Alright. So back to agenda. There was a time not so long ago when I was drowning in to-do lists and feeling pretty negative every day.
Tasks, Tasks Everywhere!
Maybe this is you right now. I hope not, but it’s entirely possible. I dare to even say likely.
You wake up. You open your laptop. There’s a meeting. A deadline. Some unread messages. Maybe a paper to revise. You do your things. You tick the boxes.
At the same time, your to-do lists just grow.
Tasks. Unfinished tasks. Important tasks. Irrelevant tasks. All kinds of tasks. Task madness, that’s what your life is.
And for a while, this works just fine. I mean, tasks make you feel busy and important, so there’s that!
Maybe this works even for years.
But when every day is just about surviving the next task, when you’re constantly reacting to the next thing without stopping to think about what you actually want — one day you wake up and realize: you just don’t want to do anything at all.
You don’t feel lazy. You feel disconnected.
And that is a dangerous place to stay. Because once you’re in that rut, no one will pull you out of it but you.
I’ve been there. And here’s what helped me find my way back, and what will help you too.
In four minutes.
Remember You’re a Scientist Already!
Once you realise you already do all this, but just not on yourself, it all becomes clear:
- You already know how to run experiments!
- You already know how to design better systems.
- You’re brilliant at thinking in terms of variables and outcomes.
It’s just that most of us forget that we can apply that same thinking to our own lives.
We wait for some external solution to show up. We think we have no control. But we do.
We so much do!
In fact, academia gives us more personal agency than most people ever get in their careers.
So let’s leverage that.
Here’s the big shift:
Stop seeing yourself as a desperate, broken task machine. And realise you’re a living, breathing research project.
And what an exciting project is that! The greatest project you’ll ever get to work on.
You are the lab. N = 1.
What does that mean?
You can suddenly stop copying other people’s routines that don’t fit your life. You start testing tiny changes in your work, your time, your focus. You log the results, tweak the setup, and iterate.
No guilt. No shame. No drama.
Just data that optimises you toward…. what?
Whatever you want!
Is it more words you want to write? Is it just feeling happier.. is it motivation?
Here’s an important question you might not have ever even paused to think about: What is it you really want?
It’s incredible how many of us have no clear answer to that. Like, what is the result we are after? And why are we after that result? If we don’t stop to think of this, there is literally nothing to optimise toward, and our big clumsy ship is just drifting on the merciless ocean that is modern academia.
And you can rest assured that if you just do tasks you don’t even understand why, soon you will want to do absolutely nothing.
…and you’re just a task machine.
Try This:
Pick one thing that isn’t working well right now. Maybe it’s:
- Writing consistently
- Having clear goals for every day
- Balancing meetings and deep work
- Not feeling excited anymore about your research
Then:
- Write the problem down.
- Try one small tweak this week.
- See what happens? And then tweak.
Or as Emerson put it:
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sounds simple? It’s because it is. We just don’t allow good things to happen to ourselves. Because there’s a certain appeal to wallowing in misery, let’s admit it.
The need to be the hero. To fight demons. To put down fires (that in reality don’t need to even exist).
Allow your academic life to get better.
That’s the real takeaway.