yourself the best chance to do it is also very important. Jasvir Nachatar Singh, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business says:

I am a planner, so I usually plan out what I need to do in December itself (every year, actually), so that I am not overwhelmed with work. In my diary, I allocate my time for my teaching, research, and leadership activities. My sanity stays intact through planning and I can say NO to ‘shiny projects’. 

How you tackle this workload is highly individual and could mean you stop work when the University shuts down and don’t touch serious work till February, or it could mean you’re doing ‘Shut up and write‘ with colleagues on Christmas Eve or seeing in the new year while writing. There are no hard and fast rules around when you must be working but it’s good to take a step back once in a while to observe your own practices. Michelle Cimoli, a PhD researcher in the School of Allied Health, Human Services & Sport (Discipline of Speech Pathology) commented:

As the earth starts another trip around the sun, I’ve been reflecting on the past year and the intention I would like to bring to 2022. I bought myself a new notebook (2022 will be the year of the #BulletJournal!), created a list of current projects, and have made inroads to taming my email Inbox. In addition to having a clear sense of what I’ll be ‘doing’ in 2022, I’ve decided I need to ever so gently, ever so kindly, sharpen the focus on my mental health and self-care by paying more attention to ‘being’ – being present, honouring the moment, and giving this​ moment my fullest attention (as Eckart Tolle would say). 

I am hoping this intention helps me develop more of a discipline in doing one thing at a time, and giving my fullest attention to this one thing. Less multi-tasking. Less unproductive thinking. 

Having the intention to work more mindfully and view your practices more holistically can make a big difference to sustaining your ability to do good work and live an enjoyable life. To motivate yourself to get things done with enthusiasm, there’s nothing better than a well-planned, fabulous reward when you’ve completed that work. Made Rimayanti, a PhD researcher in Physiotherapy, said:

I think my inspiration for the new year is to see my family again in Bali. I haven’t seen them for 2 years, and I have blocked 2 months in June 2022 to see them. I’ll make sure I smash my goals before then so I can enjoy what little precious time I have with them!

To work effectively, then, requires a range of elements that have nothing to do with putting in X number of hours in a day or week. It’s about organising and prioritising, having time to recharge and rest, and giving yourself incentive to meet your goals.

All the very best for starting 2022 with a bounce in your step!

—————————

If you’re looking for some structured research planning to help you meet your goals and map productive directions for your research, you can check out La Trobe University’s Individual Research Plans (IRP) on the intranet.

—————————

Dr Tseen Khoo is a Senior Lecturer in research education and development with the RED team at La Trobe University. Melbourne. She researches in the field of critical university studies and has published on early career researcher experiences, digital academic identities, and racial diversity issues. 

Tseen created and manages the Research Whisperer with Jonathan O’Donnell. She’s on Twitter at @tseenster.

The post Starting as you mean to go on (Tseen Khoo) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Hugo Gernsback in the Isolator, image originally published in Science and Invention magazine (July 1925) | Source: greatdisorder.blogspot.com/2010/03/focus-focus.html

This is not a post that wants to whip you into a fever of productivity. 

It is hard going right now, for many reasons, and it’s fairly unhelpful for anyone to be telling you that you should be doing more than what you can manage right now. 

What’s this post about then? It’s about how we all have different blockers and tendencies when it comes to doing our work, and what we do about them can also be quite different. 

It all started with an idea I had while talking to the lovely people at ‘Research Now’ last week. Research Now is an informal weekly get-together that the RED team hosts, where we discuss a whole range of different things. We’ve talked about ways to do research planning, how folks approach literature reviews or orientation, candidature admin, coping with lockdown (this being a constant topic at the moment…). We’ve swapped baking tips, met more of each others’ pets and children, and generally spend a relaxed 45 mins just hanging out. It’s a good, low-threshold way to connect with colleagues. If you’re interested in coming along to Research Now, email us and we’ll add you to the list.

ANYway, last week, I ended up inviting the crew who were there to share their productivity issues and how they tried to address them. I find that we often know how we get in our own way when it comes to getting things done!

Have a look at the key issues we recognised in our own practices – if any of them look familiar, do the approaches to address them also look familiar? 

I started the ball rolling with my particular productivity blocker: 

I’m very good at being utterly daunted by projects and anxious about how much needs to be done – so I do nothing. 

How I have tried to address this is the classic strategy of breaking the project down into smaller tasks (you hear this advice 100 times and you need to be in the right zone to actually listen to it). I’ve also been training myself to goal-set better and made sure I have accountability for my goals. I’m part of a monthly-weeklies group, and I have also set up a personal accountability colleague for major research project milestones. 

Allira said: “I’m really good at false productivity – I’ll happily spend an entire day completing life and work admin tasks (sending e-mails, colour-coding my diary, etc), then feel guilty about not making any tangible progress.

