Week Three – Day Two
Working in Waves – Daily Schedule
How many hours do you spend sitting at your laptop? And how many of those hours are spent productively? Today’s idea: maybe you don’t need all those hours. Following a ‘normal’ 9-5 working routine is not the best way to write a PhD. You can’t do intense mental work for eight hours a day. It is impossible. If you’re having an exceptionally good day you may be able to manage six hours of reasonably intense mental work; and considerably less if you’re doing something particularly demanding.
The good news is that you don’t need to work for six or eight hours a day. Once you start writing your PhD in a more efficient way you’ll need a fraction of that. Say two or three hours of intense mental work a day. Four maximum. I stumbled across this knowledge, because I was forced to finish my PhD in a couple of hours a day (and now I recommend it!). When I started writing my thesis after not being able to work for years, I only had enough energy to work for half an hour at a time. Half an hour? That’s nothing! It was next to nothing, but I got work done all the same. A year-and-a-half later, by the time I was finishing my final manuscript, I was working for about four hours a day, four days a week. It was enough. By then, I was using two strategies that helped me get a lot of work done in only four hours: today’s strategy of ‘working in waves’, and a technique I call ‘allow your PhD to write itself’, which we’ll be working on during the rest of the week.
That doesn’t mean I was always so confident about my (very) short workdays. Especially when the deadline for finishing my first final draft of the thesis started looming, I got worried about my working hours. ‘It’s not enough!’ I thought. ‘I can’t do this in a couple of hours a day.’ And then I panicked: ‘But I don’t have more hours a day in me!’
That’s when I came across the book The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (fun aside: Tony Schwartz was Trump’s ghost writer for ‘The Art of the Deal’. He got his better ideas later on…). Their main message is that if you manage the balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal well, you will be a lot more productive and you’ll feel better too. They advocate a way of working in which you work for a set amount of time, then relax and renew, before you start on the next intense burst of work. Their advice is mainly aimed at business people with 24/7-hour schedules, but they had one case study of a writer that peeked my interest (p.170). The writer was facing a challenging deadline that he wasn’t sure he could meet. He was working 10-hour days at the computer and he was having trouble concentrating. Loehr and Schwartz devised a highly structured work schedule that alternated periods of work and relaxation. The writer was a morning owl (and an American – they seem to get up at impossibly early hours) so his workday started early.
This is what his schedule looked like:
6:30 – 8:00 First writing session. No email or phone
8:00 – 8:30 Breakfast with wife and kids
8:30 – 10:00 Second writing session. No email or phone.
10:00 – 10:30 Break. Ten minutes of physical exercises and ten minutes of meditation. Healthy snack.
10:30 – 12:00 Third writing session. No email or phone.
12:00 – 13:00 Go for a jog and eat lunch
In the afternoon, the writer had time to read and do research, and catch up on other tasks.
According to Loehr and Schwartz, the writer got nearly twice as much done in those 4,5 hours of focused morning writing compared to his previous 10-hour-at-the-computer-days. I believe them.
This really works.
And this is how you do it:
Catch a Wave
The basic idea of ‘working in waves’ is to ‘catch a wave’ of energy, get a lot of work done efficiently, and then relax and recuperate before your energy levels and productivity start to drop. This second step, the relaxation part, is crucial. Allow yourself to recharge. Then repeat. You’ll notice that your ability to focus is renewed when you start your second ‘wave’, because you took the time to recharge. Over the course of the day these energy refills add up. You will be more productive and will feel much better at the end of the workday (which comes sooner too).
Step 1. Work like a sprinter
The first step is to determine how long your work cycles should be. This depends on your general energy level, your attention span, and on the difficulty of the task involved. Experiment with this. Loehr and Schwartz suggest 90-minute segments, because this is the length of one so-called ultradian cycle, which account for the ebb and flow of energy throughout the day. Most often, that didn’t work for me. I found that I couldn’t sustain my energy and focus for that long. Personally, I found that working in 45-minute chunks followed by a 10 to 15-minute break worked best. Some people choose even shorter chunks: a friend of mine wrote her PhD in many 10-minute writing sessions. Just know that 90 minutes is about the maximum you can sustain your energy and focus in the best of circumstances.
