As the fall semester kicks into full swing, I’ve been chatting with many of my students about scheduling, deadlines, and bottom-line pragmatic strategies for getting things done. As we all learned during the pandemic lockdown and in the subsequent year, our routines and normal rhythm and pace of doing things have all been completely disrupted.

At the top of the list is our relationship with time and the enormous flexibility that we have had introduced, without much warning, into many of our lives. For academics like me who are used to working on their own and forced in many ways to figure out how to balance research, writing, teaching, service work, admin duties, grading, and all of the other demands on their time to blur the lines between personal and professional life, this has not been new. In fact, I know many of my colleagues who like me have pivoted to planning their days and weeks like an extended sabbatical where they would normally produce a big project, without outside supervision, over a year or so.

An excellent resource for figuring out how to manage goals through small daily actions. As Clear states, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

For the majority, however, this kind of planning is quite alien, and it is especially the case when juggling different work and education modes. Without benefit of the built-in systems that have us committed to commuting and being in a particular physical place for certain hours of the day, the ability to self-schedule and “find the time” to get things done becomes exponentially more challenging. This is one of the reasons, for example, that I have designed all of my online courses with a predictable “rhythm” of content, activities, and assignment deadlines, all with built in “To-Do” lists and a suggestion for how to work the course over a seven-day period.

Still, no amount of goal-setting can lead to actual action when it comes to making deadlines. And what we all soon discover is that the motivation we feel early on with any novel thing-- be it a new job, course, hobby, or something more personal like a diet or exercise routine—is limited and fleeting. This is where habits and something called “habit-stacking” is fundamentally important.

As James Clear aptly argues in his book Atomic Habits, “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” In a broad sense, Clear is stating the obvious: if you don’t actually schedule and make time for your goals, they won’t happen. I think we all know this at some base level. But Clear’s solution to this problem is not just about the breaking down of goals into manageable steps and new habits, but more critically, to tie the establishment of those new habits with existing habits. For example, if you already drink a cup of coffee every morning and want to work on the habit of journaling, then pair the habit of morning coffee with journal writing. This was one of the ways I personally developed a daily routine to write with more consistency.

The most important thing is to look at the habits that you already have in your day-to-day life, and look for ways to stack an old habit with a new one. This helps cement the new desired routine with the system you already have in place. Don’t believe me? Simply spend one week tracking your time, and you will quickly see that you have a pace and rhythm to the way you are already spending your time. The only way to interrupt, transform, and achieve new systems, is to hardwire the daily/weekly consistency that comes via habits.

For more information, I highly recommend reading Clear’s book, and for more immediate action, start with identifying a goal you want to achieve next month, and work on breaking it down to a smaller habit you can pair with something you are already doing every day. Enjoy my weekly round-up (which incidentally I tie to writing up just before making Sunday dinner). We all have the same 24 hours each day— how will you make yours work better for you?