Four-week planning

 

Every Friday, typically immediately after lunch, I sit down and make a four-week plan. I start by taking a blank A4 sheet of paper and putting it in front of me on my desk. I then make a horizontal line on the top half and make four vertical lines through this line. This results in 10 boxes. One for each working day during the next two-week period. I then take out my calendar and enter all the things I need to do: meetings, lunches, seminars, classes. I exclude public holidays. I then make a brief calculation. How many writing units are available during the upcoming week? (The maximum number for one day is four.)

I then start to think about my three weekly goals. These may involve things such as writing 12 units on chapter 7, making a PowerPoint for presentation X, conducting a Finish On Time workshop, spending two days in the archive. The weekly goals I emphasize the most are my writing goals. I try to use process goals (number of units), but I also tend to make an estimate of what I think this will result in. Here, I typically use generous intervals. For instance, writing 2–5 pages for chapter 7. Before I get started on a chapter, the goal may also be to find the structure for this chapter. This could even be a weekly goal. 

Once I have a pretty good handle on this week, I do the same thing for the following week. I then make a new horizontal line on the lower half of the piece of paper and make four vertical lines through this line. This results in 10 new boxes. I look upon these two weeks as “upcoming.” Hence, I don’t plan them in as much detail. But I still want to know what to expect. Approximately how many units will I have at my disposal? Are there any approaching deadlines? Here, I sometimes discover that things are about to get busy further down the line. This may give me a reason to revise my two-week plan. Perhaps I can address these problems by pushing forward a deadline for myself? You see, I hate working with tight deadlines. 

This is true with regard to both large and small things. A PowerPoint presentation may just as well be created three weeks before a lecture as one week. A conference abstract or a research application can be submitted as soon as the system becomes accessible. Once I have done these kinds of small things, I can also stop thinking about them. Out of sight, out of mind. The basic condition should be that there are not a lot of open loops. The fewer things on my mind, the better. This frees up creative energy and makes me feel better.

Here, I also look back at last week’s four-week plan. What happened to the three goals I set at that time? Have I done what I set out to do? These days, the answer is typically yes. Alternatively, there is a good reason (sick children, something big and important got in the way). The reason why I normally achieve my weekly goals is that I have used these kinds of goals for many years by now. I have a pretty good idea as to my capacity. And I’m not overly ambitious when I set goals. I estimate my units conservatively and make sure that there is plenty of space in the schedule. Because things will happen, and on certain days my energy level is low. Then it doesn’t matter how much time is available. In such a case, it’s better to do some mechanical tasks than to bump up against an empty Word document.

So, how long does it take to make this kind of four-week plan? To some extent, it depends on your groundwork. For me, it usually takes between half an hour and an hour. But then, as you know, I make a fairly detailed plan for the semester. As a result, there are quite clear guidelines on what the four-week plan should contain. At least when it comes to big things such as writing books, articles and applications. In that regard, I know what the aim is. I know which week a chapter needs to be completed for the plan over the semester to work.

After I have done my four-week plan, I usually take a short walk. Perhaps I have a drink of water or go and say hi to a colleague. I then prefer to spend my Friday afternoon doing something fun not related to performance. Such as reading a book on academic writing for pleasure. At around 2.30 p.m., I typically go over to the university gym, Gerdahallen. I find this a perfect way of shifting from work mode to weekend mode. The planning and the physical activity result in the work mode simply evaporating.

Read also: "Finish On Time" and "Planning but when and how?" 

Skill-related goals

Most of my planning concerns prioritizing what should be done and when. However, before each academic year, I tend to set up a more long-term skill-related goal. This concerns something I can’t do or am not comfortable doing but which in the long run I want to – or need to – be able to do. In previous years, such goals have included being comfortable writing in English and using PowerPoint. Last academic year, my goal was to learn how to write a book that was not a thesis.

In my experience, an academic year is a quite reasonable amount of time to learn something new. It is sufficient time to play down whatever it is you’re trying to learn. This means plenty of time to try, fail and try again. At the same time, this is not an infinite amount of time. If you want to get something done, you can’t wait for too long. 

The background of this routine is my experiences from the basement at LUX. In other words, my lowest point as a postdoc when I truly realized that if I wanted to work as a historian, I had a lot left to learn. What I was and what I knew were not sufficient for getting to do what I wanted to do. Hence, I identified a number of skills I needed to learn: write peer-reviewed journal articles, prepare applications, become a confident lecturer, etc. However, I was unable to learn all of this at once. Nor was everything equally important in the situation I found myself in at the time. That is why I gave myself permission not to worry about everything at once but to focus on learning one thing at a time and then trust the process. 

