How I Prepare for a New Semester as a PhD Student | My Back to Grad School Routine

---

Hello friends! I recently posted a reel of my first day back to school as a 4th year PhD student and it really got me thinking about all of the things I like to do to set myself up for a * slightly less * stressful semester. Though I don't try to go over the top with prepping (because there are always things you can't really plan for), I thought I'd share some things that help me feel a little more settled before a hectic semester. Whether this list sets you up for the current semester or it brings life to your routine mid-semester, I hope it helps set you up for a healthy, happy, and focused return to school.

(1) Restock all the food and everyday essentials in your home (and in your office!)

Sure, you can spend all the time in world reviewing your work tasks but none of that really does you any good if you aren't making sure that your health and well-being are taken care of! Before the start of a semester, I like to make sure my pantry is stocked, that I have groceries for the next couple of weeks, and that I'm stocked up on basic home goods like toilet paper, dish soap, allergy medications (if you're like me) and laundry detergent. You'll be thanking yourself later in the semester when you can focus on your work and not have to worry about stopping to get more kleenex on the way back from class.

(2) Set month & semester goals for work

The Type A monster in me cannot start a new semester without setting goals! Though I know a lot of people who can get away with storing all of their important to do's in their heads, I am not one of those people. In grad school, I find myself setting primarily monthly and semester long goals for research. Research projects are long, time-consuming projects that can't be easily ticked off in a day or a week so I like to create big picture goals for what I want to accomplish each semester. By the end of this semester, I want to have a full draft of my dissertation done (no matter how crappy that first draft is) - we'll see how that pans out!

(3) Get into your routines (before things get too crazy)

I find getting into a routine before the craziness of the semester to be extremely helpful in maintaining those routines even when things get busier. For me, this involves incorporating regular workouts back into my everyday life and getting to bed at a reasonable hour. I also find it helpful to establish specifically how you'll get back into that routine and where it fits best within a 24 hour day so that you don't have room for excuses about how you're "too busy" once the semester is in full swing! For me, that means trying to fit in a workout during the evening hours when I’m usually a vegetable on the couch anyway because I know that working out in the mornings is wasting away the time when my brain is at its highest level of productivity!

(4) Schedule time in libraries and coffee shops

Let's be honest - I'm a homebody and I'm also inherently lazy (who isn't?!). All I want to do is work from home from my bed all day every day because #anxiety. BUT I know myself well enough to know that if I spend even just an hour or two a week in a library or coffee shop setting, I'm inspired by all of the people surrounding me working hard on their projects. It helps put a pep in my step if I at least spend a couple of hours a week admiring the hard work of those around me and reminding myself that I'm lucky to get to work on research I like and teaching topics I enjoy. Plus, since my partner now also works from home, the separation is sometimes nice and allows me to focus a bit better :P

(5) Research things to do and create a list of events you want to attend

This is something I do every semester because the first thing to go when I'm busy with work is always my social life - but it's so so necessary to maintain a life outside of your work. Whether that's establishing hobbies you want to build on, random activities you want to do, or events you want to attend - having things outside of work to turn to will help keep you afloat when the semester gets tough.

(7) Make a plan for rewarding yourself. Because you freakin' deserve it!

This is a non-negotiable, my friend. YES - looking at you! The start to a new school semester is rough. You're hit with tons of new deadlines, work gets piled on, and you have to start seeing people every day - which is exhausting. So, make a plan to treat yourself a little - because you're working hard, you're doing difficult things, and you deserve to enjoy things even in the midst of all the craziness. This semester, my first day of school reward was my favorite sushi and my end of the first month reward miiiiiiight be an espresso machine hehe :)

I hope this was helpful! If you have any tips of your own you’d like to share I’d love to hear them - leave me a comment down below :)

You might also like:

How I Use Time Blocking as a Grad Student & Why Time Blocking Every Day Doesn’t Work for Me | PhD & Productivity

---

If you’ve ever poked around the Internet looking for productivity tips, there’s no doubt you’ve heard of time blocking! Time blocking can be an incredibly useful tool but after testing it on and off for many years, I’ve found that it’s a tool that is only useful to me in certain situations and in fact, can stress me out if I try to use it every day like many people recommend doing! So, stick around to hear about my experience and see if time blocking is right for you.

Alright, alright, so I do use a type of time blocking if you could even call it time blocking. I schedule things in my google calendar so that I know when my meetings are and what time I need to be where. Without my google calendar I’d have no idea where I need to be since I have an awful memory! I'm not sure if this is considered time blocking, but I do at least put things in my calendar if I physically have to be somewhere. I usually refer to this as my "butt in the seat" calendar since I have many other calendars that don't actually reflect where I am in the moment and reflect other deadlines or projects!

