#organizing and prioritizing important tasks and doing them has gotten harder

[shyrahsw]

i planned on writing about this for a few days but apparently i can’t phrase anything how i’d like to

The more I read about executive dysfunction, the more I’m convinced I struggle with it and wonder how long I’ve been struggling.

[thevirgodoll]

hi! i was wondering if you have any tips to stay organized and stay on task? i’ve been doing a short online course this year and have really struggled to ACTUALLY bring myself to do the work, as assignments and lessons are not under any time constraints i just don’t do it. i also have adhd so get bored or distracted easily. do you have any tips for me?

This is really close to me because I also have ADHD. I have both inattentive and hyperactive type. *As a result, this academic tip guide will be a guide for people with ADHD and not neurotypical people, without disability. There is a difference.*

I am doing online as well this semester.

1. I create a schedule. If I do not create a schedule, I will be unproductive the entire day. So, what will help you is to do things in orderly fashion.

For example, at 12p - I will do this assignment/watch this lecture. You have to dictate what time you’re doing everything. Then, you also have to block out technology distractions while you are working. 

-> Even if you’ve gotten halfway through the day with no schedule, write down or block off times on your digital calendar for what you are going to do at each time. ADHD is easier to tackle if you break things down into smaller tasks.

*Pro tip that I almost forgot: before you do anything, wear your day clothes. Don’t wear pajamas. Actually getting dressed or even doing hair/makeup changes things.

2. Download the Forest app after you have created your schedule. I consistently recommend this because it works in increasing productivity. It allows you to set it for however long you’re doing this task, say 30 minutes.

-> Why?: It will block all apps on your phone for (insert time here) to plant a tree, and if you leave the app your “tree” will die. Eventually, the more sessions you do, the more points you will gain to plant different plants, and eventually plant real trees around the world.

3. Have a list (& a planner) as well. Not only is the schedule creating structure, but the list creates even more structure so you know what you need to get done for the day. It also helps you not fall victim to the classic symptom of forgetting. Each day, you should write down what you WANT to get done and create your own times to look at lecture and assignments. Have goals for the day.

For example: complete assignment 2.

If you do not have expectations with yourself before the day begins, your ADHD will kind of take over and do something else. I have structure to my day. I set a timer to wake up at the same time. I take my ADHD medicine 90 minutes before my final wake up time, and I do my morning routine once it kicks in. Having the same routine helps.

-> Focus on your goals. Don’t be super harsh about the times.

-> Don’t overwhelm with how many things on to do list. Again, break it up into small tasks. For example, one part being: Wash dishes or fold laundry. It makes it less overwhelming to your brain and gives you a choice of which task. Typical non ADHD people just tell you to prioritize tasks but that doesn’t work for us. Do it in a random order and it gets the job done.

4. TAKE BREAKS! The other side to this is making sure that you give yourself adequate breaks.

*For hyperfocus, wait til your hyperfocus has started to wear off. Use it to your advantage for peak productivity. It is no joke.*

-> The misconception is that some people with ADHD are lazy and as a result, some ADHDers won’t take breaks. You can take a break. Healthy, long breaks do more for you long term.

-> Have a timer set. For example, after a 45 minute session or an hour session, I will take a break to do another task that has nothing to do with studying, like laundry, eating a snack, or stretching. Then after that task is done, I will go back to studying.

5. Have a workspace. Only do work at this space. I do schoolwork at my living room table and it is perfect. I do not study in my room because that is my sanctuary for relaxation and rest, not productivity. Make an effort to make the workspace clean, with your supplies - laptop, notebooks, pens, etc - readily available.

-> Once I get to my workspace, everything for the morning is already done. I’ve done my morning routine, so all there is left to do is hydrate while I study.

6. Recognize if you have adequate energy to do the task. Sometimes, with ADHD you may neglect your needs. If you are not getting enough rest, here are some tips:

•Bed should be for rest only.

