Thanks to Curt Rees for pointing me to this article by Matt Boyd about avoiding burnout. The 11 suggestions range from working weird hours to changing scenery to writing it out and I found that there are a couple I’ve started implementing in this new year.

In particular, I’ve been focusing on doing micro-work (without knowing that’s what it was called) at weird hours. Maybe not as weird as the writer seems to suggest but weird as in late Friday night before heading to bed or early Sunday morning while I’m watching the news shows.

Boyd defines micro-work as follows:

Micro-work is the idea of an always on mindset where you do bits and pieces of work throughout your natural 16 hour awake cycle. This way, you can mix in a healthy dose of daily activities while still accomplishing a whole lot.

I have daily morning routines that include checking email and touching base with my online students. I’m also a fan of Brian Tracy’s “live frog” theory of getting things done so I usually have at least one or two items on the to do list that need to be done before the lunchtime dog walk. (In looking up the reference I discovered there is now a live frog app.)

Once I get past those routines and frogs, the day opens to possibilities beyond work. But then, about 9 PM, I find myself back in my chair, laptop in hand, considering the to do list. That’s when I like to at least get started on the next morning’s live frog. It’s taken me a long time to realize that working independently from home means that I don’t have to follow the classic work schedule. Just because other people are battling the morning commute so they can be behind their desks by 8 AM doesn’t mean I have to. After all, my commute, including the stop at the coffee shop, is about two minutes. 

Rees pointed to the “strategic procrastination” tip: I don’t really think about my work flow as procrastination but simply knowing when I need to start working on a long term project. For instance, I’m doing a workshop for school administrators in early March. I’ve already created the folder and copied potential resources into it but I’m just not ready to start the final presentation. It will take about two days of work and I have plenty of time. For now, I’m letting it percolate: do I want to play a game? use a special group project? organize the day around a theme? These are questions I can be contemplating even when I’m not working specifically on the project. So, it may look like I’m procrastinating but it is very much strategic.

I tweeted the article with the question about how this could apply in what Boyd calls the “classic 9 to 5 grind.” And I continue to wonder how we prepare our students to live in a non-classic environment?