The copyedits of Eclectic Projects 005 have been on my desk, untouched, for over a month now. The original plan was getting them all squared away before launching back into my PhD deadlines, but then my spouse-mouse got COVID. They’re asthmatic, and we’d been ducking the spicy lung for three years by being extremely careful, so catching it for the first time brought a lot of fear and anxiety into our household. It also blitzed two weeks I had earmarked to put issue 5 and stories for issue 6 to bed, since a) I picked up a lot of the household chores and caring, and b) while I kept testing negative for COVID on RATs, I felt pretty bleak myself.
The curst of trying to do all the things: there’s never slack in the schedule when you need it to catch up. Probably a useful lesson to be reminded of.
One exercise I do with mentoring clients is the priority pyramid – a way of getting some clarity around all the projects on your mind, and what gets priority on the list. A secondary conversation which follows the pyramid is the harsh reality of getting things done: you’ve probably only got enough spoons for 3 or four professional projects, since there’s inevitably one or two personal projects and ongoing commitments which don’t make the radar.
My five runs something like this.
Currently, all things bend towards getting the PhD submitted in November. There’s one novella re-written based on supervisor feedback, another that’s about 1/3 rewritten, and an exegesis that needs an unknown amount of work (the supervisor handling that says it’s largely good, but I don’t plan well around undefined amount of work).
My second row is a nebulous pool of family tasks: supporting my spouse-mouse, whose mental health is rocky post-COVID and some unexpected work shenanigans; making sure I don’t fall by the wayside on household chores just because I’m overwhelmed with deadlines.
Alongside them are my regular mentoring and workshop commitments. Admittedly, I’ve pared back some meetings with the aim of getting my thesis done, but there’s still 10 to 12 hours of contact time, prep, and admin
My third row projects are the current Brain Jar Press releases, then getting Eclectic Projects back on track, with some long-overdue admin tasks waiting in the wings for the moment I get some room on the schedule.
One of my tricks with breaking work down this way is making sure I know what the current priority is, but also what’s most likely to step into that spot when a project’s laid to rest.
For example, there’s a significant list of thesis tasks that need to be done: writing the abstract, finalising the research codes, finalizing the bibliography, so much university admin. Nothing steps up to distract me until I’ve finished the novella rewrites.
The current Eclectic Projects task – finalising the issue 5 proofs – gives way to rewriting the next story and setting it to go live, followed by the three stories after that.
My Brain Jar focus tends to shift week-by-week. Right now, it should be laying out a novella we’re publishing next year, but it’s been superseded by reworking our website to account for a key plugin going away. The novella layout will come back on the list after the website work is done, and there’s another book ready to edit the moment proofs are sent off to the author.