Learn and Work Smarter

133. Study Breaks and Finishing Projects Without Deadlines (Q&A)

• Katie Azevedo • Episode 133

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In this Q&A episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I answer two questions submitted by listeners of the show.

Question One: A student asks for study break ideas that will increase his focus when he returns to the work.

Question Two: A professional asks for strategies for completing projects that don’t have deadlines, but that are still important to finish.

What You Learn:

  • Practical study break ideas for 5, 15 and 30-minute breaks
  • The one kind of activity that is the WORST to do during your study break
  • Why projects without urgent deadlines are hard to complete
  • A deadline strategy that adds urgency to non-deadline tasks
  • A practical approach for making sure you’re always making at least some progress on non-deadline projects

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Well, hello, and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie Azevedo, your host. This is episode 133. This is also one of our monthly Q&A episodes where I answer questions submitted by listeners of the show. And if you're wondering where people are submitting these questions and how to go about doing that, it's easy. You go to learnandworksmarter.com, and right there on the homepage, there's a really simple form to submit your questions. I will also leave that link below in the show notes and in the description box if you're watching on YouTube. I am gonna answer two questions today. The first is from a student who is asking about study breaks, and then the second is from a working professional who's looking for motivation to finish projects that he wants to do that don't necessarily have a deadline. My goal with these Q&A episodes is always to frame my answers in a broader context so that everybody listening can get some value from the conversation because I think, I believe, that when we listen to other people's questions and hear what they're struggling with, that can sometimes make us realize that we had those same exact questions ourselves all along. If you're watching this on YouTube, please make sure you subscribe. If you are listening in a podcast app, make sure to follow the show. And then lastly, come find me on Instagram@ schoolhabits if you wanna stay connected between our weekly Thursday episodes. All right, let's get to these questions. Grab your pencils and let's begin.. All right, we're gonna start with our first question. I am gonna read it here. A student asks Do you have any recs for study breaks? I either don't know what to do or I end up getting so involved in something during my break that I don't wanna get back to studying. I've already set a timer. Thanks, Katie. Okay, how to take a study break. This is an awesome question. I've actually gotten it a few times in SchoolHabits University Q&As. Of course, I'm gonna answer it here because you submitted it in the form. So first things first, it is awesome that you're even thinking about this because that means that you've already bought into the idea of taking breaks while you're studying, and I feel like right there, that's probably where you're ahead of a lot of people already. It takes a lot of work sometimes on my part to convince students that shorter, frequent study sessions are exponentially better and more effective than these epic two, three, four, five-hour study sessions that they're telling me that they're having. Neurologically and biologically, we have the evidence that the shorter study sessions are better for retention. They're better for focus and for memory regardless of how people feel about it. Shorter study sessions using a spaced repetition framework is always the best way to go. With that said, it does sound like you already know that , and you're looking for ways to use that strategy with breaks in a way that lets you get back to your study sessions smoothly, and I love it. I already love it. I do definitely have some suggestions about how to spend your break, and my suggestions, I guess to a degree, are gonna depend on how long those breaks are. So let's start with shorter breaks. If you're using something like a classic Pomodoro session where you're studying or you're working for 25 minutes, um, and then you're taking a five-minute break, there are some things you most definitely do not want to do in that five-minute break, and then some better ideas as well. The first thing, you do not wanna do anything that is gonna trigger emotions. What do I mean by that? Essentially, don't touch your phone. Every single thing that we see on our phones has the potential to make us feel excited or hysterical or angry or shocked or nervous. We can go from zero to six billion in two seconds flat just by picking up our phone, and once we heighten our emotions, whether they're really good emotions, we saw a funny cat, or really bad, we got a bad text message. So meaning we, like, elevate our emotions, or we depress our emotions. It makes it so much harder to transition back to the work. And I don't just mean phones, but I mean screens in general. So let's say that you're doing your work at your computer, and you're thinking,"Okay, like, I won't touch my phone, but I'm gonna watch YouTube Shorts for five minutes," you're gonna have a really hard time getting back into your work because you're gonna feel a lot of things in those five minutes of watching YouTube Shorts. That is rule number one. Do not do anything that's gonna make you feel anything too strong, even if it's good feelings. Now, my next suggestion is to get up So we're talking about a physical change. If you're working on the floor, get up off the floor. If you're working at a desk, get up from the desk. If you're working in a library, stand up and walk around somewhere. Even if you don't have a lot of space, you can still get up and move. Changing positions and then even one step further, actually