I make a timeline for myself, every 6 months or so, with the headings ‘What’ (the task) and ‘By when’ (a rough deadline); this keeps me accountable and it’s easy to see whether I’m ahead or behind schedule.

I schedule ‘Golden Hours’ into my diary – these are the times when I work best and can write, uninterrupted, for a few hours (if it’s not written in my diary then it won’t happen).

When starting a new chapter, I love making brainstorms (with colours, photos, etc.) to help get the thoughts out of my mind. When writing out the first draft of a chapter (using what’s on the brainstorm), I follow the motto of ‘1000 words a day’. It only takes a few hours and it’s a complete rough draft; it really helps to get the words onto the pages.”   

Dan said: “I am a list maker. In fact, so much of a list maker that I will sometimes even list things I’ve already finished, just to have the satisfaction of crossing them off. To be honest, I’m not sure if my list-making ritual is productive or procrastination but one common problem I have is the angst of not making it through to the end of a list. 

A management coach once told me that, in his experience, people tended to make lists that were far longer than what was possible to complete in a single day. His solution? To limit the list to a small number (e.g. 8 to 10) of items. If you reach the end – GREAT! Reward yourself, but get out of the habit of making lists so long that they never get finished.”

Anuja shared: “Tasks that I initially think will be quick, but end up taking a lot longer, particularly some emails. 

The solution for me is that, if I only have a handful of these, then I list them, and aim to get them complete by the week. This puts them in a separate category to the other emails and delineates them as a task of their own. If I have a fair few like this, or I don’t have many hours in my day or week, I allocate specific time in my day or week to do these. I don’t aim to finish them all at a given time, but allocate myself something like one hour a day to get them done.”

Charmaine said of her work schedule: “Mondays are currently my designated study days and I work Tuesday – Friday so my productivity is feast or famine. I find it difficult to know where to start. 

I have found that the Pomodoro technique is helpful. However, it’s only helpful if you have actually already planned, or mapped out, the focus of the Pomodoro sessions! Otherwise, I sit there staring at the screen.

Having a study buddy to be accountable to is also good.”

Ashley said: “Too often, I let myself ‘off the hook’ when I should be writing, telling myself I’ll feel more like writing later (spoiler alert: I almost never ‘feel’ like writing until I start writing). 

My solution/practice is to have a routine or study schedule; this is crucial for me. I work full-time so the time available for PhD stuff is pretty limited as is but, without a schedule, I spend ages agonising over whether to write and feeling guilty if I don’t. To combat this, I set aside the same two evenings each week for study and I switch straight from my ‘day job’ to writing as this helps me stay in ‘work’ mode. For the past 3 months, I’ve been attending SUAW sessions on Saturdays – the group atmosphere keeps me accountable when my inner-thesis-avoidance monster would say ‘It’s the weekend – have some fun!’ (this is also helped by the fact that I’m in Melbourne so my pre-lockdown weekend activities are non-existent).

Sometimes, to-do lists send me into a panic, so I find it more helpful to keep a ‘done’ list. After a writing session, I write down the tasks worked on and time spent on a calendar. This acts as a reminder that even short sessions lead to incremental progress, which helps motivate me to work when I’m feeling discouraged. It also helps me better estimate how long tasks will take, so my to-do lists are (slowly) becoming more realistic and less panic-inducing.

P.S. PhDs are long and hard, and sometimes you do genuinely need to take time out and have a break. The above isn’t a suggestion to push through when you are exhausted or worn out. It’s for those times when you know you have the capacity to work – you’d just rather not.”

—————————–

Many thanks to the generous souls who shared their issues and practices in this post! I compiled them here in case they were helpful for others who have obstacles in common and wanted to see what colleagues did about them.

—————————–

Dr Tseen Khoo is a Senior Lecturer in the RED team. You can find her on Twitter at @tseenster. 

The post In case this is helpful (Tseen Khoo) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Part of becoming a researcher is figuring out how to manage yourself in relation to time.

All research work comes with deadlines to juggle, complex work that feels as long as a piece of string, and the need to plan across various time scales. It’s a tricky business.

Then there’s the fact that we’re all different, and have a variety of different responsibilities. So the key thing to do is to suss out what makes you productive given who you are and your unique context.

Some of us are still figuring things out, and may engage in a bit of magical thinking (a couple of days per chapter sounds about right, right?). Others of us are planning superstars, showing up with a hefty toolkit of diaries, and calendars and apps to help us get on with things. And yet all of us have more to learn about time and productivity when it comes to research.

On Friday the 3rd of July we were lucky enough to have Hugh Kearns from Thinkwell zooming in to give a workshop called “Time for Research”. This workshop is a popular one, and Hugh is a master of making us all wriggle as we see the missteps that many of us make as we go about managing our own productivity. For anyone who missed the workshop but wants access to the resource, you can buy the book here. I’ve also summarised some key takeaways for you in this post.

As I said in a previous post on academic writing, one of the best things about zoom workshops is the chatbox! This workshop was no exception, there was a total treasure trove of advice given by our ECR and graduate researcher community.

In this post I have gathered up that advice, and shaped it into 10 time management strategies offered up by our researchers for our researchers. I’d like to thank our researcher community for being so generous with their suggestions, which I’ll share in no particular order.


1) Plan well. This involves good longer and medium term planning to make sure big goals (e.g. research milestones) are planned for and in the diary/calendar, and that smaller goals are working toward these bigger goals. Daily planning is also important. Some researchers shared that they find planning the day before really helpful. The decision about what to do the next day has been made for you, and you can get on with making the magic happen.


2) Make lists of things to do, and rank them in order of priority. This can help you know what you need to do first, so you don’t have to spend heaps of time thinking about it. Put things on you can cross off easily. This way you get a bit of momentum going! Lots of people said that they really need to schedule in writing time to make sure it doesn’t get lost among all of their other responsibilities.


3) Break bigger tasks into smaller component parts. Work on the smaller parts and build up to the whole. If you are the kind of person who writes on their to-do list “write the paper” you may experiment with something smaller (e.g. write  paragraph two of the methodology section). And make sure you have sufficient time for yourself to do the task you need to do. Don’t make unrealistic goals that set you up to feel disappointed in yourself. Some people said they use the pomodoro technique to keep track of time and to figure out how long a given task tends to take them.


4) Think about when you’ve got the “oomph”. Some of us found that it is a really good idea to do revisions on a paper or on a thesis chapter straight after being given the feedback when we’ve got the ‘oomph’. Other people found that they had ‘golden hours’ where they were more productive in the morning. They key message here was do a bit of reflection and see what works for you. 


5) Start writing. It’s a fine judgement call to make between ‘gathering a bit more information’ and spending too much time in reading-land. Sometimes we need to jump into writing and figure it out on the page.


6) Rest and reward yourself. One of our researchers said that they set a goal for how many words they want to write, and then once they’ve achieved it they will watch an episode of their favourite show on Netflix to reward themselves. Rewards work best when you do them after the thing that you want to do…rather than before (sounds obvious I know…). Walk away. Some of our researchers said a key strategy they use is to walk away from writing for a while. As one of our folk said “When you get to the point you’re making it worse, step away” or pause and get feedback. Other people made sure that their weekends were set aside as “recharge time”. One of our researchers suggested this book Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang as a helpful guide.


7) Time to think. Research work is hard and doesn’t always benefit from being too busy. Sometimes we need to set aside time for stillness, silence and special time to think.

8) For those who are managing teaching and research, several strategies were shared. For example, some researchers do a weekly post to students about what they need to do the following week, or make use of a discussion board and encourage students to use it, or use FAQs. Making sure students have all the information they need can save a lot of time with email queries.


9) Uninstall distractions, or keep your phone away. These may include email notifications, social media, news media, and other alerts that flash and buzz and beep. Other people made rules not to check email until lunchtime. Our researchers suggested a number of books that have guidance on this topic including How to Break Up With Your Phone  by Catherine Price, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport, and this blog post Why you (probably) can’t multitask. Lots of different applications were shared to block various apps including Appblock or OFFTIME or Freedom or Block Site to help you block distracting applications/websites or Daywise to schedule notifications.


10) Saying no, not right now, maybe later (and all the other variations of ‘no’). This is a big one. Many people were trying to find ways to delay saying ‘yes’ to actually check if they had time. Others suggested sticking a post-it above their desk asking “IS THIS A SHINY BALL?” so they don’t forget to refuse shiny opportunities that aren’t priorities, or they don’t have time for. One of our researchers suggested this book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown, which picks up these themes.

What are your top strategies for managing time? We’d love to hear from you.

————————————–

James Burford works in the RED team. He’s always learning about time and how to manage it.

The post 10 time management strategies for researchers (James Burford) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Photo by STIL on Unsplash

At a recent event, doctoral researcher Kerryn O’Rourke mentioned some of the strategies she uses to get herself organised for her research work. This week we invited Kerryn to share with us a tool that works for her, and she has chosen the Productivity Planner. In this (not sponsored!!) post, Kerryn shares how and why it works for her. 


If any other members of our research community have a tool you’d like to review on the RED Alert please get in touch with us. 
———————————————–

Approaching my final year of PhD candidature, I felt the need to seriously up my productivity.