The year of skill training from which I have the strongest memories was when I was supposed to learn to write in English. It was the academic year 2015–2016 and I had just received a two-year postdoc position through the Crafoord Foundation. This was the longest contract I had been given after receiving my PhD and I really wanted to make the best of this opportunity. The memory of being on my september way out of the system was still fresh in my mind. I was well-aware of the fact that peer-reviewed articles in international journals carried much weight. That is why I decided to mainly write in English for one year – even though it was tedious work for me. I made sure to write whole manuscripts and let colleagues accustomed to writing in English read them. This was also the year in which I wrote journal articles together with Isak Hammar and Anna Kaijser. Of course, I did not master or become fluent in English during this year, but I did become reasonably comfortable. The worst resistance and my fear of making a fool of myself vanished. 

The goal for the 2019–2020 academic year differs somewhat from previous goals. This is because, starting this fall, I now work with Finish On Time. I am very pleased and grateful for this opportunity. This feels exciting, fun and stimulating as well as, obviously, a bit scary. My goal is thus to be comfortable in this new role and that, over time, I will be able to do this a few times each semester without adding too much stress. In other words, more or less the way I have learned how to manage seminars, conference presentations, teaching and public lectures. A few years ago, I could go on and on for weeks preparing for these things. Now, it’s just something I do. That’s why it also feels like this is the right time to try something new. It is time for me to expand my comfort zone.

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Finish On Time

A little over a week ago, I was invited to speak at the annual gathering of the National Graduate School in Historical Studies in Höör, Scania. I was part of the section “Perspectives on Life as a PhD Student” and my task was to discuss how the course Finish On Time had played a role in relation to how I work. I attended this course in the winter of 2011/2012, about a year before I defended my thesis. In practical terms, this course has been the most important course I have ever taken. That is why I found it exciting to talk about it in front of and together with a new generation of PhD students. 

Finish On Time was created by philosopher Åsa Burman. During her own PhD studies, she worked out of Berkeley for a longer period of time. Here, everyone attended courses and workshops focusing on practical academic work. This meant that she came into contact with productivity techniques as well as tools used for planning and time management. This world was completely alien to a Swedish PhD student in the field of philosophy. David Allen’s Getting Things Done (2001) and Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) may be common reading for entrepreneurs and business executives. But they don’t constitute typical bedtime reading for academics. Particularly not in the humanities. 

For Åsa, however, this encounter with the unknown ended up being fruitful. She tried the techniques and felt that many of these produced good results. An important aspect was that she felt as if she had more control over her work and that she experienced less stress. She wondered why no one had taught her this stuff. Hence, the idea of starting up something on her own was born. After completing her PhD and working as a consultant at McKinsey in Copenhagen for a couple of years, she took the plunge and launched the company Finish On Time. My PhD colleagues and I in Lund were one of the first groups given the opportunity to take the course.

For me, Finish On Time was an eye-opener. Sure, I had already analyzed the way I worked. When meeting Åsa, however, it became clear that I had lacked a language for thinking and talking about this. Furthermore, my toolbox was limited in scope. During the course, we were encouraged to try out new working methods. I still use some of these, and that is what I talked about at the gathering in Höör. 

On a very fundamental level, I base my work on distinguishing planning from execution. I never come to the office in the morning wondering what to do. No, this has been decided much earlier. This means that my day can be devoted to doing what I’ve set out to do. This may come across as rigid, but I feel that it offers me freedom and control. I don’t experience that someone else is stopping me from doing what I’ve planned to do. The key is identifying the most important task for that particular day. In my case, it is almost always some form of writing. That is where I start. Other things have to be adapted to this. 

In practical terms, I then use the unit method, which means working with great focus during 40-minute sessions. I set the timer on my cellphone, put it out of sight, and when it signals, I take a break and leave the office. I do this regardless of whether or not I experience flow at that particular time. I then drink a glass of water or go out to get some air. If I succeed in achieving four such sessions, I consider the day a really good working day. However, it is typically possible to squeeze in one or two units even on days filled with meetings, seminars, teaching and writing emails. 

This approach takes some time to get used to and also requires continuous planning, both for the short and the long term. At the gathering in Höör, I talked about – and demonstrated – my one-year planning, semester planning, four-week planning, weekly planning and one-day planning. In addition, there is obviously also a five-year plan (which I didn’t show the participants). Nevertheless, all of this requires its own blog post, or perhaps several. To be continued.

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