On Planning vs. Executing as a Scientist
In general, a large part of being a scientist is planning different experiments, stress-testing them, and then writing them up. However, what I have noticed over the years is that there are almost two distinct modes when it comes to working on a scientific project: planning mode and execution mode. Some of us find one of these much easier than the other: either diving headfirst into a project without fully considering the overarching structure, or semi-procrastinating by devising the optimal plan for when we finally get down to it. For every project to be functional and executable, we need both modes. We need to be able to turn long-term goals into consistent actions that allow us to make progress on our plans.
Currently, in my postdoc, I find it much easier to be in planning mode, and I almost gravitate towards overplanning my day as a form of procrastination. I think this is due to a combination of different factors. First of all, my task list is much longer than it was during my PhD. I have more meetings, more students to see, more articles to read, and more work to grade. All of this means that the number of tasks I could be working on has grown exponentially. As a result, I can naturally focus on planning these tasks ‘perfectly’ without ever actually getting to them. At the same time, the important things I should be working on have not changed that much. It is doing experiments (computational in my case) and writing them up. That simple. So, if I have a good week, as I see it, I would have mostly been working on this primary task.
Something that I noticed slipping in is that I almost started to believe that I could not work on this particular task without a proper plan in place. Thus, unless I started the week with a perfect plan, it would be impossible for me to get anything done. However, as I said before, planning can become another form of procrastination. It might make us feel good and in control in the moment, but over the long term it can actually take up a large part of the day. Thus, this week I want to go over three techniques that I am experimenting with to get out of this overplanning mode and towards an execution mode.
1. Technique One: Daily, Weekly and Yearly Planning
First of all, assess for yourself what you think a reasonable amount of planning is. I once read in Cal Newport’s book How to Become a Straight-A Student that only five minutes a day should be sufficient to assess what the most important task of the day is, along with maybe one or two side tasks to work on. Depending on your job and family situation, this might take a little longer. However, I do think daily planning should not take more than 30 minutes, as otherwise you are again spending a large amount of time each day planning rather than actually executing.
Aside from these short daily check-ins and plans, we do have larger planning moments that account for every week, month, and maybe year. If the daily plan is five minutes a day, the weekly plan might be 30 minutes at the beginning or end of the week, and the monthly one could take a day, for example, scaling up the amount of time we take depending on the time horizon.
For the monthly and yearly plans, I would actually recommend thinking of these less as planning sessions and more as moments for reflection. What did you spend your time doing last month? What do you want to focus on more next month? Why is this not happening? It becomes more of a journaling and reflection moment where you think about where you currently stand in life and where you want to go, as opposed to the daily little planning moments that are primarily about deciding what to work on.
2. Technique two: Scaling Down
As mentioned before, one of the primary problems that contributes to my need, or feeling, to overplan is the vast amount of extra tasks I currently have. When I first arrived in London, I wanted to make the most of the city, which I still want to do. But this also meant overcommitting myself to several different tasks and activities. One of the drivers of overplanning is simply having too many dispersed commitments. Scaling these down to one or two important things a day will automatically remove some of the need and desire to overplan.
3. Technique three: Execution Mode
There are many techniques out there to actually get yourself into execution mode and stay there. These range from Pomodoro timers, time tracking, or noting down what you do every hour, to changing locations and working somewhere more productive, such as the library. There are even more extreme approaches, such as physically tapping yourself to your chair and not allowing yourself to move until a specific task is done. Over time, I have found different techniques to be effective, so I think it requires you to experiment a little and figure out what works for you.
But maybe, first of all, a good question to start with is: what is your baseline of focus or execution time currently?
For example, if you currently spend a maximum of 30 minutes working before you get distracted and start doing something else, then this is essentially your baseline. It might therefore not be very realistic to expect yourself to suddenly work for five or ten hours straight from the start. Instead, you can slowly work on expanding your capacity. Try adding another 15–20 minutes of focused work each day and see how that goes. Of course, this means that you will not see a sudden, dramatic improvement. But over time, you will slowly progress quite a lot. And then, perhaps, in a couple of months you might find that elusive state of flow, where you actually forget about time and become completely absorbed in the work.
Currently, I see execution mode as being quite similar to meditation. Within the meditation technique I practice, the goal is simply to observe the breath and the body and keep your attention there. Every so often, your attention will drift, and you will start thinking about other things that you should or could be doing. When you notice this, you simply make a mental note of “I was distracted” and then gently bring your attention back to the task at hand.
Over time, as you keep doing this, you will find that your mind starts to wander less and less, and that the time between your mind wandering and you bringing your attention back becomes shorter and shorter. In the same way, this allows you to gradually become better at maintaining your focus on the task at hand. I have to say here that, similar to meditation, your mind will never fully quiet down for long periods of time. This is simply the nature of the mind, especially if you have a busy life with many interactions and tasks constantly vying for your attention. Thus, the goal is not necessarily for your mind to become permanently distraction-free. Instead, the aim is to get better at noticing when you have become distracted and, rather than reacting to that distraction, gently bringing your attention back to what you were doing.
“One more paradoxical truth about control: often, the way to have the best ideas, and to produce the best work, is to develop an ability to forget entirely about trying to control the quality of your output.” Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman
🧠 PS: I am considering working more closely with a small number of Master's and PhD students, with the goal of accelerating your progress towards completing your degree, publishing one or two high-impact papers, and making the research journey as smooth as possible. If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to fill out the audience survey below.