While going down an internet vortex is usually not so productive, this time I came up with this ripper of a book: the Productivity Planner, by Intelligent Change.
What I like about it is that it integrates all the best advice on how to be productive:

• Write a to-do list of 3-5 tasks per day.
  This is a really good one for me as I’m inclined to overshoot on expectations and not feel satisfied at the end of a day. I’m learning that less is more. Feeling successful at the end of a day spurs me on for the next and helps me relax in between (that has to be a win-win!)
• Start with the most important task.
  THIS is SO important! This was my biggest productivity trap. I sabotage writing time by “getting all the fiddly admin done first”. And then the day is gone. There is always admin, there are always emails. Making myself do the most important task first when I had precious writing time during C19 lockdown and kids’ home learning and yadda yadda, just got me a paper drafted!
• Work on only one task at a time (really).
  I can’t claim to have hit this goal very often, but I feel pretty steady and clear when I do.
• Work in 25 minute sessions (the Pomodoro technique).
  YES, DO Shut Up and Write. Join the LTU groups, online groups or DIY. I even had my kids doing it during home learning (For the Shut Up bit mostly, haha!).
• Use breaks effectively (like stretch, dance, chat, but not check Instragram).
  Yes, you’re in charge of your breaks (And I am too now that my kids have gone back to school).
• Track time and your use of it (there are little boxes to colour in).
• Score your productivity each day.
  This seems to build in some reflection that I think is always helpful. Setting intentions and then reflecting at the end ‘book-ends’ the day and/or week. Then off time is really off time.

Aside from all the productivity hacks, it has lovely paper, is beautifully bound, and peppered with (not too many) inspiring quotes from famous (and mostly likely productive) people. Here’s some of them to get you thinking:

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. RUMI

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. ARTHUR ASHE

Fall seven times, stand up eight. JAPANESE PROVERB

I highly recommend this tool to other researchers who are keen to boost their productivity.

—————————————————–

The post Investing in productivity tools (Kerryn O’Rourke) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Anyone working as a research scientist with young kids is familiar with the constant pull between wanting to give both your work and parenting 100%, yet never feeling like you are anywhere close to succeeding.

So, what happens when you force scientists away from their lab work and into a ‘kids 24/7’ situation without warning?

For me, the truth is that in many ways it has actually been pretty great.

BUT, before I go into all the gushy reasons why not being able to escape my darling children for five weeks straight has actually been somewhat of a blessing, I’m also not going to pretend it hasn’t been stressful.

In fact, if I think too hard about it, I find myself getting very anxious about what this COVID-19 lockdown period may have cost me, career-wise.

The critical months of data collection that were to contribute to my next big fellowship application, the invaluable networking experience and potential international collaborations I could have gained from attending two major overseas conference that have now been moved online or cancelled. The list goes on.

So, I try not to think about it too much. We all have our own versions of how this time has disadvantaged us and I know some have it a lot worse off than me.

As I sit trying to concentrate on my work at home in my makeshift office, I can’t block out the sounds of the children laughing/screaming/thumping in the background. I can’t stop them crashing in every few minutes (despite being told by their dad not to disturb me) to show me their latest drawing or Lego creation.

On a good day, I get about three broken hours of work done during the day then another few hours at night after the kids are asleep.

But, in reality, any truly decent stretches of time to really think and focus are scarce. Throw in the endless zooming for lab meetings, committee meetings, student meetings, project meetings and journal clubs, and there goes the day.

Occasionally, even achieving the bare minimum is such a futile battle that I give up altogether. And on those days, rather than lose my shit (and I have most certainly lost it at times), I try my best to just embrace this rare situation.

It’s actually pretty nice being able to have lunch (and endless snacks, let’s be honest) with my kids every day, go to the park every day, get messy doing craft, teach them spelling, art and maths, and how to google ‘world’s tiniest dogs’ videos without needing help. The important stuff.

The house may be trashed and my ethics application may be chronically in an ‘early draft’ stage, but I know I will look back on this time of unlimited cuddles fondly, and that I will miss my girls when everything goes back to normal. For a little while, anyway.

Postscript: Since this post was first published, Amy’s younger daughter has returned to childcare. Amy does indeed miss her, and now only contends with work interruptions every 30 minutes…

(The first version of this post was published in the La Trobe Biochemistry and Genetics Department’s newsletter on 24 April 2020)

————————————

Dr Amy Baxter is an NHMRC Peter Doherty Early Career Fellow in the lab of Dr Ivan Poon at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS), La Trobe University.

Her research examines the roles of apoptotic cell disassembly and clearance in the context of vascular inflammation.

Amy has two children: Maggie and Rosie (aged 7 and 4, respectively). She tweets from @dancnwthmycellf.

The post #WFH and the important stuff (Amy Baxter) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

As a lecturer in the RED team, I facilitate learning opportunities for La Trobe’s researcher community. Across these workshops we often touch on one of my favourite topics: rewards, and how they can be helpful for researchers who are trying to motivate themselves to achieve writing goals.

Writing is often a lengthy process for researchers. Motivation can sag as the hours turn to days and the days tick over into months. Added to this picture are the brain bending, shoulder crunching and finger cracking realities of many hours spent at a keyboard trying to get words on a page. It can be exhausting work on all levels, which makes pushing on so difficult sometimes. This is where rewards (some people call them power ups), combined with appropriate planning can be so useful for researchers. Some positive reinforcement can be a really valuable way of sustaining motivation throughout the long duration of a research project.