Once you’ve figured out how long would work for you: set a timer and eliminate all distractions. Switch off your phone, disconnect from the internet (yes, work without being online. If you really have to look something up, you can do it after the 45 minutes, or whatever timeframe you chose, is up. It will keep you more focused), close your email programme, and politely tell anyone who is asking for your attention you’ll be available later. Not now.
Then sit down, and do what you set out to do. You only have 45 minutes (or however long you choose), so get it while you can. Go for it. If you find yourself procrastinating, you have either set your time period for too long, or you are not embracing the sprint mentality.
(If you suffer from procrastination and fear, try shorter intervals. Break it down. Focus on the next tiny step. Be pleased if you manage, even if it’s only 10 minutes. Any work done, is work done.)
Once the timer sounds: That’s it, your time is up! Time to take a break!
Step 2. Relax and chill out
The second step is to relax and chill out. Get away from your computer, go make yourself a cup of tea, put some music on, go for a walk around the block, go for a short jog or whatever helps you disengage from your work. Loehr & Schwartz recommend getting some physical exercise during this period: Maybe you can do some push-ups? Lunges? Sit-ups? I’ll be honest and tell you I don’t do this. Generally I make myself a cup of tea, and relax on the settee drinking my cuppa. Sometimes I do a short meditation. Sometimes I put some music on. Find out what works for you. (Checking your phone, email or Facebook etc. doesn’t count. You’ve got to step away from the screen if you can). Set the timer for 15 minutes or so. Be consistent, it helps.
Step 3. Repeat
Then, after a little time away, get back to work. Set your timer for a new chunk of time, and get going. Once the timer sounds: relax and recharge.
Step 4. Stop
The next trick is to stop when it’s time. Maybe you will do four one hour segments (45 plus 15), maybe three segments of an hour and a half (75 plus 15), maybe seven half hour segments (20 plus 10). Figure out what works for you. But don’t think more is more. Less is more. You shouldn’t try to fill the whole day.
My Own PhD Schedule
To give you an idea of what your workday could look like: this is what my own workday looked like when I was finishing my PhD (and I still like this work rhythm). I often did less due to energy issues but this was my ideal workday:
Morning
10:00 – 10:45 first work session (I don’t work before 10, my brain only wakes up at 10 am. I am not American). No email. No internet. No phone.
10:45 – 11:00 cup of tea
11:00 – 11:45 second work session. No email. No internet. No phone.
11:45 – 12:00 cup of tea plus chat with my boyfriend if he’s home and I can get him to disengage from his work for 10 minutes (it can be a challenge).
12:00 – 12:45 third work session. No email. No internet. No phone.
That is most of my work for the day done.
12.45 – 13:00 check email and favourite sites
13.00 lunch
Afternoon
13.30 – 15.00 fourth work session (longer, less intense chunk, for more routine tasks.) I sometimes do use the internet while working in the afternoon to answer my emails.
15.00 DONE. Time to chill out.
16.00 – 17.00 Exercise. Jog/dance to music for 20 minutes, or go to a yoga class
21:30 – 22:00 Meditation
Find out how this way of working in waves could work for you. When are you most focused and productive? Make those hours the central focus of the workday. When are you surfing the net or distracted by email? If it’s during a time you want to be writing: you have to find another way! If it’s during a time you wouldn’t be productive anyway, ask yourself whether you want to spend your time sitting at your computer, or if it would be better to give yourself permission to ‘leave’, and do something you really want to do.
Naturally, this approach only works if you apply yourself during the chunks of time you allot to working. Imagine it as a sprint – ready, set, go!! Run! You will get your rewards afterwards: a good chunk of work done, a sense of accomplishment, and the ability to relax because you know you have done your work for the day.
Assignment
Catch a wave. How could you apply the strategy of ‘working in waves’ to your own workday? It’s best to set up a schedule in advance, not make it up as you go along: the more structured, the better. See examples above.
Once you have decided on the schedule, you’re ready to get started. Eliminate any distractions, set your timer, and go! Once your time is up, get up from your desk and do something non-workrelated. Go for a walk, listen to Spotify, do a couple of push-ups, make yourself a cup of tea or pop out for a coffee. Then, after you have relaxed for a bit, get back to your desk and start again.
The trick is to not fill your entire day. Leave early. You cannot do challenging mental work for more than so many hours a day. You will have done enough.
Reflect on your schedule at the end of the day. Did it work? Do you need longer work waves or shorter? Could you stop even earlier? Find out!