Usually, when we refer to time blocking though, we're referring to blocking certain chunks of time for specific tasks or projects. Oftentimes, time blocking is used in tandem with task batching where you do similar tasks at the same time - e.g., you might respond to all emails in a block, grade papers in another block, prep meals in a third block.

Types of Time Blocking I've Tried

To make things more complicated, there's a lot of variation in what tasks should be blocked together and how long people recommend those blocks be. Here are some of the time frames and methods I've tried:

• half hour blocks — I wanted this one to work because the woman who recommended it to me seemed so efficient with her time, but there were some pretty big lifestyle differences between the two of us. As someone who doesn't have kids and primarily works from home on a computer, I found that I was mostly putting the same thing in 3-4 blocks in a row. Rather than having the 1st block say "prepare lunch" and the 2nd block say "tidy the kitchen and the 3rd block say "put johnny down for a nap", I found myself labeling five blocks in a row with the words "dissertation, dissertation, dissertation." Half hour blocks turned out to be too short for me!

• 3-4 hour blocks - Most time blocking advice out on the Internet seems to recommend somewhere around 3 hour blocks. Since the short half hour blocks seemed too short for me, I tried 3-4 hour blocks for a period of time but again, this wasn't ideal for me because some days I'd work on the same project for the entire day which made the blocks moot.

• project and task based blocks - some people recommend that blocks be based on projects you are currently working on (e.g., specific research projects or blog posts) whereas others recommend blocks be based on types of tasks (e.g., you might work on sorting through your emails for a couple of hours since it's the same type of task though those emails may be about a lot of different projects). This type of time blocking worked for me depending on how busy my day was - which I'll talk about more later!

• digital and written time blocks - you can either write out your time blocks in a planner or on paper in a notebook or you can block it out on a digital calendar. For me personally, I find time blocking to be most effective when I've written down the block rather than booked it in a digital calendar.

Why time blocking hasn't really worked for me in the long term

I’ve tried about every recommended “type” of time blocking but have found that it doesn't always work for me due to the nature of my work and how I prefer to get things done - and here's why:

• I'm crap at guessing how long it'll take me to do WORK things. As a grad student, I'm constantly learning and doing things where I have absolutely no idea how to do or how long they're going to take. Cleaning and analyzing data could take me 2 hours or 2 weeks depending on how long it takes me to figure out a specific method of analysis or what data issues I might run across. Same with preparing a class - depending on the lecture topic, I might spend a couple of hours preparing to teach or I might spend an entire day. Though this might make planning in blocks of time difficult, it's a natural part of life as a grad student where the majority of the things you are doing are things you've never tried to do before. Many people I've followed or spoken to who use time blocking have more predictable tasks or more consistent jobs where the things on their to do lists are easier to predict so it appears that time blocking may work well for tasks you can easily predict and are already familiar with.

• I find that I go through seasons. Since grad school work has a very seasonal flow to it, it makes sense that time blocking isn't always the appropriate method. When there are super pressing upcoming deadlines, I find that time blocking doesn't seem to work for me because I prefer to spend days or even weeks immersed in the same project and letting the work guide me towards what to do next rather than planning to move onto a different task in the next block.

• With long-term projects time blocks can be sort of unmotivating. This goes hand in hand with the flow of graduate school work but frankly, when it takes you weeks to finish a paper, having time blocks that only accomplish tiny things or having the same time block label day after day because you still haven't finished writing your theory section can be pretty demotivating!

• I get bored or tired. This could entirely be a "me" problem - but I am a big believer in listening to your body and mind. This isn't always possible if I have a deadline but if I'm not under massive time pressure then I like to listen to my mind and work on what I feel like working on in the moment (within reason of course!). Sometimes, this results in my mind wandering off during time blocks because I really feel motivated to write rather than analyze data or prep teaching materials rather than read emails!

How I actually apply time blocking in my life today

Even though time blocking did not work for me on an everyday basis, there are still certain situations in which it works extremely well for me. Though I'm total crap at estimating how long a paper will take me to write or an analysis will take me to run, I'm really good at estimating how much time it'll take me to get through emails or grade student exams. I'm also good at estimating the time it takes me to get to different places and how long it'll take me to run an errand. So, for days where I'm on my feet running around campus or taking care of life admin things, time blocking works really well!

In the end, I do use time blocking but prefer to use it as a tool for days when it's a fit for what I need rather than an all around rule for how I run my life! As much as I love trying new productivity methods, we have to realize that all of these productivity strategies are just tools that are nice to have in order to make our lives better and not rules we have to live by if it's not serving us in that moment or on that day.

Enough of my rambling! I hope this was helpful - let me know in the comments if you've tried time blocking and what you thought of it!

Some of my favorite productivity tech: