No Carrot and No Stick – Staying Productive Off-Contract

Summers are tough for me because the risks and rewards of my work seem far off and irrelevant. No one is here to look over my shoulder or ask me how things are going. No deadlines are looming, other than that big, bold deadline called tenure. So when there’s no carrot and no stick to work with how do I make myself move forward?

• Handle the worst first. Make a list of all the to-do’s for the summer, or just for the week, and then agree that you’ll tackle the most horrible items first and then reward yourself with something you love that takes you away from the office for a while. I prefer walking to get coffee or cupcakes, or going home to play xbox until my eyes fall out of my head. Go with what motivates you best.
• Procrastinate to motivate. If the above method doesn’t work for you then try reversing it and using your desire to procrastinate the evil task as a motivator to do everything else first. Just remember that no matter how much work you do that last task will still be looming over your head until the bitter end. If that freaks you out then you really should try getting it out of the way on day one.
• If you hit a wall, stop and move on. There’s no point spinning your wheels over something all day. If you’re not making progress stop and move on to something else. Let the problem simmer on the back burner for a few hours or even a few days. For extra support, work with a buddy and pass the problem back and forth whenever you hit a wall.

So, how effective are these techniques? Let’s consider an extreme case: writing journal articles. I told myself I only had to work on writing one day this week, but I hate writing journal articles so much that I spent every day so far this week being really productive on every single other thing I could think of before working on articles (Procrastinate to motivate). Now it’s Friday, so I had no more excuses and got right to it at 8am this morning. Now I’m sitting here relishing the lunch break/blog time I promised myself if I finally got down to business this morning, which I did (Handle the worst first). Once I stopped being productive this morning I took a break (If you hit a wall, stop and move on) and now I’m headed back to work to take a new approach to the problem. Although my feelings about journal article writing are inversely correlated to Cookie Monster’s feelings about cookies, I have managed to accomplish my goal for this week.

Sometimes no one is around to dangle that carrot or hit you upside the head with a stick. When you’re left all alone it may become harder than usual to produce, especially when you really loathe the task at hand. If you are ultimately held responsible for what you produce, not for the time and effort that went into the work, you’re not wasting anyone’s time but your own by being less productive. What other ways do you get yourself motivated? How do you judge whether a week was productive or not? And what’s your personal reward for a job well done?