How Can I Use Time-Blocking To Help Write My Dissertation?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, what do we got?

00:00:07.920 | - Next question.

00:00:08.960 | We have a question about time blocking,

00:00:12.640 | tips on, your tips on time blocking

00:00:16.440 | and how he can factor that into taking some time off work

00:00:19.760 | and writing his dissertation.

00:00:21.360 | - Hi Cal, my name is Carson,

00:00:28.320 | long time fan, first time caller.

00:00:31.080 | I've taken some time away from work

00:00:33.200 | to finish my dissertation after a long hiatus

00:00:36.160 | and I'm using time blocking.

00:00:38.840 | My question is this, do you have any tips for,

00:00:42.800 | like when you have a tendency to not do

00:00:46.480 | what you schedule yourself to do?

00:00:50.200 | I basically have three buckets

00:00:52.880 | related to the dissertation work,

00:00:54.360 | research, writing and revision.

00:00:57.340 | And I'll often, you know, when it's time to write,

00:01:02.160 | do more research or maybe even pay the bills.

00:01:05.320 | I have a feeling this may be, I'm not alone here.

00:01:11.960 | Curious for your tips and thanks for all you do.

00:01:14.680 | - All right, Carson.

00:01:17.120 | Well, first of all, I think we're gonna now refer

00:01:19.200 | to time blocking as, as seen on NBC's "The Today Show",

00:01:24.200 | time block planning.

00:01:26.040 | That's just a little bit of branding strategy there.

00:01:28.600 | Second of all, you have a fantastic voice.

00:01:31.640 | So you should sell things.

00:01:35.000 | You should team up with Kobe from earlier in this episode,

00:01:40.000 | who was trying to sell the stock investing tip lessons.

00:01:43.500 | Because Carson, if it was you reading these lessons,

00:01:47.280 | I think we'd all be all in, you know, you'd be like,

00:01:50.040 | I want you to mortgage your house,

00:01:54.420 | invest that money into crypto.

00:01:57.800 | And everyone would be like, yeah, makes sense.

00:01:59.880 | Man knows what he's talking about.

00:02:01.800 | I'm gonna, let me just mortgage that house over there.

00:02:04.200 | So great voice, use that, use that to your advantage.

00:02:08.120 | I have two things to suggest

00:02:09.640 | for what you're talking about here.

00:02:10.800 | Again, very common problem.

00:02:12.640 | Time blocking is hard.

00:02:14.180 | Blowing past blocks or ignoring blocks

00:02:17.840 | is something that happens all the time.

00:02:19.360 | A lot of it has to do with what's happening in your head,

00:02:21.280 | the pain of context shifting, et cetera.

00:02:23.760 | I think one, schedule less.

00:02:26.940 | You're probably being too ambitious.

00:02:29.540 | You have multiple buckets of different type of work

00:02:32.600 | you want to be doing on your dissertation.

00:02:34.300 | It sounds like you're trying to do all this work every day.

00:02:36.700 | I think you're being too ambitious.

00:02:38.220 | Your brain might be just crying uncle

00:02:41.420 | when it switches to the bills

00:02:43.460 | or becomes more linguid in its pace on the research

00:02:46.880 | and lets it overlap into the other.

00:02:48.560 | So think about doing less.

00:02:50.060 | Be very regular.

00:02:51.820 | Gonna work on this every day,

00:02:53.640 | but I'm gonna be less ambitious

00:02:55.200 | about how much I'm gonna work on.

00:02:56.380 | Maybe I'm doing one thing every day.

00:02:57.940 | So I just do that thing

00:02:59.580 | and I have some flexibility around it if it runs long

00:03:02.420 | and that's it for the dissertation.

00:03:04.840 | Two, I'm gonna say you want to ritualize this better.

00:03:08.300 | So this has to be, when I say ritual,

00:03:10.340 | I mean in terms of timing, setting, and activity.

00:03:13.960 | So for something like this,

00:03:16.320 | I am working on a hard long-term project.

00:03:19.300 | You're gonna want to use the same times if possible,

00:03:22.060 | probably first thing in the morning.

00:03:24.520 | In deep work, I have a couple examples,

00:03:26.360 | especially one in particular I'm thinking of,

00:03:28.080 | of Brian, who did his dissertation at 5 a.m.

00:03:33.080 | It's like 5 a.m. to 6.30 a.m.,

00:03:34.720 | heavily ritualized every morning.

00:03:36.400 | He had a full-time job.

00:03:37.920 | 5 a.m. to 6.30 a.m. dissertation.

00:03:39.840 | And that just, the same time, same day,

00:03:42.240 | was heavily ritualized.

00:03:43.720 | And then setting, so where do you do this work?

00:03:46.520 | Same time, same place.

00:03:47.800 | Brian had this dank office in the basement that he used,

00:03:51.460 | but it was perfect because he only used it for that.

00:03:53.600 | And then activity.

00:03:54.740 | Again, using that same example of Brian from deep work,

00:03:58.480 | he was down to a specific time he would make coffee

00:04:02.240 | and how he would make the coffee

00:04:03.480 | and when he would drink the coffee.

00:04:04.960 | I believe he even had the bathroom break programmed in,

00:04:07.840 | so it was very ritualized activity.

00:04:09.720 | All of this, all of this, what it does

00:04:11.720 | is break down the context-switching cost in your brain.

00:04:15.160 | It makes it much easier for your brain to,

00:04:17.340 | A, not have to negotiate with itself, should we work now?

00:04:21.700 | It's a hard argument, waste energy, you might lose it,

00:04:23.420 | so just take that off the table.

00:04:25.140 | And B, the rituals get you into that mode quicker

00:04:27.540 | so you don't have as much of an expensive

00:04:29.920 | context-shift operation happening.

00:04:32.020 | So you waste less energy on that, you get into it quicker,

00:04:33.980 | you get into it easier.

00:04:35.740 | So do less and to be much more ritualized

00:04:38.860 | about the work you do.

00:04:40.620 | It's a core principle of slow productivity

00:04:43.180 | is change the scale at which you're looking

00:04:46.860 | for accomplishment to be longer.

00:04:49.580 | So it's not what did I get done today?

00:04:52.060 | It's am I happy with the chapter I produced this month?

00:04:55.100 | You're going to a larger time scale.

00:04:57.560 | And then it's just about clean, deep,

00:05:00.800 | reasonable, sustainable work again and again.

00:05:03.760 | Head down, the wheel is grinding,

00:05:06.600 | you look up three months later and say,

00:05:08.120 | hey, this first part of my dissertation looks pretty good.

00:05:11.020 | All right, what do we have for our fourth call, Jesse?

00:05:16.560 | - Before we get to the fourth call,

00:05:18.160 | I loved how Carson was first time caller.

00:05:22.720 | You get that a lot in sports talk radio.

00:05:25.220 | - I know, well, which again,

00:05:26.840 | we should do live calls at some point.

00:05:30.320 | I mean, maybe we would regret that.

00:05:33.600 | - I just love the first time caller,

00:05:35.600 | first time long time, you hear it all the time.

00:05:37.520 | I feel I've heard a few times,

00:05:39.160 | like listening to some of your listener calls.

00:05:41.560 | I love it. - I do enjoy it.

00:05:43.120 | And also the thing I want to do is

00:05:44.520 | we should do one of these live, do it actually live

00:05:47.920 | and we should do it the morning

00:05:49.920 | after an important Nationals game

00:05:51.640 | and just let it devolve into sports talk radio.

00:05:54.000 | We would be swimming in fans if it just became calls,

00:06:00.380 | long discussions, long discussions about the Nationals.

00:06:03.720 | (upbeat music)

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How Can I Use Time-Blocking To Help Write My Dissertation?

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