•Blackout curtains

•Lavender essential oil, I have a diffuser but you can also put it on your pillow

•Background noise: pick what you want, lo fi music, rain sounds, binaural beats, singing bowls

•If all else fails, ADHD is often comorbid with other illnesses, meaning you could have a form of depression causing insomnia for example. This should be considered if you are having long term issues and symptoms.

7. Don’t overdo it. We are not neurotypical. Executive dysfunction is real - meaning our brains actually shut down when it perceives a task to be mundane.

-> You do not have to fit everything into one schedule for the sake of being “productive”. Each day should be what you know you can do, and there are different days to tackle different goals.

-> When you feel like you cannot continue, which is literally a symptom of ADHD, sit still for a few minutes.

8. Have a “What I Did Today” List. Because of how ADHD actually makes us feel, we don’t realize how much work we have put in. ADHD actually can be explained easily, we have about 2 dopamine workers showing up to work while most people are at maximum capacity. We are working overtime to do our best, even on medicine. So, acknowledging what we did today is good and encouraging, or at least reflecting in a journal.

9. Play music. It’s recommended to play study music without words because with ADHD we will submerge ourselves into the playlist of nostalgic 90s R&B. I recommend lo fi hip hop on YouTube, video game instrumentals, classical music, or jazz instrumentals. Whatever gets you going just do it!

General ADHD tips:

•Rewrite lecture notes and type the lecture notes.

•Color code with bright colors and pretty drawings or calligraphy

•Instead of telling yourself “I need to take notes” which usually leads to procrastination say “Rewrite lecture notes and emphasize main points” ... this is useful in your to do list but in everyday goals

•Generally try to get your assignments done ahead of time if there is structure to certain courses, if not, again, stick to the schedule. If you slip one day off your schedule then don’t beat yourself up. Breathe!!!

•Side effect of most ADHD meds is that you’re not hungry so buy easy things to eat like muscle milk or yogurt and granola or smoothies so you can sustain yourself

•Get a dry erase board to show what you need to do for the day and put it on the fridge with command strips

•To avoid forgetting things, put them at a table near the door where you leave your apartment/dorm/house.

•Don’t overthink the time it takes to get ready, often that’s why ADHDers are late. Better to be super early than late though - have a routine set so you know how long each task takes - for example “I know a shower takes me 15 mins, washing my face takes 60 seconds and a few more including sunscreen/moisturizer, etc...”

•In that same grain, set timers for going to the bathroom, showering, etc just in case you one day hyperfocus and push yourself too far

•Open the blinds!!!!

•Clean your room and tidy up your space. A cluttered space impacts your mental health in a really negative way. Your space reflects your mental state at times as well, so check in with yourself. Have a specific day where you know you’re going to clean, but ADHD sometimes gives us bursts of cleaning so take advantage of that as well.

•Anytime your water bottle empties refill it. Have your water bottle or mason jar next to your workspace, and drink 5-10 gulps. Seriously. ADHD depends a lot on hydration, especially if you are on medicine which naturally dehydrates you. If you do not stay hydrated, you’ll get that massive headache mid day and crash sooner. A lot of times, lack of productivity can be due to not drinking enough water.

•If you don’t take medication, then sometimes you may notice you love coffee, and that’s because it’s a stimulant. Too much of anything is not good, but balance it with water. If you’re going to use coffee to kinda “medicate” then do it close to when you’re going to be productive.

•Setting yourself up to do a task rather than envisioning the overwhelming act of doing the entire action. “Okay, lets just get up and get the first step down, such as opening the laptop or wetting the toothbrush.” Baby steps.

•Take advantage of accommodations! Your college more than likely has an Office of Disability Services. Also, email your professors...they’re actually just as stressed as you about classes being online.

•Remember that you’re already trying as hard as you can, so don’t listen to the narrative of “try harder”, “you’re *r word*”, “you’re cheating by using medication”, “just do it,” “it’s easy,” “what’s so hard about it?” or “you’re lazy”. Anyone telling you that, even yourself, is wrong. And DO NOT allow anyone to be ableist, even yourself.

