3 Things You Can Do When You Can't Do Anything
This week we encountered another week of daycare disruption, with one of my children's classes being canceled. Though I’m free of PhD responsibility, it nonetheless adds to my mental load as a mom and an immigrant with limited family support. However, it’s another good week of reflection.
When our childcare was closed in the past for various reasons ranging from religious holidays to snow days to more recent health concerns, I went from resentment and victimization to progressively acceptance, figuring out something else for myself.
A few things I learned along the way about what you can do when you appear to be inactive at bench work:
1. Switch to inspiration work, instead of feeling bad about not doing hands-on labor
The focus of a PhD, and a significant portion of it, is on what to do NEXT. Many people believe that “doing” itself is true work. But as you gain more experience, your value is more about the strategy and perspective you bring to the table.
Grab a pen and paper, or a notebook. Capture any lingering questions, connections in data, consumption, hypothesis, or anything else that comes to mind. Those thoughts are usually missing out during typical “busy” working days.
2. Embrace managerial time
Time is segmented badly. Switching back and forth between deep work and interruptions from children is hardly a win-win situation. Not healthy for you, nor for the attention-demanding young human being, not for your quality work.
If you do wish to work, focus on work on manager type of works. Keeping information flowing so that other people (collaborators, PI, mentees, editors etc) can keep moving. For example, delegate straightforward data organization, send a draft for feedback, and organize and set up meetings
3. Stop being apologetic
It's not the end of the world if you're late replying to Slack, email, or Teams (what am I missing?). I will say it again. It's not the end of the world if you take a long time to respond. If the email can sit there overnight, does it matter to wait for another few hours?
Tips: Schedule every 2 hrs (or half-day, you have to decide how frequently you really need to check and respond to chats etc) for dedicatedly checking and processing them.
Pro-tip: On a regular basis, this strategy will give you protected time to realize that you don’t have to live in there. This has worked so well for me that when the timer goes off, I’d run it again because the focus time feels so good. (Yes, I completely sign off or close the email tab when I start getting annoyed by the tiny bright dots!)
When I was home in Taiwan for 2 months last year, every morning I woke up to tons of unopened emails and/or Slack notifications from US’s previous working day. It was frustrating at first, but I had little choice but to accept my reality. It was at that point that I realized, this constant connectivity didn’t matter nearly as much as I had assumed. Only a few of them required my attention. And only a few of the few required me to respond.
Conclusion: The large number of fresh messages stacked up gave the misleading impression that you were busy.
If none of these save you from overwhelm: Fuel yourself & Meet just the basic
Get the nap that you neglect for a while. Go to bed 10 min early is a good idea. You have come a long day with the kids. Treat yourself to something that makes you feel better. It’s not indulgent, it’s called necessity. THIS IS essential to everything – on good days or bad days.