Three things make a post, double meaning edition

Not just for the title opportunity, honest. Although I’m not knocking it.

My friend R and I have been doing ‘three things’ every day. She is also a PhD student and we face many similar challenges, both internal and external.

It’s very simple. I email or text her with ‘these are the three things I am going to do today’, and she does the same’. Then we do them. Or we don’t.

Then the next day we draw a line under yesterday and start again with a clean slate.

Three things can be very large or very small. Mine are often ‘send an email’ or ‘download a paper’ or even ‘say a prayer’.

Sometimes the three things are very small and they still don’t get done, because I’m too tired or ill or avoidant or something else (which may or may not be work-related) happens instead.

It doesn’t seem like very much when you look at it written on a page.

And yet, it is working for both of us.

I have been thinking about why it works. I don’t really know why it works. I know a lot of successful people who do it, which is why I started doing it – I am a great believer in ‘if you want what somebody’s got then do what they do’. It’s quite tempting to file it under ‘magic’, which is where I file a lot of the strange things that nonetheless work. But there may be more to it than that.

Setting up a track record of success. I don’t get my three things done every day. But most days I do. Some days – quite a few days – I get more done as well. By focusing on my three things alone, rather than the hundred and fifty things I think I ought to be doing, I’m starting to see my college work as something that I’m succeeding at, rather than always feeling like a failure. So I feel more enthusiastic about it, and I do more. I’m starting to develop a virtuous circle rather than a vicious circle.

Taking the pressure off. Some days I’ve done my three things by 9.45am. Then, guess what? I’m done. College work complete for the day, and I can take the rest off if I want. In general I don’t – I do more college stuff, or something like tidying and organising that will help me with college stuff tomorrow. But sometimes I take the day off, and I see friends or rest or go to the gym. And then, guess what? I’m in great shape for tomorrow’s three things, because I didn’t spend the day either tiring myself out or stressing about what I haven’t done. Virtuous circle ahoy.

I can do this because I’ve seen other people use this process and I know it works in the long term. Everything that needs to get done gets done, and it is good enough. I get that it’s a bigger leap of faith for R, or someone else who is taking it on trust from me. But it is working for both of us.

Mixing and matching To finish this PhD, I’ve got a lot of different things that need to get done. Some are administrative (find and download papers, investigate college regulations, identify participants, schedule interviews). Some are relational (talk with supervisor, interview participants, chat and tweet with interested parties about my research). And some are creative (read and interpret papers, write content, reflect on interviews, write memos, build theory, challenge theory).

It’s easy to think that only the creative stuff – coincidentally the most difficult – is important. But three creative tasks in a day is hard. One creative task in a day is hard. I don’t want to overwhelm myself and lose my hard-earned track record of getting my tasks done. So I mix and match. A good day’s list contains one admin, one interactive and one creative task. Then my energy will take me in one of these directions and I’m likely to get more done.

Working smarter, not harder I was ill on Friday and then I took the weekend off, so today is my first day’s work since Thursday, and I was really really avoidant this morning. Did not want to start. So two of today’s three things are administrative – upload some papers to the Kindle and get some comments on a document – and one is a very small creative action designed to get me back into the flow. That’s manageable. So I have done the first and am all set up for the other two and have time to take a break and write a blog post.

Tomorrow I’ll be more back into the swing of it and I can go for bigger and more directly relevant tasks. Or maybe I’m not as recovered as I thought and I’ll still be on tiny tasks and I’ll be on tiny tasks all week. That’s not up to me. There’s not a lot I can do about my energy levels except take the self-care actions and remember that the cycle always swings back up in the end. That’s okay. I trust the process and I know it’s all going to get done, because I’ve seen it happen. And I’m far, far further on than I could ever have been at any other time in my life.

Engaging with work every day I do take weekends off for the most part, although not invariably. But during the week I will have three tasks every day, unless there’s a very good reason. So I’m working every day.

It’s not my fantasy. In my fantasy I start working at 9am and finish at 5pm every day and work consistently throughout, with a break for lunch. But I am not that person. I have never been that person and I probably never will be that person and I can’t make myself that person. (And so far, everything that’s needed to get done has got done anyway, so maybe I don’t need to be that person.) But I am working every day. I am making some progress every day. That is a very good feeling, and I’m sure it’s part of the virtuous circle.

And, of course, my work is near the surface of my mind. So when I do have a creative day, I don’t have to worry too much about getting back into it, because I’m already in it.

I’m not in this alone I cannot begin to describe how much difference working with R is making to my PhD. Her discipline is about as different from mine as you can imagine. She lives in a different city using different methods and different working styles and different times a day. We rarely talk. (Well, we rarely talk about work. We talk about Strictly Come Dancing incessantly.)

But I know she is there for me.

I know she will not judge me if I sign up for three tiny tasks and do none, and I know she will cheer me on when I’ve completed my day’s assignments, even if it took a total of seven minutes. I know that I can email her and say ‘not happening today, sorry’ and she will get it because she has been there and will be again. When I see her having a low day, I know that she’s going to hang in there and the flow will come back. And knowing that’s true for her helps me to remember that it’s true for me.

I think that a lot of my writing, whether it be about working life or personal life or spiritual life or even political life, probably comes down to ‘try not to be in it alone’. It is hard for us to ask for help and hard to accept it and hard to share our real selves. But it is not only one of the most useful and productive things we can do, but also one of the most worthwhile.

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