•Validate yourself. Don’t let anyone to do the “I experience that too”/“I know what you mean”/“we ALL have trouble with this!” and they don’t have ADHD. No. It’s our experience, it’s valid, and unlike anything on the planet. If you’re reading this and you don’t have ADHD - no, you do not experience any of the things in my next bullet point.

•Don’t be hard on yourself if you stumble along the way getting this right. ADHD completely changes your executive functioning.

We see the task, but our brain blocks it.

We have something marked down as “important” but our brain tosses it out in the “trash”.

We watch an entire episode of a show, but our brain ignored the entire thing. Our brain picks and chooses what is stimulating, our brain changes our interests.

We have sensory overload, we have no dopamine, we have bursts of curiosity that cannot be contained (often inconvenient) and if interrupted, our brains cannot take it.

People often discount how many things ADHD actually changes because it’s widely misunderstood. I want to take the time to acknowledge that ADHD, formerly known as simply ADD, has different types: primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive-impulsive, or combined which is what I have. So it’s not “hyper” and “relatable”. It is also not a buzzword to use to describe things. I must put stereotypes and misrepresentations of ADHD to rest.

It impacts us emotionally as well, which most people don’t know... such as rejection dysphoria — extreme sensitivity to being criticized to where our brains self destruct. Our brains don’t regulate emotions well.

ADHDers - do not fall victim to how everyone else operates and call yourself a failure. We have to work twice as hard and the results actually come out brilliant especially with our determination and imaginative ideas that are also seen in autistic individuals, honorable mention!

There’s good days and bad days. There’s literal changes in thinking that other people do not experience. We all collectively know wouldn’t be who we are without ADHD, but we all recognize the challenges. However, it makes me happy to see messages like this so that I can make a difference and hopefully help one person with ADHD, especially of color, at a time stop being so hard on themselves. 💗

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

For the past four decades, the notion that religious beliefs should guide voters’ decision-making has been largely monopolized by the Republican Party. But the partisan “God gap” hasn’t gone unnoticed by some religious Democrats, who have urged candidate after candidate to make appeals to religious values and beliefs in the hope of turning the “religious left” into a politically relevant force. And as the 2020 Democratic primary ramps up, there’s already speculation that the right candidate could tap a long-dormant reserve of religious energy among Democratic voters.

First Cory Booker — who was literally anointed by his pastor ahead of his presidential announcement — was touted as a possible candidate of the “religious left.” Then Pete Buttigieg stepped in to claim that mantle, telling reporters that the left “need to not be afraid to invoke arguments that are convincing on why Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction.” Meanwhile, several other presidential hopefuls, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, are all talking openly about their religion on the campaign trail, even making arguments for why their policy positions — whether it’s abortion rights or income inequality — are linked to their faith.

And to some extent, forging connections between faith and politics makes sense for Democratic candidates — a majority of Democratic primary voters are religious. But there are several big hurdles facing any Democrat looking to use the language of faith to marshal voters in the primary. For one thing, the Democratic coalition isn’t dominated by a single religious group. And Democrats don’t prioritize religion the way Republicans do — in fact, the Democratic Party has been growing steadily less religious over the past 20 years. Certain groups of religious voters — in particular, black Protestants — will likely play an important role in the primary, and there may be some room for candidates to appeal to religious moderates. But in a diverse and increasingly secular party, religious rhetoric alone may not get the candidates very far.

Democrats are religious, but religiously diverse

Religious Democrats may not get as much attention as their counterparts on the right, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. About 65 percent of Democratic primary voters in 2016 reported having some kind of religious affiliation, compared to 84 percent of Republican primary voters. But as the chart below shows, religious voters in each party may not have much else in common. Republicans are fairly racially and religiously homogeneous: In 2016, the vast majority (70 percent) of Republican primary voters were white Christians, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.1 Religious Democrats, by contrast, are much more diverse — 31 percent are white Christians, 22 percent are nonwhite Christians, and 12 percent belong to a non-Christian religious group (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.) or say that their religious affiliation is “something else.”

