Administration Procrastination

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Let’s face it—there’s more to a grad student’s life than procrastinating on writing a dissertation. There’s a world of opportunity of boring administrative crap to put off doing as well! September is when student status forms need to be filed, student loans need to be expedited, the IRB needs to pandered to, your committee lined up, and all sorts of conferences and jobs need to be researched. It is enough to daunt even the most stout hearted among us.

The head games associated with life’s administrative challenges are a-plenty, but here are three:

A) forms and deadlines tend to be ignored by the creative mind until the deadline has past
B) the fear that the deadline has already past is enough to generate a negative attitude which is a feeding ground for further procrastination
C) a vicious circle is created until the grad student is filled with such needless shame about all administrative issues that the mere mention of a ‘form’ is enough to induce panic

Here is where the Check-Offer within you must sally forth and save the day. Because although boring and fraught with many dumb, infuriating, idiotic, time-wasting, bureaucratic, mind numbing nightmares; all manner of administrative brew-ha-ha is within the scope of your capability. Not only that, but the bulk of all your administrative non-sense can probably be completed in 2 days.

Here’s a method to try for knocking out all your personal administration in one block of time:

1. Make peace with the fact that you’re not going to get any work done on your dissertation for the next week.
2. Decide what administrative stuff needs doing and make a list.
3. Try to make the list as specific as possible and list each specific as a separate item.
4. Make a box by each item on your list so that you can put a BIG check in the box when you’ve finished the item. (Don’t ask me why but it feels better to have a space to make the check rather than to just put a check mark next to your item.)
5. Do not get bogged down in an elaborate spread sheet project for making said list.
6. Now you are ready to do a little acting exercise. Pretend you are a personal assistant hired for a few days to get these tasks done. Your boss has given you a list, and you have a couple of days work to do. These are no longer forms that relate directly to your life and impact the very stability of your future, no, these are the bread and butter of a gal/guy Friday. And since you’re a professional assistant, any problems you run into are just part of the work week—maybe a bit of a yawn but nothing some Pepsi and a bag of pretzels can’t cure. For your new job as personal assistant, you need to begin work at a reasonable hour, take a lunch break, and make a plan for how you’re going to attack the rest of the work you have to do for the next day.
7. Now that you’re finished, you can present the work you’ve done to your stress case of a boss. She will now negotiate your salary. Does this feel like a rewards system you’ve used on yourself many times, but to luke-warm effect? This may be because you designed the reward too early in the game. Remember, even though these techniques center on developing a schizophrenic-like personality split; you really are still you. So if you go into a task saying that you’ll reward yourself with a massage at the end of it, you can easily just go and get the massage. However, if you plan your reward at the completion of your task, you can have a fun and surprising conversation with yourself at the end.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT YOU: Ma’am, I worked hard for the past couple of days. I think I deserve a bubble bath, and a night’s worth of watching Saved by the Bell. Also, cheez-doodles for dinner, a new pair of shoes, I can call an ex I said I would never call again, and a pony ride…with face painting, and maybe some flowers, and The Lord of the Rings boxed set…

(you may find that your inner personal assistant is a lot pushier than you would have assumed)

BOSS YOU: Well, you’re right, you should be proud of all this work you just did! And in such a timely fashion! Spot on!

(you may be surprised by how uptight sounding your inner boss is)

BOSS YOU: But I think that some of those things you mentioned are a little bit…

P.A.Y.: Fun?

B.Y.: No….

P.A.Y.: Cool sounding?

B.Y. Uh-uh…

P.A.Y.: Reasonable?

B.Y.: No, listen, what I was going to say is that those demands are entirely UN-reasonable. How about the bubble bath and some flowers?

P.A.Y.: Throw in the Saved by the Bell and you’ve got a deal.

(you’re inner boss agrees because she knows you were going to do that any way)

And there you have it— a finished pile of administrative B.S. and a relaxing time of it to boot.

The real good news is that soon this will all be behind you. I mean, have you ever known a professor who knows or cares about administrative protocol??? This is because professors don’t deal with any administrative stuff. And that may be all the motivation you need my friend. Well, that, and the lure of tenure…

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Filed under September, procrastination