Well, it's certainly been a long time.

Last fall, I had high hopes that I would be able to continue posting on this blog regularly. Yes, I knew the first year as faculty was notoriously overwhelming. I knew I'd be in for what my colleague called in a very understated way "a very busy time." 

But I also knew I was an organized, productive person. A person who was good at accomplishing goals. After all, I ran a blog about all those strategies and tools for making good use of time and managing expectations and setting smart goals. Plus, these posts were hardly a huge time commitment. Certainly much less time and effort goes into writing a short post than into planning even one day of the classes I was teaching. Wasn't all that true?

It turns out, it was. And that's exactly why this blog vanished for the better part of a year. 

It can be easy to get sucked into the details of our daily lives and lose sight of what motivated us to seek this degree, this job, this hobby, this insert-time-consuming-activity in the first place. There is always so much to do and not enough time to do it, and the stress and overwhelm of the details can affect our motivation and cause us to question whether this (whatever it is) is worth it.

I've extolled the benefits before of the monthly review to help keep the deadlines and minutia from controlling our actions, but sometimes we require a deeper investigation. Sometimes the question is not are my routines and systems working? but am I doing this for the right reasons? or even am I in the right career?

Over the last few weeks, I have been packing up everything I own to move to a new town. The process of moving is always stressful (though it can be exciting as well!), and a bit part of the stress is the way all the little tasks of moving show up as constant distractions. There are boxes everywhere reminding you that you meant to pack that book you finished last night, the morning mail arrival makes you realize you need to start forwarding the mail, and then there's the actual process of moving, which never comes at a convenient time.

For the last few weeks, I've had my time divided up into smaller and smaller slices every day, and even though I'm still working roughly the same hours, it feels like I haven't made anywhere near as much progress is usual. The first few times this happened to me (I have moved many times in the last few years), I was frustrated. I was still working as much as I had planned, squeezing in 15 minutes here and 20 there on projects. So if I was putting in the same time, why was I not getting the same results?

Every so often, I realize I've left behind a habit that was really helping me. Often, this is caused by some sort of external change. Something that causes a massive temporary upheaval, forcing me to rearrange my life. I may think I will return to all my habits once the dust has settled, but often things get dropped, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to -- eventually -- notice.

This particular habit was listening to a podcast regularly. The podcast is called The Mindful Kind, and it's a lovely, quick listen. Every episode is only around 10 minutes long, and the host, Rachael Kable, discusses mindfulness in the context of daily life. For me, it served as a regular reminder to pause and breathe, to find little ways to engage more fully in my own life. ​I'm in the middle of a few big job and life transitions right now, which are exciting and scary at the same time. I started listening to this podcast again every morning, just to take a few minutes to keep my brain in this mindset of living in a more intentional way, so I don't get caught up in the chaos of all this change. As part of this intentionality, I'm journaling more often. 

This is more than just 8 weird tricks to boost your productivity. This is about connecting with yourself and thoughtfully building the life you want. In order to do that, you have to be prepared to ask yourself questions and listen for the answers.