So, how can you use rewards to plan?

Here are some ideas:

• The first thing you might do is to set yourself a concrete goal to hold yourself accountable. It’s a good idea to ensure this goal is relevant (i.e. important to your overall progress) and neither too big, nor too small. Goals might be a combination durations (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly) – basically any configuration that fits with you and your project.
• Give yourself a target (e.g. number of words, or amount of time writing – whatever it is, just make sure there is a clear ‘finish line’).
• Then you can select a reward that you’ll give yourself once you’ve achieved the goal. Make sure your reward is proportionate to the goal you’ve set for yourself. As Jenna Avery puts it: don’t be stingy about it!
• Then you do the thing!
• After you’ve done the thing you reward yourself. Luxuriate, bask in glory, celebrate, zone out, feast.
• Then you repeat the process again, and again! You might need to check in with yourself to see if the reward worked. You might even find that the more you practice this habit the easier it will become to sustain progress.

If you are scratching your head trying to imagine what kinds of rewards you could give yourself, here is a list written by Jennifer Blanchard to get you going! Her suggestions range from small pleasures like listening to music and grabbing a coffee to using social media or watching Netflix. Lisa Munro shares ideas for bigger rewards like a massage or a special tattoo. The important thing with rewards is that they have to feel like rewards for you! There is no point in simply borrowing ‘go for a run’ or ‘3 pieces of chocolate’ off someone else’s list if that really isn’t where your yum is.

These points have been covered by Chris Smith, who has another useful ideas – can you turn what used to be your juiciest ‘procrastination activities’ into rewards? For example, Facebook, phone calls with a friend, and sitting down to watch a TV show can all be good rewards after the writing has accomplished, rather than as activities that displace the writing itself!

If you still can’t think of a reward, here is a list of 155 ways to reward yourself for completing a goal or task. And here is a list of 50 rewards separated into small, medium and large. After looking through these lists I am keen to try some new rewards for myself!

After working with researchers for a while now, I have some questions I tend to ask folk who are using rewards for writing. Some of these are:

1. Are you actually giving yourself rewards? I mean for real, for real? It is important to stop and celebrate sometimes. While, as Lisa Munro observes, too often ‘we fall into the trap of thinking that suffering is noble or that our suffering somehow makes our work even more worthwhile’ – this need not be how you arrange your researcher life.
2. Are your rewards the right size? Are you giving yourself a four-hour TV binge to reward yourself for a short 20-minute writing burst?
3. Are you actually giving yourself the reward before the work? This seems to be a regular one among many of the grad researchers I’ve been speaking to. You may be giving yourself lots of good rewardy things, but what happens if you switch the order around? For example, you might treat yourself to a coffee and a muffin at the café after you’ve put some writing time in.

Over my time at La Trobe I have heard of fantastic rewards being set! Some of these range from the small and everyday rewards of having walks across campus, a chocolate chip cookie, a nap, and an extra half an hour on twitter. Others have been large goals for significant milestones. Some of the meatiest goals I’ve heard are people giving themselves new musical instruments, marrying their darling, throwing parties, and going on international holidays.

I’ve already outed myself as someone who sniffs out pleasure in academic life – so it may not come as a surprise to you that I embrace rewards and the delights that they bring me. Now, I’d love to hear from you! What are your go-to rewards to help you keep your motivation levels up? Do you have rewards you’ve set for the end of a big project? Let me know! In the meantime I am going to keep a tally of some of my common rewards. I’ll share them with you in another post.

There are a number of other fab posts out there on this topic, so take a look:

• Problem, goal, reward: How to increase productivity and efficiency as a writer – Melissa Hart
• Accountability: How to keep writing using rewards and people pressure – Chris Smith
• 15 Ways to Reward Yourself For Writing – Jennifer Blanchard.
• Rewards for reaching writing goals – Lisa Munro
• Using Habits, Triggers & Rewards To Build a Daily Writing Practice – Sukhi Jutla
• Reward yourself for writing – Jenna Avery.
• reflection on writing – or – Pavlov’s dog rules – Pat Thomson.

James Burford is a lecturer in the RED team. Along with Emily Henderson, he co-edits the blog Conference Inference. He rewards himself with twitter time using the handle @jiaburford

The post Using rewards to help you achieve your writing goals (James Burford) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

—————————————–

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters | unsplash.com

I’m not really into the New Year’s Resolutions thing, but a few conversations over my final few weeks at work made me realise that there are a few things I do to make my work life a bit easier that other people don’t know about.

Most of it is about filtering out noise. Whether that means you get more done, or just get through a day with less distraction, it just depends on what you want in life.