changing rooms, like leaving the space that you're in. Don't just stand, but leave the space that you're in. That can make returning to the work feel fresh, like a distinctive start to part B of the work, and that's actually the power of the Pomodoro session anyway. If the work is hard and intense, you think it's okay, like I am just working for 25 minutes, and then I get this break, and when your break feels like a break because you've gotten up and you've left the r- l- left the room, then returning to the work for another round of Pomodoro working doesn't feel so bad because you've had your break. But if you never get up and you were just staring at the screen for the entire break time, then it never feels like you took a break, and so returning to the work feels like you never left it in the first place. You know what I mean? Um, a couple other ideas, you can get up and get a drink or a snack, maybe refill your water bottle, get a cup of coffee, get a cup of hot cocoa, make a cup of tea. All of those things can be done in five minutes. Have a snack. You can easily make toast and put peanut butter and jelly on it in five minutes. You could peel an orange and eat it in five minutes. Sometimes, too, when you're working and you know that you have a snack break or like a coffee or a hot cocoa break coming up, it gives you something to look forward to. A tip for making the snack break work better is to kinda think ahead of what t- kind of snack that is gonna be. So let's say that you're working at home and you wander into the kitchen to get a snack and you're like, "Well, actually I'm like more hungry than that, so I'm gonna make a box of mac and cheese," and then you can't do that in five minutes, right? If you think to yourself, "You know what? I think mac and cheese would be pretty awesome as a snack break," make the mac and cheese ahead of time so that during the break, like, you can just take five minutes to eat it. Um, another one of my favorite ideas that works perfectly for a five-minute break, or you could even do this for a 10 or a 15-minute break, which we'll get to, just go outside. Like, breathe fresh air. As my son would say, "Go touch grass." There's a good chance that you're doing your homework indoors, or you're studying inside, maybe in your dorm room, in your house, or a library, in the science building at your campus, a cafe, whatever, and that air can feel stuffy sometimes. Even if it doesn't feel stuffy when you're breathing it, going outside to get some fresh air makes you realize, like, "Yikes, I did need some fresh air." And that can feel really good and invigorating when you return to the work. You don't have to walk around outside. You can just go outside, take a few breaths in, look at the sky, try to hear a bird , and then go back in. That'll probably take you about five minutes. Now, if you're taking a break that's longer than five minutes, you do have some more options. I have a video on my SchoolHabits YouTube channel called Three Alternatives to the Pomodoro Technique, And in that video I share three Pomodoro variations with different timing ratios. I will leave that video linked in the show notes and in the description box. But if you're gonna do something like a 15-minute break, then okay, maybe you can make a box of mac and cheese. Maybe when you do go outside, you can walk around for a little bit. You can find your dog or your cat or your turtle and snuggle the… Are you snuggling a turtle? I only thought turtle 'cause we had a massive snapping turtle in our driveway the other day. But maybe don't snuggle the snapping turtle, but find your cat and your dog and snuggle them for a few minutes. You could even do a little cleaning or tidying in the area where you're working. If you're working in your room, you could take 15 minutes to do some dusting or maybe clean up, like, your study table or organize your bag or your folder. None of these things are gonna trigger strong emotions. They're analog, and they're most likely different from the task that you're working on, but that's the key. You want your break to feel completely different from the task you're working on because that's what makes it feel like a break, and that's what makes it feel not so bad when you return to the work. Now, those are some ideas if you're doing breaks between, let's say, 5 and 15 minutes. If you were doing 20 to 30 minutes, you could take any one of those ideas and just extend them. Like, do them longer. Have a meal instead of going for a snack. Go for a longer walk. Maybe do some dusting and clean out, you know, more than just a folder in your backpack, but something, you know, more substantial. For a half-an-hour break, you could have a shower. That is an awesome break activity. Any time you can do something that's sensorial, so triggering of your senses, not your feelings, but your senses. Like, get a new scent. You could light a candle. Sometimes if you're cooking something, that's gonna satisfy that, you know, the tasting of something new. Going outside, smelling the fresh air. You could listen to music. That gives you an auditory change. Standing up, that gives you the physical change, the tactile change. Again, we're talking about the five senses. So changing them or tapping into them for these longer breaks. And that's different than triggering your emotions by looking at TikTok or checking your email or your school portal or your Slack messages and realizing like, "Oh my gosh, there was something in there, and then now I'm stressed out." That is 100% gonna derail you. But going for the five senses, that's gonna refresh you. Now, if we're talking about longer breaks, like you're gonna have a study session in the morning and then you're gonna have one like later on in the day, then I'm less concerned about what you do because these aren't really breaks in the sense of the kind that I'm talking about here. Those are just two completely distinct work sessions at different times of the day. When you have a break between