CASEY E. BERGER, PH.D.
  • Home
  • CV and Pubs
  • Social Justice
    • Antiracism
    • Feminism
    • Queer rights
    • Building an Inclusive Classroom
  • Learning + Teaching
    • Teaching Philosophy and Pedagogy
    • Teaching Experience
  • Building Balance

Building Balance

Welcome to Building Balance! I’m an early-career physics professor and advocate for work-life balance and mental health. I learned the hard way in graduate school that if I didn’t create my own boundaries and find balance in my life, the world would take advantage of that. Now, I pass those lessons on to other knowledge workers who feel besieged by our era of constant connectivity and proscriptive passion.

You can sign up for regular updates by subscribing to my newsletter. I try to post monthly with a tip, a resource, or a book review, and my newsletter will notify you when those are published. 
Want to support my work on Building Balance?
​Buy me a coffee!
Picture
I also offer workshops on work-life balance for knowledge workers.

Workshops

The book that gave me permission to rest... and play!

10/30/2022

0 Comments

 
I grew up in the Midwest, and I remember clearly being told when I was applying to colleges (by more than one person) that admissions committees like us cornfed midwestern kids, not because of our culturally-presumed wholesomeness, but specifically because of our work ethic. This was a myth I embraced wholeheartedly, because I did in fact have a very strong work ethic. I truly believed there was no such thing as a problem that couldn't be solved without as much hard work as was required.

Looking back, that idea was keeping me trapped in some unhealthy attitudes about myself. Ideas that I'm still untangling decades later. 

But it was easy to stay trapped in those bad ideas, because I've never been very naturally inclined to idleness. Even my daydreams inevitably turn into projects. So how do you rest when everything about your personality and your cultural conditioning is telling you never to slow down, let alone stop?
Picture
This book has some much-needed answers for those of you who--like me--struggle to answer that question.

Read More
0 Comments

Review: Zen to Done

9/29/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts that highlight some of the books and other resources that I've found helpful in learning to manage my time and energy. This one was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, and I've decided to highlight it first because I think it's an amazing place to start if you're feeling overwhelmed.

Zen to Done is written by Leo Babauta, who is well-known in the world of minimalism, but you don't have to be a hardline minimalist to appreciate this book. As described on Babauta's website, Zen To Done, or ZTD, is a response to the Getting Things Done productivity method, with a more streamlined approach.

Read More
0 Comments

Prioritization with urgent-important matrices

7/1/2021

0 Comments

 
I don't know about you, but it seems that for every item I check off my to-do list, there are five more that pop up from various locations. Maybe it's a request from a colleague, an idea I got from reading an article that I'd like to implement in my work, a suggestion from a supervisor or mentor, or a commitment to family or friends that arose from a conversation. Whatever the origin of these tasks, they have a tendency to snowball if we aren't careful about paring them down (or learning to say "no", which is a thing I am very bad at and I promise will someday be a blog post of its very own).

When things pile up, it can quickly feel impossible to accomplish any of them, let alone all of them. If only there were a neat tool to help distinguish between which activities are high priority and which we shouldn't even bother with.

​It turns out, there is!

Read More
0 Comments

Time sprinting

7/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Batching your time for better focus and reducing procrastination.
One of the biggest barriers to our work-life balance is the amount of time we spend neither working nor playing.

​You know the time I mean. It’s when you’re sitting at your desk, dreading some task that feels boring or intimidating or even impossible. You don’t want to start the task, either because you fear you can’t accomplish it in the end or because you just don’t want to do it. So you haven’t started. But instead of using the time not spent on that task to do some other important task or to rest and recover, you spend it worrying, your attention divided between whatever it is you tell yourself you’re focusing on and your dread.


Read More
0 Comments

    Author

    Casey Berger

    Archives

    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021

    Categories

    All
    Books
    Boundaries
    Deadlines
    Goal Setting
    Prioritization
    Rest
    Reviewing
    Strategies
    Time Management
    Tools
    Values
    Work And Life

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • CV and Pubs
  • Social Justice
    • Antiracism
    • Feminism
    • Queer rights
    • Building an Inclusive Classroom
  • Learning + Teaching
    • Teaching Philosophy and Pedagogy
    • Teaching Experience
  • Building Balance