It's All About Structure (and Fluidity)

It's amazing how many tools we have to simplify our lives, tools we know would greatly improve our overall well-being, that we just ignore.

Friday morning I had the good fortune to drag myself, bleary-eyed, out of bed and across town to campus for a study skills/time management workshop. (I need to take these offerings seriously - Booth's career development is one of the reasons the Economist just ranked it the #1 full-time MBA program in the world.)

Christine Gramhofer, the head of academic advising, started with a review of how to learn effectively at Booth. Here were my main takeaways:

1. Review notes immediately after class. Study in 30-45 minute blocks with 10 minute breaks in between.

These both boil down to the need for structure and focus. Structure is important because between classes, networking, recruiting for summer internships, career and interest clubs, and anything outside of B-school, there is just too much happening to be able to keep track of mentally. I think a clearly defined structure, and a dedication to single-minded focus within that structure, might be the most important contributor to (personally defined) success over the next two years.

2. When forming study groups, clearly establish and hold space for an initial "test the waters" meeting before making a course-long commitment.

This pointer contained so much - the importance of communication, clearly defined goals, recognition of group dynamics, carving out space to be able to say that something just isn't working while still maintaining positive relationships. Simply saying "let's meet this week and see how it works for everyone, then talk about the rest of the quarter" sets a tremendously positive precedent for communication, respect and permission to have personal boundaries.

3. In a list of common stress triggers, the #1 item on the list was lack of control.

When I read that I connected to my breath and relaxed for the first time in days. Fundamentally, we never have control, but I can't remember ever being as confronted by that fact as I was during the first week of orientation. At Booth students bid for their classes in an open market environment; in the first round of bidding, I only won 2 of the 5 classes I bid on. In the second round of bidding, I didn't win anything.

One class at Booth costs around $5,900. There is huge pressure to choose wisely. Because Booth is the school for the independent, a basic class like statistics taught by six different professors will have six different course descriptions and syllabi. So first we have to pick the courses we'd like to take - independent thinkers, so no strict basic curriculum - then, the professor we think we'll learn the most from. Then we have to bid. And bid. And bid. At the same time we're meeting with career services - recruiting for summer internships starts in a month or so - learning just how difficult our chosen field is to break in to, #1 MBA program in the world or not. Add to this suddenly living on a student budget, trying to navigate a new city, being away from all previously established routine, and the lack of control is tangible, unavoidable, and highly uncomfortable. That said, being a strong type-A (or, according to Myers-Briggs, an INTJ, as I learned last week), the stressfulness of this did not occur to me until I saw "lack of control" at the top of a list of stressors. And then, suddenly, I could breathe again.

This post is already longer than I intended, but I also picked up some great tips from Randy Dean, the self-proclaimed (and rightfully so) time management guru.

1. Stop multitasking and start focusing.

The average time it takes a person to return to a place of productivity after being interrupted from a task is 4-15 minutes. And that doesn't include the interruption itself.

2. Stay focused on long-term goals.

This doesn't mean having them listed somewhere or being able to articulate them, although that's a start. This means scheduling regular time to revisit them, sit with them, work with them. There are a lot of reasons I'm in business school. Intellectual curiosity, building a lifelong network of smart, diverse businesspeople, career advancement - the MBA program provides structure for all of these. But equally important, to me, was taking time to become the best leader I can be. This isn't tangible. It requires self-assessment, dedicated self-awareness, deep reflection. And these take time. So I'm going to form a "master group". Six to eight of my classmates, to sit with me in council once a month (or whatever format we agree on) and discuss our personal goals and how we're progressing with them. To remind ourselves of these goals, hold ourselves accountable to working toward them, and to gain insight from others' constructive questions and feedback.

3. Have a NEW daily process. This is quite strategic, but it makes wonderful sense. Here's what Randy suggested:

Step 1: Check the calendar for the day, week, month.
Step 2: Once you see what is happening today, this week, this month, update your task list as needed. (He also spent quite a bit of time on task lists - I've set up a Toodledo account that I'm quite excited about - if you are thinking of trying it out, please let me REFER YOU first so I can get a free upgrade to a pro account!)
Step 3: Check your task list for the day and adjust as needed.
Step 4: Check email. This was really the key point - do all of the other steps BEFORE checking email, since we all know how that quick early morning peek at email turns into 20, 30 minutes, an hour, and before you know it it's time to go to work.
Step 5: Revise task list again.

I'm actually going to implement this - I'll let you know in a while how it's going.

4. Turn off beeps, pop-ups, alerts of all kinds that tell you when a new distraction has arrived.

All these do is distract us from whatever we're focusing on at a given time. Randy put this really well - he said we should run technology, not let technology run us. This is another new guideline I'm excited about implementing.

All of this lovely structure will be a great way to counter the stress from lack of control. The fact that I finally had a successful bidding round helps too! So take that, you price inflators who bid up footnote accounting to over 3,000 points! I might have had a few extra days of stress, but I got the class for 0 points today, so I'll be able to outbid you next quarter! :)