Productivity After Chaos
A semester from hell showed me which productivity practices work for me
This summer, I spent much of my free time digging through my high school diaries. I was a boring diary writer—instead of long entries detailing friendship drama or failed crushes, most of my diary entries were to-do lists and resolutions. “Write paper,” “get up at 5:30 AM,” “5 miles of running per week,” and so on. Years later, now as a graduate student in my second year of my PhD program, it’s mind-boggling to reflect on how much more capable I felt with time management back then.
The real shocker comes when I reflect on my to-do lists from the past two semesters, that is, my first year as a graduate student. For starters, they’re mostly casual lists made in my ‘Notes’ app on my phone, and the tasks themselves are much less complex; entries like “reply to email from postdoc,” “outline study plan for exam,” or “schedule meeting with PI” abound. For the most part, many of those seemingly simple tasks took weeks to get around to. After years of schooling, leading to a PhD program at one of the best research institutions in the world, I expected that my time management skills would have improved as a function of my experience level. But, for a large part of those two semesters, I felt as though the opposite was true.
Despite the long lists of goals that I made for myself before entering my graduate program, this past year, I only had enough energy to skirt by. My weeks were largely defined by piles of research papers to read, hours staring at lecture slides to make any kind of sense of biochemical techniques, and liters of eye drops purchased from CVS for my strained eyes, which were exhausted from trying to decipher figures that looked more like hieroglyphs than data. I was able to keep my weekends free for the most part, which I was happy about, but Sunday evenings brought a sense of dread that I wasn’t expecting to encounter so early into my program. I felt like I was treading water, just doing all that I could to stay ahead of my deadlines. I needed a solution.
Throughout the year, I attempted time management and productivity techniques that ran the gamut of what YouTube has to offer. Here’s what worked, and what didn’t:
Preserving Weekends: Going into graduate school, I knew this was one thing I was heavily looking forward to. I came straight from college, and as an undergraduate, I found that assignments were a constant. Even on weekends when I was having fun, assignments loomed in the back of my mind. Even when I wasn’t working, the guilt over not working was quite heavy.
As a graduate student, I looked forward to making my weekends sacred times of little to no work, and this is one practice that helped me from the start. Knowing that my weekends were off limits, I was more motivated to do my work during weekdays so that I could enjoy my weekends without guilt. However, I still needed strategies for how to get my work done efficiently on weekdays.
Pomodoro Timers: This method involves setting a series of timers that represent ‘work’ and ‘break’ periods. The typical Pomodoro workflow involves four cycles of 25-minute work periods followed by five-minute break periods, with the fourth work period ending in a 15-minute break. Then the cycle repeats. This is usually my initial approach when I’m on an assignment time crunch. I started the semester by trying to use Pomodoros at random—but with nothing to anchor me (that is: no set time limit on how long I intended to work, no clear endpoint that I intended to reach, and no motivation), these weren’t very effective. Today, I use Pomodoro timers during large time blocks for dense projects.
Notion and similar apps. Notion is a note-taking workspace that allows users to organize tasks and projects with powerful AI tools. Similar tools include Mem, Coda, and Obsidian. I was introduced to Notion in college when a Notion student campus ambassador showcased her perfectly polished page to me. It was impressive to see just how detailed and complex her notes, tasks, and to-do lists were. There seems to be a lot of potential for those who would benefit from a more centralized task manager and note-taker. For me, the complexity and learning curve was just a bit too steep to commit to learning how to use the application to its full potential. A more basic approach, using a centralized notebook for to-do lists, notes, and task management, worked to increase my productivity and lower the activation energy for me to start daily tasks.
Calendars! Throughout the fall semester, I found myself often caught off guard when assignment deadlines crept up. I was so used to being reminded of deadlines by my professors and teaching fellows during college that I stored my deadlines in my head and wasn’t worried about forgetting them. Of course, this method didn’t fly in graduate school. Aside from my classes, I was responsible for coordinating my lab rotations and keeping track of crucial administrative deadlines. Trying to keep track of deadlines in my head instead of in a calendar or planner led to late nights trying to finish things last minute and aimless work days, not knowing what I needed to prioritize.
The real game changer for me came when I started using Google Calendar to the fullest. With a written list of my priorities for the week to anchor me, I started laying out the days and times when I would work on given assignments, combining with my class, lab, and extracurricular schedules. This took the guesswork out of what needed to be done during a given day, and when I was able to stick to my work schedule, I found that I had much more time for intentional R&R.
Ultimately, the strategies that worked for me may not work for you, and vice versa. There are also many other strategies not listed here that you might swear by (Comment them below!). Although this period of trial and error was stressful and frustrating, I finally feel as though true time management is within reach—just in time for me to embark on an academic journey that will require it. If you feel like you just can’t get your productivity up, try a few of these methods! If something isn’t working, don’t freak out. The internet is full of other tips that may work for you—just trust that one day you’ll find your answer to productivity after chaos like I did.
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