Have you ever stopped to estimate how much time and energy you are spending "thinking in your project" versus "thinking about your project"? In this episode, I explain the difference and why noticing the difference can have a huge impact on your productivity and well-being.
Have you ever stopped to estimate how much time and energy you are spending "thinking in your project" versus "thinking about your project"? In this episode, I explain the difference and why noticing the difference can have a huge impact on your productivity and well-being.
Welcome to the thriving academics Podcast. I'm Ulya Tsolmon, a professor and certified coach, and I share insights on how to create your best work and live your best life. If you want to go from surviving to thriving without sacrificing what's important to you, then listen on To find out how. Hello, my friends, In this episode, I want to talk about the difference between thinking about your project and thinking in your project. And how this difference can make a huge impact on your productivity and well being. So one of the most common problems that I've witnessed my fellow academics struggle with is making progress in their projects. So maybe it's writing an article or book or grant, some feel like they are working all the time, but not really making any tangible progress. And some are so overwhelmed that they can't even start. So when you're worried about your work, you either can find yourself procrastinating with non project related stuff like laundry, household projects, social media, or you procrastinate with seemingly productive things like email, admin work, and maybe some other tasks that are really important to get done. But they're really not the priority. So either way, you're not making progress and what's a priority project to you. So when you're not making progress, and what's important, you worry, and you have a lot of anxiety, with more anxiety and not making progress, you start feeling overwhelmed, and feel like you're falling way behind. So with each passing day, you lose hope and you anxiety grows. So maybe eventually a deadline or some other sort of disciplining mechanism gets you to do something. So then you drop everything work in the 11th hour with extreme level of stress and anxiety, and you get the project done. Now, if this is a typical experience for you, then you know that this is a very difficult way to work, you're stressed and suffer in the days leading up to the deadline. Then even if you produce something by the deadline, by sacrificing your sleep and maybe working marathon hours, you feel regret. And you blame yourself for waiting this long, and really can't help but wonder if there is a better way, or if your work could have been a better quality if you had worked on it earlier. And you wonder if something is fundamentally wrong with you. Because you see other seemingly being able to be productive and enjoy life at the same time. So after these long anxiety periods, leading up to the deadline and challenging Sprint's right before deadlines, you're so exhausted and burnt out that you can't even bring yourself to work on the next project. So then the cycle continues until you wonder if you are even made out to be in this profession. So if this cycle sounds familiar to a certain extent, then listen on. Here's one concept I'd like to share with you today to get you on that path of creating your best work while living your best life. So there is a huge difference between thinking about the project and thinking in the project. So thinking in the project is actually doing all the work, whether it's thinking writing that actually moves the project forward. Thinking about the project is thinking whether the project will succeed or not thinking how you're already behind that there is never ending list of tasks and worrying about feedback you may receive. Now we spend a lot of time worrying and thinking about the project and not enough time doing the project. So I'm not really talking about thinking about the project in a sense that you are doing your due diligence, but I'm talking about worrying about the project which does not help move it forward. When you're worrying about the project. It really delays the progress and delaying the project then increases your worry and the cycle continues until you feel completely be overwhelmed. So when you're working on a project, have you ever stopped to estimate how much time and mental and emotional energy you are spending on thinking about the project. So thinking about whether you can do a good job, whether it's going to be received well, and whether it's worth doing the project at all, and whether you are way behind in the project timeline. Now, having this awareness of how much time is being spent in thinking about your project versus in the project is the very first step to making sure that you're not wasting a lot of time and energy in things that don't really move your project. So when you are thinking about the project, and you feeling the anxiety, and the worry, and you're questioning all the decisions, and all the past decisions that you've made, and maybe you regretting how you've spent your time in the past, and you're worried about how your project might turn out, then with that worry and anxiety, then you start procrastinating with things like you know, doing laundry, watching Netflix, and maybe spending time on seemingly productive things, the household tasks that super overdue, maybe you're doing some other work, emails, other things that seem pretty productive, but they really not your priority, like these tasks are not moving your project forward in the least. So what I would like to bring your attention to is really understanding like, how much time are you spending in thinking about your project, and how much time you actually spending in thinking in your project. So thinking in your project, on the other hand, is doing things, maybe thinking, producing things and completing tasks that actually move the project forward. So these are tangible results that you're getting from your efforts. And if you compare the time that you spend thinking about the project versus thinking in the project, I think it'll be very useful to get an estimate of what is the percent of time that is being literally wasted? For a lot of people, it's a difference between the two activities, thinking in the project and thinking about the project is pretty stark. And for some people, the ratio of spending the time between thinking in the project and thinking about the project can be staggeringly different. So for some people, even tasks that take maybe 10 minutes, one could be spending, literally days thinking about the task, instead of sitting down and doing the task. So and it seems like you are always, you always have so much work to do. And you're always overwhelmed. But when you if you were to shed all that extra time and energy that you're spending, thinking about the project, worrying about the project, or resisting the project, then you can save a lot of mental energy and actual time being spent on projects and make huge progress with the time that you have. So next time, when you feeling overwhelmed about the project and you feel like you're not making any progress, ask this simple question is this time and energy expenditure moving my project forward? So if you find yourself resisting it, ask a very simple question is this activity is this thought process, moving my project forward? And for most of the tasks that you're engaged in, it will be pretty straightforward. It's going to be for example, laundry definitely not moving your You know, grant proposal writing project forward, social media is not looking at random information on the internet is not responding to, you know, trying to clear out your email inbox is not. And thinking about the past and wallowing in regret is probably not and also imagining future failures and scaring yourself. Also probably not moving your project forward. But at the same time, you can recognize like how much time and mental and emotional energy you are spending in thinking about your project. So pay attention to how much time and energy you're spending on thinking about your tasks versus thinking in your tasks. So next time when you feel stuck and find yourself worrying, ask if this time and energy expenditure moving my project forward in meaningful ways, then ask what is the next best step you can take to move the project forward. And try to focus on doing just those tasks. So with more awareness and practice, you will learn to redirect your attention to things that matter for your project. And I encourage you to take pause when you're feeling overwhelmed and you feel like you are blaming yourself for not working faster, or you're not making progress and ask yourself, Is this really helpful? Am I doing the thinking about the project versus thinking in the project? Okay, so hopefully that's pretty clear. And if you feeling stuck, hopefully this simple question is this time and energy expenditure, moving my project forward, can help you get unstuck and focus your energy toward things that really matter. Alright, so until next time, take care. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about all the things we talked about, check out women faculty.com Where we take these concepts and apply them. Come join us and do your best work and live your best life.