Rolling progress

A few years ago, a colleague laughingly mentioned that he was “becoming more and more comfortable with just moving his entire to-do list over month by month”.

I had goals and plans for the summer. I worked hard for almost all of the summer. My people also worked hard. We made some great things happen, and made progress on nearly everything.

My goal list sits, largely unchanged, because nothing actually got FINISHED.

I am not yet comfortable with this. I am part of the problem though, often a delay when something is on my plate, because my plate overflows weekly.

This post brought to you by my near total burnout after completing a 20 page tutorial for a workshop as well as a 10 page grant application that I thought was just a formality-style form in the past three days, amidst meetings, a conference, and a workshop (which the tutorial is FOR).

I wanted to be editing my students’ papers (3 on my desk at the moment) and starting a massive grant application that is due at the end of the month, but the “urgent and important” column in my to do list is now entirely deadline-driven. Anything important but not urgent might have to wait til October, and the only non-urgent, non-important things that get done are administrivia that will otherwise make my life harder or prevent my people from being paid appropriately.

I like this job, but honestly, it is a bit much. I’d so love to be able to take a week’s vacation and not be punished for it. Take a week and not be doing work in every brief moment alone. I haven’t figured out how to do that and make life even plausible on the other side.

It’s the start of the school year, and I’m fried, but also hopeful I’ll be able to get some of these goals actually accomplished this semester (she says, not yet ruefully laughing at the prospect).