work sessions the way that I'm describing them in my answer to you, we're talking about essentially you're studying one thing, but you're taking breaks in between. So you might be studying from 12 to 2, but you're doing that in four separate chunks. If you're studying from 9 to 10 and then later on in the day from like 4 to 5, I'm less concerned about what you do in that time in the middle because you're probably just gonna be going about your day. So the bottom line here is to avoid anything that's gonna make you feel really good or really bad or really anything at all. That means your phone. That means your devices. I want you to get up and change your physical environment, especially your position. If you're sitting, I want you to stand. If you're lying down, sit up or stand. Try to get some fresh air. Move your body and tap into your five senses. You could do that on a scale of, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes, no problem. You can extend or decrease those activities. I think that is a really great question, and I hope that you found that answer helpful You're always welcome to follow up via email and let me know what you've tried. I actually really love when people do that. Okay, I am going to move on to my second question here. Let me read it."Hi, Katie. Love the show. What's your advice for doing projects that don't have an urgent deadline or maybe even no deadline at all? Thinking house projects, personal projects, or even some projects I can do for work that would make my life easier. Think SOPs, organization, and such. I want to do these things, but I find I put my efforts on time sensitive tasks and neglect the nice to haves. All ears to your strategies." Okay, so how do you make progress on projects that you want to do that don't necessarily have deadlines? Thank you for your question. It's funny, but I have gotten a lot of questions lately about deadlines. I know I said that about the last question about like study breaks, but I, but I have. It's come up in conversation a lot. It's come up with my private coaching clients a lot, my professional clients, and I just feel like maybe we're at, as we're approaching the summer season, we're approaching a season where there are a lot of deadlines, like things wrapping up and before like the lighter work season starts. I don't know what it is. Something in the air. But it's a great question, and it's something that I personally face as well. I have a lot of things that I want to do, goals I want to achieve, projects I want to complete, but they sometimes just get like shafted and moved down the to-do list because other things with more obvious and urgent deadlines often are getting thrust on us in ways that are beyond our control. So like work projects, homework, people need things, like family, stuff like that. But I think this is an important question because it's often these non-urgent projects that are the most important to us. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix. That is a framework for prioritizing things. It's essentially a two-by-two grid, so like four boxes, and it helps you figure out what's urgent but not important, what's important but not urgent, what's urgent and important, that's like the priority number one, and then what's neither important or urgent. Oftentimes, home projects, personal projects, and even the things you mentioned, like some work things, I think you said making like SOPs or whatever for, you know, or, or organizing, organizing things. or maybe even going through our inbox, there's no deadline th- for that, but they're important, but we would consider them not urgent. Those are the kinds of projects that would make our life easier, but there's no obvious deadline attached, so we tend to tell ourselves over and over again, like, "I'll do it later. I'll do it later. I'll after… I'll do it after I do all of these other things," even if it's something that we really want to do. It's not just you. I face that as well, and like I know how to prioritize and I know how to execute. It's not just you. I have a podcast episode that I recorded a while back called My Three Bucket Productivity System for Getting Things Done. That's episode 63. I'll leave that linked in the show notes and in the description box. In that episode, I share my three bucket productivity system that I personally use for getting things done that not only have deadlines, but that are also important to me, and that don't necessarily have the deadlines attached. The idea behind it is that on most days, I try to do something that has to get done, so that would be like a deadline thing, something I want to get done, which is usually something that's connected to joy, and then there's the one that's more aligned with what you're talking about, is the should get done. And I know there's a lot of shame around the word should. Okay, but I, I don't mean this in a shameful way, so just roll with like the lighter version of should. Okay? The things that we should get done or the things that we want to do, whether they're w- work-related, maybe home-related, personal-related. For whatever reason, we feel like we should get them done, and maybe you want to as well. Regardless, we don't make a priority to put these things on the calendar, they're not gonna get done. Like, that's the nature of things and tasks. They don't get done unless we do them. And my three bucket productivity system acknowledges that sometimes there are things on our to-do list that nobody's knocking on our door for, but we just know in our heart of hearts that we want to get them done. And I genuinely try to make an effort to make progress on at least one of those tasks, to fill one of my buckets with the one of those tasks every day. Maybe for you, it might not be every day. It might be, okay, if it's once a week you make progress toward whatever goal you set. You have to figure out the sort of like pacing and the frequency and the timing for yourself. Let's work through an