How to find more time for priority work this week

Plus a sad celebrity story and an exciting (to me) financial story ($20!). An emotional roller coaster for your inbox!

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

As a Gen Xer whose musical tastes run from rock-alternative to pop that sounds like rock-alternative (pop alternative?), there is no reason why I should feel a strong connection with a 1972 indie-folk song. That’s not my generation’s music and that’s not my genre. And yet I do feel connected to it and I am writing about it now, so here we are.

The story of Jim Croce’s posthumous hit “Time in a Bottle” is haunting. Croce wrote the song about his desire to spend more time with his pregnant wife. Shortly after the song’s release, Croce died in a plane crash at the age of 30. His lyrics, intended as romantic, are tragic.

Well, that’s depressing.

The particular lyric that has long resonated with me is as follows:

🎶 “there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.” 🎵

Do you ever feel this way yourself? Do you find it challenging to have enough time to do the things you want to do, when/if you are able to even figure out what those things are?

These are, of course, rhetorical questions.

Nowadays, everyone is busy. EVERYONE is busy. Coworkers are busy. Friends are busy. Toddlers are busy. Toddlers!

Amidst all this busyness, we often lack the mental space to figure out what we even want to do, much less the time to do it.

There can be sweet spots in our schedules in which we are busy working on the things that foster a sense of purpose or busy spending time with the people who bring us joy or busy caretaking our own wellbeing. Such times leave us feeling satisfied with our lives. We found the things we want to do and we are doing them. 

Other spots in our schedules are less sweet, filled with less purposeful, joyful, or self-nurturing activities. These things are often necessary and/or important to our careers and our daily lives. This reality doesn’t make them any less mundane, annoying, or even draining. 

And while each of us can protect our schedules as much as possible, the time required for such activities can be out of our control. Your class is located a significant distance from your office. The dental office can fit you in either during your prime writing time or in four months. The monthly department meeting needs you for quorum and while the office coordinator has done his best to accommodate everyone’s calendar, it isn’t at your preferred time of never. 

Such is adult life. There is no magic to give you more time to do the things you want to do once you find them.

Or is there?

Well, that’s what today’s small thing to try immediately is about.

(Magic! 🪄🎊🫢)

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Prepare for found time

True story: In 2009, I was walking between the Engineering Building and the Agriculture Building on my campus and I found a twenty-dollar bill. $20! It was thrilling. I felt lucky to even see it: a Canadian twenty-dollar bill is bright green and it was summer, when the campus is green and lush. While it was just lying in plain sight, its colour was a nature camouflage.

For readers unfamiliar with Canadian money, here is a picture so that you can appreciate the miracle of my finding it:

The point of this story is not the twenty dollars. (But did I mention: TWENTY DOLLARS!!!). The point of this story lies in the aftermath of the event: for over 13 years now, whenever I go past the Engineering and Agriculture Buildings, I am looking for money on the ground. Because a taste for found money is hard to shake.

In addition to watching for found money, I am also (segue alert!) also on the lookout for found time. What is that, you ask? Found time is simply time that you unexpectedly find available for your use. A cancelled meeting (sweet!). An awkward gap in your schedule (ugh). A delayed flight (oh no!).  

Unlike Canadian twenty-dollar bills, found time is everywhere once you start to look. And while a Canadian twenty-dollar bill retains (some) value over time, found time is either invested (doing the things you want to do) or not (doom-scrolling social media or responding to low-value emails).

In my experience, the trick to investing found time to do the things you want to do is to plan for it. Here is how:

1. Create a table like the one below. For each column category, write down one answer to the following question: “If you find an extra hour available this week, how do you want to invest it?” (This is the “finding the things you want to do” part.)

Some examples: work on shitty first draft of literature review section (work with purpose), go for coffee with my parents (connect with others), go for a walk (nurture well-being).

2. Add a row labelled “found a half hour!” to the bottom of the table. Staying with the exact same ‘thing you want to do’ ideas, write in what you could do in half as much found time.

Some examples: add a paragraph to the literature review section, call my parents, go for a short walk.

3. Round three! Add a row labelled “found 15 minutes” to the bottom of the table. Again, write in how you could invest that found time.

More examples: re-read literature review notes and add a few bullets to literature review section; send my parents a text scheduling a future coffee; go outside and walk around the building. 

4. You now have nine plans for how exactly you can invest found time: three one-hour (like finding $20 - awesome!) activities, three half-hour (imagine finding $10 - sweet!) activities, and three 15-minute activities ($5 - not bad!).

You have found nine things you want to do. Now it is time to find the time to do them.

Some found time will just appear in your calendar. When such found time appears, you are ready with a plan: having decided once what to do in the event of found time, you can just do it.

But waiting for found time is passive, and for some people cancelled meetings are unicorns - beautiful myths never to be seen in real life. For this reason, I encourage you to actively look for found time hiding in your calendar. That 30 minutes of ‘useless time’ between your class and your research team meeting can become a walk, or a phone call with your parents, or a walk while conducting a phone call with your parents. That 20 minutes between Zoom meetings (ugh) could become three bullets in your lit review. 

Add up the found time in a given week and you might discover that you have an extra hour or two or more that you can choose to use (or not). And while your total found time in any given week might be lower than you want (finding a $100 bill would have been a better story than finding a $20 bill), it is still time and it still has value. (Did I mention: $20!) Having more time for the things you want to do is, like I said, magic! 🪄🎊🫢

An important caveat: You don’t need to use all of this time, or even any of this time, working with purpose, connecting with others, or nurturing your well-being. You do you, my friend. But being aware of the opportunities within found time will help you be on the lookout for it and to make conscious choices with how you spend it.

What is your own approach to found time? Please hit comment at the bottom of the email/page and let me know!

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:

• In my most recent Skills Agenda column, “Teach the students you have, not the student you were”, I provide ideas for instructors to adjust their teaching practice to meet the needs of their students. As I write (ahem), “When we have a sense of our students’ interests and motivations, we can make small changes in our teaching practices that have large impacts on student learning.” If you are teaching this semester, please be sure to check it out.

• I attended the Prairie Political Science Association conference in gorgeous Banff, Alberta. Banff is, of course, in the beautiful Canadian Rockies, or as we PPSAers like to say, prairie-adjacent. It was great to catch up with friends and colleagues and to meet new people. A number of people self-identified as Academia Made Easier readers; thank you for doing so! 👋

• While in Calgary en route to Banff, I lifted my stairs workout game (see photo). I fear/hope this will turn into me seeking out the best stairs in every city I visit. If your city has a great set of stairs, please invite me for a visit! 😺

Until next time…

If you find Academia Made Easier helpful to you, please help me grow the audience. How? It is easy! You can forward it to a friend or two or seven (easy!), share it on Facebook groups and on Twitter (easy!), tell your colleagues about it (easy!), mention it in your own blog/newsletter (easy!), talk about it on your podcast (easy!), and/or, if you are a Substack author yourself, recommend it to your own subscribers (easy!). I appreciate your help!

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. I am of the belief that there are few things cuter than a cat in a box. If you agree, please enjoy this picture of Storm in one of the largest boxes she has had the pleasure of claiming. It is the little things in life and, sometimes, the big things.

Want to help support my chocolate habit? You are very sweet. Buy me a coffee is a site that allows readers to show their appreciation for the unpaid labour of writers, artists, and other creatives. Check it out!

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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.