Talking Routines and Fatherhood in a Corona-World with Scott Mitchell: Community Conversations
During these unprecedented times, daily work and much-needed downtime have blurred into one. However, the Tempo community brings some inspiring ideas to help make life a little easier. For the third edition of Community Conversations, I spoke with Scott Mitchell, a Ph.D. student and scholar in the history and theory of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Like for most people reading this post, all of Scott’s work and research has shifted from concise face-to-face conversations to lengthy digital communication conducted purely at home. Something that becomes even more demanding when throwing two kids into the work/life mix.
Hey Scott, as someone that doesn’t have children, I can only imagine how stress-inducing this is. Can you fill us in on what your daily routine looks like?
“I’m not a morning person, so most of my work is done during the kids’ naps, in the evenings, and right now, late at night. My days are filled with my kids — a toddler and an infant — running (and crawling) around for 8 hours. My wife works from home but is securely locked away in a home office (lucky her), as she conducts most of her work by phone. That means I get little bits of time to sneak away to do small things and only sit down to do real work after 8 pm.”
Wow, that sounds intense. How do you maintain focus when working during these pockets of time? Do you have any tips that might inspire others to try to remain productive in a similar environment?
“I work in two ways: focused, attentive time at my iMac, and secondly, scattered brain dumps, and short bits of research on my iPad. In the pre-pandemic days, I could sit down and be focused from 10 am and remain so until late afternoon when my attention would again have to shift towards the kids, bringing them home from daycare.
These days, that morning and afternoon focus has shifted entirely to the evenings. I’m also an isolation-worker, in a darkened room on my own with one thing in front of me at any time. I’m not a highly-caffeinated person, but love rituals; making a Chemex in the morning or a cocktail in the evening is a great way to get in the flow.
I also like structure, so I’m big on lists (as long as they only have what I immediately need to be doing on them at any moment) and focused apps environments. I like to think my desk reflects my current state of mind. A messy desk is usually the result of being flustered or unclear. A clean desk means I’ve been able to take the time to focus my work.”
I’m curious to know how ‘productive’ you feel during the times that you’re at your most focused?
“Conversations are often very productive and are an essential part of the creative and critical process. That said, even in the best of times, I’m prone to tangents. It’s why I’m particular about the tools that help keep me focused.
I’d say I can easily have a solid six-hour stretch in the quiet of the evening, where I consider myself at peak consciousness (usually long sessions of reading or writing). That isn’t to say I’m seated or stationary for those six hours, but I can get into that flow fairly easily. In the time of Coronavirus, being a good father also feels productive, though, so who knows.”
What’s your personal view of the definition of ‘productivity’? Are there any specific methodologies or tools that you swear by?
“I somewhat dislike the term. The idea that one could somehow describe something seemingly so universal and restrictive as a descriptive noun is uneasy to me. The process is far more important than product and certainly more important than whatever state of production I may find myself in.
That said, I’m particular about my processes and love well-made, well-designed tools that make those processes more enjoyable. I’m also a designer, so I’m critical about my tools and have strong opinions. This can often get in the way of the work itself, even if it keeps my mind active.”
When it comes to tools, how important to you is email?
“To be honest, I try to reduce the importance of any one technology. One way I have tried to do that is to make email almost exclusively a professional communication tool. I don’t subscribe to a lot of newsletters or commercial email and try — with great success thanks to Tempo — to check it two or three times a day.
But in my academic life, it remains the primary tool for communication, especially in the age of Coronavirus. Having a beautiful and satisfyingly simple tool is key.”
To keep some form of structure, do you have any specific email routines?
“I’ve set up Tempo to provide me with new email three times a day: 8 am (after most of the morning routine is complete), 2 pm (when the afternoon slump is starting to hit and I’m looking for something structured to do), and 8 pm (after the kids are in bed and I have the time to look toward tomorrow or structure some evening work).
Tempo has — for better or worse — forced me to make a spatial and modal change, as it is only installed on my home office iMac. Before Coronavirus, I split my time between my home office and a shared office at school, where I used an iPad Pro. When at the shared office, I still tried to maintain this strict schedule.
With Tempo’s help, I’ve also learned to put all other work aside and work through my inbox in stages: Make decisions about new mail (with some quick responses) and then dig in on specific tasks. Long before Tempo, I was a classic Inbox Zero user, moving email tasks out of my inbox and into a to-do list (Things), only returning to an email through search or a link when it came time to do that work.”
Do you have any habits that counteract your productivity?
“I don’t know if this is a habit or just a personality/system failure, but I am deeply aware of it and still unable to change it in myself. I routinely overestimate how much I will accomplish in a day and inevitably keep things on my to-do list for far too long. When I inevitably come to this realization at 8 or 9 pm, I move it all to the next day, as if I’m going to magically have time tomorrow. For this reason, I do not tend to use Snoozing in email clients. If I did, I would end up with gobs of tasks or emails building up in the background without a true window into the slowly brewing mess.
When I’m working through my system well, I’m saying ‘no’ to requests or deciding, correctly, that unimportant things are unimportant. Zen comes from doing less.”
If you have a unique way of approaching productivity, we’d love to hear from you.