I thought I’d share some of them here – maybe I’ll need to remind myself when I get back to work in 2020…

You’re the boss of your Inbox

Be ruthless about unsubscribing from lists and events that are no longer relevant. For everything else, set up filters. I have a filter for blog stuff, one for the podcast, another for mailing lists that aren’t so important I need to see them immediately (but I do like to check them). I have a boss who gets CC’d into so many things that he doesn’t necessarily need to act on but should at least see or know about that he filters them off to a separate folder. This way, he doesn’t miss important things that he does have to actually think about.

My other favourite piece of email management is Boomerang. This app can be used with Gmail and Outlook, and lets you (a) send emails out at a later time and (b) have emails return to your Inbox at a scheduled time. It helps me get things out of the way while I’m thinking about them, or keep things out of sight until I need to deal with them. The free version gives you 10 emails a month, but it’s one of the few apps I happily pay for.

Filters and Boomerang mean that I don’t really aim for anything like ‘Inbox zero’ (trying to get all the emails out of your Inbox). The moment of satisfaction isn’t worth the inevitable deluge of replies. I would also love to say that I am organised enough to only look at email once/twice a day, but I have it on my phone and find it just as easy to look and delete/do throughout the day.

You’re the boss of your writing

Even some of the most talented and productive writers I know have routines and tricks to help them stay motivated (in fact, that’s largely what keeps them so productive). A large portion of the task of writing is unglamourous and functional, just making words appear on a page. Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve set up a Shut Up and Write group, or joined one (La Trobe has a great one, and a blog post explaining the benefits of writing while surrounded by other writers).

Setting up routines is important, this is one of my favourite blog posts from Dr Peta Freestone, one of my favourite writing professionals:

What does my ritual involve? Other than commencing with a cup of something caffeinated, there’s three elements: eliminating temptation, blocking out distraction and pacing myself.

Although I don’t do all these things all the time, things I’ve found helpful include:

• locking 3-4 hours into my schedule in the morning to write and trying to make no appointments in that time, 
• using the pomodoro timing method, 
• using internet blockers to stop distraction (also: my favourite cafe near home has no wifi), 
• tracking and rewarding myself for words/sections written/edited, 
• reporting progress to other people, and
• focusing on one writing project at a time.

You’re the boss of your collaborations

Ok, sometimes, you’re not. Especially if you’re a junior researcher, you may find yourself working with someone else’s preferred tools and routines (they’re the boss of their own writing!). Collaborating with different people people is a great way to learn about different rhythms of collaboration, and different processes. I’ve done everything from sharing paper copies, Dropbox, emails with attached Word Docs, to sitting and dictating draft sections to each other.

By far, the best collaborative tool I’ve found is Google Docs. The ability to work on the same document at the same time (either in person or over a video chat), track changes and see edit histories makes it very low stress. For LaTeX, I’ve found using an online platform like OverLeaf also works quite well (especially for low-skilled LaTeX users like me who guess their way through and hate installing a bunch of stuff on their computer).

You’re the boss of your to-do list 

Most of my advice generally involves embracing apps and programs that make your life easier, but when it comes to schedules and lists, I’m still a big fan of paper. I use an online calendar, but for planning what I want to do each day I still like a paper notebook. I have an A6 notebook that sits in my bag, and I plan out a week on each opening. I like visualising things, and I like physically ticking them off.

I’ve also used Trello, Google Sheets and Google Keep for collaborative task tracking but, for myself, I still prefer paper.

You’re the boss of your social media

Social media isn’t work (unless it’s part of your job!), but it’s easy to feel like you’re being productive if you’re tweeting about academia or reading blog posts about linguistics. Some people feel overwhelmed by the number of platforms out there, and the performativity of being online as a professional.

First thing, pick your platform. You don’t need to be everywhere, stick to a couple of places. I never got around to joining Facebook, and I am 100% a lurker on Instagram. I enjoy linguist Twitter; it’s probably where I spend the most time. The two things I recommend people read when they join Twitter are A crash course in “getting” Twitter, for linguists and other people in specific niches, from Gretchen McCulloch and Rachael Tatman’s Guide to Conference Livetweeting. Being on Twitter means that I often know people before I even get to a new job or a new conference, and I get to stay in touch with friends and colleagues from all around the world.

Second thing, it’s your social media experience. Don’t be afraid to unfollow (or mute, if you’re trying to be polite) people you find stressful. Twitter also allows you to turn off retweets from people, so you can see their tweeting about linguistics and their cute cat, but you don’t have to see their retweets about local politics that aren’t relevant to you. You can also mute words and hashtags. Just like with email, you don’t have to put up with noise. Your social media profile is your space.

————————————-

Lauren Gawne is a David Myers Research Fellow in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University. 

Her research focuses on grammatical evidentiality and the gestures people use when they speak, with a focus on Tibeto-Burman languages. 

Lauren is also interested in research data management, internet English, and public linguistics. Lauren co-hosts the podcast Lingthusiasm with Gretchen McCulloch and run the generalist linguistics website Superlinguo. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo.