example, though, of this. Let's do the example of like creating the SOPs, 'cause I think you said creating SOPs. I would start by treating this Like it's a task. Give it a deadline. Y- you give it a deadline, it has a deadline. In your question, you said that you respond better to things with deadlines, but do the deadlines have to be assigned by other people? We can… Like, I challenge that. We can give deadlines to ourselves, and they matter just as much. In fact, oftentimes the deadlines I create for myself for things that I am doing have more urgency, and I take them seri- more seriously than, like, someone else's deadline Sometimes that's the shift we need to make. That's the mindset shift that we're gonna need here. It takes practice to think this way, but you can get there, and it makes achieving these shoulds or these wants a lot simpler, and often a lot less dramatic and emotional too. Now back to your SOPs. Let's tell ourselves, "Okay, once a week you're gonna make one SOP." Now, in order to make that happen, you have to look at your schedule, look at your calendar and say, "What day would it make sense for me to work on my SOP project this week?" In episode 132, which was right before this, I shared a little micro strategy of creating do dates, D-O, instead of due dates, D-U-E. I think that's kind of a cool way to think about it in this like little micro strategy that might be helpful here for you. You'd say, "Okay, at the end of the week, my deadline, my do date, D-U-E, is Friday for getting this one SOP done." But then you look at your calendar and you say, "But what is my do date, D-O? When am I going to do this? When am I gonna take action on this?" And you might see that you have a 45-minute slot on Tuesday mornings where you could work on this SOP. Sure, you might have a voice in the back of your head that says, "Oh, I should be like working on something else. I could be plugging away on that TPS report," or whatever other work-related things that have deadlines that were probably assigned by somebody else. And yeah, you could do that, but what you're doing now is something different. It's my guess that you're accustomed to filling all of your open blocks of time during the week with work tasks, but now you're stuck in a position of saying, "Well, I, I never get the other stuff done." So the strategy has to change if we want a different result. If we want a different result, we need a different strategy The new strategy is not to immediately fill every chunk of time with a work task, 'cause that's what you were already doing. So we be intentional about choosing one project you wanna make progress on, find one day of the week, one chunk of time during the week that you can do that. And that can actually kinda be sort of fun. You give yourself your own due date, an D-U-E, and your do date, D-O, for each week. Okay? But also, you're giving yourself a due date for the larger project. I probably should've started with that approach too. Like, you need a… If these are sort of like amorphous projects that you have that have no due date at all, D-U-E, then let's start by giving yourself, like, a D-U-E deadline due date. Maybe you have one that's, like, way off in the future, but again, that's so vague that that doesn't mean anything. Like, later, future, down the road, that's not a specific time, and our brain doesn't respond to that with any sense of urgency. So it could actually be motivating to give yourself a due date, not in a stressful way, but to give yourself a due date, a deadline for this project. And every day or every week that you work on this project of yours, you see the progress. You build your stack of SOPs, and it feels good. That's the strategy. And you could apply the same strategy to house projects, to personal projects. Uh, it's all the same, anything that doesn't have a deadline that's assigned by somebody else. You choose one of the things that you wanna complete. I don't know, painting your garage, cleaning out the attic, building your SOPs, you know, planning a 50th party for somebody, whatever it is, you choose one. And you look at the calendar. You pick a date that you wanna aim for to have the whole thing complete by, put that on the calendar. And then you reverse engineer from that date to today's date, and just maybe a week at a time. If you're like, "I can't do it, work on it every week," fine. You know, maybe every other week, or maybe it's every day. I don't know. Again, that frequency and pacing you're gonna have to figure out for yourself, but you start putting due dates, D-O, action dates on your calendar each week, or like I said, every other week, whatever you end up choosing. You schedule these like meetings. You respect them like meetings. You show up to them like meetings. You protect them like meetings. And you make 'em fun. You can add music. You can add a friend. You can add a cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa. You can make it a ritual. You don't want these things to feel more like… or like more work, or you're gonna give up on them. So think of ways that you can infuse joy, maybe a little social connection as you do them. And then before you know it, you've completed one of these projects that has been on your someday to-do list forever. And that feels really, really good. All right, my friends, that's what I've got for you today. Remember, if you have a question that you want me to answer in a future Q&A episode, you can head to learnandworksmarter.com and submit it there. If you want unlimited access to me to ask all of your questions anytime they strike, join me inside SchoolHabits University where we do live Q&As every month to help you unlock all your stuck points so that you can reach every dang goal you set for yourself. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work. Keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning

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Katie Azevedo

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