How Taco Tuesday can help you be more productive (without actually eating tacos, unless you want to)

Note: Repeated references to tacos throughout. If you are hungry, you might want to eat before reading.

Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here. 

Do you struggle to find time for deep work? Many people working in academia feel that they lack sufficient opportunities for sustained focused work. Context switching (such as moving from Docs to Slack to Zoom to Outlook…) and task switching (jumping from one activity to another) are the norm for many of us. Unfortunately, switching is highly inefficient; according to one researcher, “even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.” Switching is also mentally exhausting.

In my experience, one of the greatest ways to combat switching is to use batching - that is, grouping similar tasks. You can use batching in small ways to make big changes in your productivity. For example, you can dedicate a specific time daily for email rather than answering email throughout the day, or save your expenses to submit at the end of the month. 

I have found that batching is particularly powerful when used for larger tasks that have the greatest leverage on academic career success, such as writing, lecture prep, relationship building, and strategic thinking. These activities require more time and focus and must be deliberately planned and scheduled.

One easy way to batch important work is to take inspiration from busy parents everywhere and implement your own work version of Taco Tuesday. For the uninitiated (really?), Taco Tuesday is the practice of (wait for it…) eating tacos on Tuesday. Taco Tuesday is awesome for a number of reasons: 

1. Tacos are delicious and even (most) picky eaters like them. 

2. Tacos are easy to prepare and can be adapted to meet many dietary restrictions (gluten free, vegetarian, etc.).

3. Planning a regular Taco Tuesday means that there is at least one day per week where you mercifully don’t have to go through the painful decision of what to make for dinner.

4. Taco Tuesday is fun to say and easy to remember. 

You can draw inspiration from Taco Tuesday by creating a theme day around a specific activity, thereby batching work in a high leverage way. This newsletter’s small thing to try immediately explains how to do this.

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Set a Theme Day 

Work theme days have many benefits. They create predictability in your schedule. They help reduce decision fatigue by removing the need to repeatedly decide when you will work on a particular task or project. They also remind you to protect time in your schedule for your priorities.

Here is how to set one up quickly:

1. Identify an activity you want to focus on. This could be a high leverage activity (lecture prep, team meetings, writing) or lower leverage activities that you wish to batch so that they don’t interfere with the rest of your week (e.g., administrivia, random meetings that don’t tie to your priorities).

2. Select one day of the workweek that you have some flexibility with, either in whole or in part. This should be a day with limited or no scheduled events for a good block of time. Impossible? Okay, pick a day with at least a small block of time available. Find what works for you.

3. Name the day. While alliterative names are more memorable (who can forget Meatless Monday or Throwback Thursday?), use whatever you find compelling. Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• Motivation Monday (focus on your top priority project), Media Monday (op-ed writing and external communications), Make It Happen Monday (focus on the week’s highest leverage task), Meeting Monday (standing meetings, random meetings, office hours)

• Team Tuesday (cowriting time with research team; regular meeting with your team), Two Topics Tuesday (focus on two key areas), To-Do List Tuesday (tackle that nagging list of random things that you need to get done), Teaching Tuesday (lecture prep, grading) 

• Writing Wednesday (self-explanatory), Wisdom Wednesday (research day), Wellness Wednesday (no meetings, go for a run at lunch), Work From Home Wednesday (self-explanatory, but perhaps less appealing since covid)

• Thoughtful Thursday (research day), Thought Leader Thursday (op-ed writing and external communications), Three Things Thursday (focus on three key areas), Thumbs Up Thursday (focus on your top priority project)

• Friendly Friday (random meetings, check-in with colleagues), Focus Friday (focus on your top priority project), Flexible Friday (leave the day open to do whatever arises), F*ck It Friday (send angry emails and questionable social media posts because You. Are. Done. Note: not recommended.)

4. Add your theme day in your calendar. Label the day so you see it recurring weekly and block off as much time as your day permits. 

5. Tell people. Yes, I am serious. Telling people creates both a boundary on your time (“Sorry, I can’t meet then - that is Teaching Tuesday and I am focused on lecture prep for the day”) and accountability (such as when people ask you questions like “How was Writing Wednesday this week?”). If you take it to social media, you can even have fun with it and create some community. #ThumbsUpThursday, anyone?

Theme days aren’t forever. In my own household, Taco Tuesday had its appeal for a season or so, and in my work life, Friendly Friday was great until I started to feel much less friendly and wanted to change it to Leave Me Alone Friday. Use theme days until they don’t fit your circumstances, and then replace them.

In my experience, a theme day can serve as a valuable tool to help you maintain time for your priorities. Be sure to give this one a try - and please let me know what day you decide on!

Chipping Away: What I Have Been Up To

A quick update on some of my own activities since my last newsletter, since I have your attention:

• For the fall term, my theme day is Freedom Friday. In the mornings, I cowrite with my coauthors. My schedule does not allow much free time for writing, so this dedicated time is essential to moving our book project forward. In the afternoons, I focus on ‘mop up’ tasks (emails, expense claims, and so forth) that are occupying my thoughts. My goal with this is to clear the decks so I can have the freedom to enjoy my weekend. 

• My policy school is a unique two-university collaboration, and the universities are located in separate cities 260 kilometres apart.  Last week I spent three days at our Regina campus offices. It was wonderful to get to spend time with colleagues (masked and distanced) face to (masked and distanced) face. As I tend to be a bit of an introvert, I was surprised at how energizing I found it to be with people again. It was really lovely.

• On the drive, I listened to the audio version of Adam Grant’s Think Again.I particularly enjoyed his discussion of rethinking teaching approaches. Grant reports research that finds that although university students prefer (and believe they learn more from) lecture-style classes, objective learning is greater from active learning in which students are required to engage with the material. As someone who employs a mix of lecture and active learning in my own teaching, I found this quite interesting.

Until next time…

My sincerest thanks to everyone who has taken the time to subscribe (free!), share (also free!), and/or comment on (still free!) Academia Made Easier. I really appreciate your engagement.

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. After my last newsletter, I realized that I mention food a lot (usually chocolate). In my defence, food is awesome. So for this newsletter, I doubled down. In my “research” (i.e., lazy google searches) on tacos, I learned a number of odd facts, including that basketball superstar LeBron James unsuccessfully tried to trademark ‘Taco Tuesday’ and that astronauts eat tacos in space. My favourite discovery is that there is a professor who teaches “taco literacy”: literature professor Steven Alvarez, aka the Taco Professor. How cool is that?

If you were to apply your disciplinary knowledge to a specific food, what would you teach? Please hit the comment button and let me know! For myself, I think a class on the Politics and Policy of Chocolate would be a lot of fascinating. And Professor Chocolate isn’t the worst title...

Loleen Berdahl, Ph.D.: I am a twin mother, wife, runner, cat lover, and chocolate enthusiast. I spend far too much time on Twitter and binge-watching television, and my house could be a lot cleaner. During the work hours, I am the Executive Director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. I am the author of University Affair’s Skills Agenda column and my most recent books are Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD and Explorations: Conducting Empirical Research in Canadian Political Science.