The post Academic productivity tips for 2019 (Lauren Gawne) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

In this post RED (Research Education and Development) team lecturer James Burford reflects on the activities of the La Trobe Academic Writing Month, which took place in November.

—————————

This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’m not super good with numbers.

The slide-sweep-click movement that my thumb does on my phone to find my calculator is a familiar one, and you’ll sometimes see me counting out big numbers on my fingers.

Despite my rather humble abilities in the maths department I know that (taken collectively) the La Trobe researchers participating in #LTUAcWriMo this year will have written more than tens of thousands of words. Indeed, some individual writers clocked up word counts in the tens of thousands. Perhaps the total number of words written by #LTUAcWriMo participants numbers in the hundreds of thousands, or maybe even more?

I say all this because it is important to celebrate the often unsimple act of getting words down on a page, which is something that we’ve spotlighted this month. Words on the page carry forward ideas that are being advanced or extinguished and concepts that are being worked through and wrangled with. We accumulate and fuss over these words and send our articles off to journals, chapters to our supervisors, or book manuscripts to our publishers, and many other places besides.

Writing enough words matters because:

1. For some of us, writing is one of the most valuable ways in which thinking can occur, and
2. Writing is important in order to offer others access to the knowledge we produce.

But it would be wrong to suggest that our only (or even that our most significant) accomplishments this Academic Writing Month are related to the quantity of words that were tallied, or the number of manuscripts that were dispatched.

Tweetchats (2 November and 30 November) and hashtag

RED Writing Retreat: 20-22 November

A photo of day two of the retreat documenting the ‘wall of achievement’ |  Photo by James Burford

I marvelled as a group of approximately fifty researchers assembled at the John Scott Meeting house to participate in our RED writing retreat. I saw writers who melted into the space, making progress that they didn’t even know was possible. The focus facilitated by three days of uninterrupted writing (in the silent room, the social room or the ‘pomodoro room’) enabled many people to immerse themselves in their world, find their flow and power through their to-do lists. 

They also took care of themselves with regular breaks, nutritious food, yoga, breathing exercises, shoulder massages, laughter, camaraderie and celebration.

Creative ways into academic writing workshop: 13 November

We had flagged to participants that this was no ordinary workshop! As the feature image (above) shows, we started with postcards and other objects on the floor of the John Scott Meeting House. Run by Sarah Houseman and me, the workshop encouraged our research writers to think creatively about their relationship with their work, and their (dis)connections. The work of the workshop was very much in the reflection about types and modes of writerly identity. 

#LTUAcWriMo Writers’ Panel: 28 November

I was invited to think and rethink writing collaboration by our three panellists in the La Trobe Writer’s forum: Professor Hylton Menz, Dr John Cox and Dr Kylie Mirmohamadi. Our panellists addressed the theme of writing ‘together’, exploring ways of imagining collaborative writing, what it’s like to forge writing partnerships across cultural difference, and how feminist ethics and friendship can produce not only productive writing relationships, but ones that are full of pleasure, robustness and delight.

The panellists (L to R): Hylton Menz, Kylie Mirmohamadi, John Cox, and moderator James Burford.  #LTUAcWriMo Writers’ Panel | Photo by James Burford

And these are just the parts of #LTUAcWriMo that I was there for! I know heaps of other things happened across campuses, in schools, departments and offices, and online, including the daily SUAWs at Mildura, the Mildura Writing Retreat and the Albury-Wodonga Writing Retreat. 

Thanks to all of the fab coordinators around La Trobe who put in special effort to make space for writing and our writers.

While this #LTUAcWriMo was a busy month for me with lots of activities, the overarching impression I am left with is this: this month I saw a community of researchers gather, and it was a special thing to see.

———————————————–

Dr James Burford works in the RED team at the La Trobe Graduate Research School. 


He (increasingly regularly) tweets as @jiaburford.

The post More than words: Reflections from La Trobe’s Academic writing month 2018 (James Burford) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem – we all have 24-hour days
   – Zig Ziglar

Feeling overwhelmed? Too many deadlines and too little time? Supervisor on your back to submit something? 

While it won’t solve all your woes, perhaps what you need is a little help with time management.

Here are 10 tips to help you manage your time better – use a few strategies, or use ’em all!

I highly recommend you take a breath and reflect on these. They might just help!

1. Focus on what needs to be done

Prioritise! I know it seems like a super-fun idea to check your Facebook, or watch that cat video, but writing your thesis should probably be the first port of call.

‘OMG, my thesis is what’s making me feel overwhelmed!’ I hear you cry. Yes, I understand that.

What I’d suggest is, instead of looking at the thesis as a giant insurmountable task, change your concept of it to be a set of smaller, manageable tasks. How? By, assessing what NEEDS to be done first. Things that don’t need to be done? Don’t do them!

For example, if you don’t need to learn SPSS right now, don’t. This doesn’t mean you’ll never learn it, but that you are prioritising. Is the motivations section of Chapter 1 most important right now? If not, don’t do it. Yes, you will get to these in time but, right now, to manage those feelings of being overwhelmed, focus on what absolutely needs to be done.

2. Quality is more important than quantity

A thesis is a long body of work, with many words. Considering you’ll be examined at the end of it, quality is more important than quantity. If you can produce quality and quantity, that’s great! For most of us, writing is a struggle and meeting both criteria at the same time is a challenge. So, instead of smashing out as much wordage as you can in a 3-hour block of writing, it’s better to do 20 minutes and write 300 words of awesome. In shorter time-frames, you can rack up more quality work, which saves you time later. Focus on quality.

3. Say NO

The number one reason graduate researchers tend to get overwhelmed is that they take too many things on. Stop saying yes to everyone –  you do not exist in the world to make everyone else’s life easier, at your own expense. You don’t need to be a martyr; start a little self-lovin’.

If you are studying, your research needs to be a priority – see Tip #1 – so learn to say ‘No’.

Consider your needs. Consider your inner self: a sense of calm, a sense of peace, a sense of ‘roominess’. To have all these experiences, you need space. This is only achieved by not taking up every opportunity. You can do it. It’s okay to say ‘No’.

4. Write ‘Get-To-Do’ lists

‘To Do’ lists are out. ‘Get To Do’ lists are in! It’s purely a semantic thing, but ‘To Do’ sounds so much like an order and can make completing the task unattractive. A’‘Get To Do’ list, on the other hand, is an empowered list that allows you to take charge.

Create your list, and at the top, title it, ‘Get To Do list’. Whenever you look at that list, your first thought will be: “I GET to do this!”. Changing the title of the list gives you a different view of your work; you have a choice to do the list. It’s not an order. It’s not a list of “must do”; it’s a choice. This may seem odd, but a simple semantic change like this can make a difference.

Take charge, and give it go!

5. Woof. Take a Power nap!

Just 30 minutes will refresh you. Hey, if we do it to break up long driving trips, we can do it when studying hard. A power-nap has been shown to add spring to your step.

6. Make your breaks mini-holidays

Everyone deserves a break from hard work. When you take a break, make sure it is actually a break. No checking emails on break!

Think of your breaks as mini-holidays. Do something really fun and engaging to shift the energy from “study/work” to relaxation. Note: you may need to switch off your devices.

7. Do hard work when you feel good

If you’re feeling buzzy and ready to take on the world, that is the KEY time to do hard work. If you are happy and fresh one morning, write the thesis! Start a chapter. Continue a section. Read a paper. Annotate the transcript.

Do your essential hard work when you feel good.

8. Set deadlines before the deadline

Instilling a sense of urgency in your work will trigger a little (good) stress and make you get the job done. Set deadlines for your work at least 2 weeks before it’s officially due, then work towards that new deadline. If you don’t have a deadline in mind, ask your supervisor or colleagues when they expect to see drafts or completed sections of research, then set your personal deadline 2 weeks earlier. If you keep this practice up over several months, it will become second nature, and you’ll hand over better material!

Also, having the space between your personal deadline and the actual deadline accounts for any nasties. What’s a nasty? It could be a flash-flood in your laundry; getting a viral flu infection; your best friend crashes at your place for a week; you realise you haven’t been paid but rent is due; your mother comes to visit unexpectedly; or your internet connection dying…EEK! Those all sound intense! However, with 2 weeks to spare, if you haven’t already finished your work, you still have time to finish it.

9. Get up early

Up earlier = more time in the day.
Yes. It really is that simple.

10. Be boring in structure

There is something quite beautiful about a routine. Being awake at the same time, eating the same thing, having ‘sameness’ – this is structure.

A routine allows the mind to focus on more important tasks. Why? Because, with routine, actions become automated. Instead of consciously thinking about the order of steps involved to achieve a task, your brain power can now be focused on saving the world (or writing up your research).

So, start small here: keep the same routine every day, even on weekends (if you can). Do you get up at 7am on weekdays? Do the same on Saturday and Sunday. Getting up at 7am on Monday morning will be so much easier! Plus you’ll be brimming with creative ideas.

———————————————–

Autumn O’Connor is a Master’s-qualified practicing psychotherapist, writing her interdisciplinary thesis on ‘computational autism’ (that is, how autistic learning systems can enhance cognitive computing models). 


She has worked as a private tutor to undergraduate students for over six years and is deeply inspired by the power of the written word! 


A rebel and a pioneer for change, Autumn will work hard and take on challenges. Her research interests include ethics, self-awareness, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, and relational dynamics.


Autumn’s website is: https://autumnheart81.wixsite.com/seemework

The post 10 tips for the overwhelmed researcher (Autumn O’Connor) appeared first on Research Education and Development.