The result is that Democratic candidates are trying to reach a smaller and more splintered religious audience than Republican candidates are targeting in their own primary. “Talking about religion is a much more complicated task when you’re trying to simultaneously address white Catholics and black Protestants and Muslim and Jewish Americans,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI, a research organization that studies religion and politics. “They may not have all that much in common, other than the fact that they identify as religious, which makes them harder to appeal to and organize.”

And while talking about religion can be a good strategy for gaining media attention, there’s little evidence that it’s translating into actual gains among religious voters — at least, not yet. A Morning Consult tracking poll conducted May 20-26 among Democratic primary voters found that Joe Biden, a Catholic, has a commanding lead among all major religious groups, followed in all but one case by Bernie Sanders,2 who may be the only candidate in the race to say he doesn’t participate in organized religion.

“It’s hard to go up against Biden because he appeals to moderate Catholics and Protestants — he’s from their world,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University who studies religion and politics. And according to the 2016 CCES survey, moderate Democratic primary voters are more likely to be religious than their liberal counterparts, so if Biden is also appealing to moderates, that could compound the challenge for his opponents. “If Biden is capturing most of the moderates, there just aren’t that many religious voters left to scoop up,” Burge said.

Democrats have gotten a lot less religious

And even though a substantial number of Democrats are religious, they have come to make up a smaller and smaller subset of the party. Over the past two decades, the share of people in the Democratic coalition who don’t identify with any religion doubled, from 14 percent in 1998 to 28 percent in 2018, according to the General Social Survey.3 The result is that today’s Democratic Party is increasingly secular, which complicates and limits traditional forms of faith outreach. “This emerging group of secular Democrats coexists a little uneasily with the more religious wing of the party,” said David Campbell, a political science professor at Notre Dame and the coauthor of “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.” “It’s a sizeable portion of the electorate to ignore, but I think the party has yet to figure out how to appeal to these people.”

Now to be clear, most of the religiously unaffiliated don’t reject religion outright, so candidates who focus on faith may not run any serious risk of alienating these voters. In fact, according to the 2016 CCES data, only 9 percent of Democratic primary voters said they were atheists, while 8 percent said they were agnostics and 18 percent identified as “nothing in particular.” And notably, voters who fell into this last category were still surprisingly connected to organized religion. About half of these Democrats said they still attend church occasionally, and 37 percent said that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives.

However, the fact that Democrats are becoming less religious does mean that religiously-based appeals might not take candidates very far in the primary, or at least not as far as they once might have. Plus, like so many other aspects of our personal identities, there is evidence that Americans’ religious selves are increasingly shaped by our partisan allegiances, with Republicans becoming more religious and Democrats less so. Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “From Politics to Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity,” found that white Democrats are drifting away from religion because of their politics, which means religion may not be as influential politically as it was in the past. “Religion hasn’t evolved to be a cue for religious voters on the left the way it has for religious voters on the right,” Margolis said. “If you live in a world where being a Democrat is equated with being less religious, and religion also isn’t central to your life, why should someone using religious rhetoric appeal to you?”

Religion may not rule Democrats’ vote choice

If there remains an obvious opportunity for some version of the religious left to emerge, it would be among black and Hispanic4 Democratic primary voters, who were significantly more likely than white Democrats to say that religion is somewhat or very important in their lives in the 2016 CCES survey.

And black Protestants are already quite powerful in the party. As FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote earlier this year, black voters (who are overwhelmingly likely to be Christian) constitute about one-fifth of the Democratic electorate and have a long and deep alliance with the Democratic establishment, making them a key constituency in the primary. According to the CCES, the vast majority of black Protestants and nearly three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

And while it’s possible to imagine some kind of religious coalition emerging among Democrats of color, there aren’t any obvious issues that could unify black and Hispanic voters who are driven by their religious convictions, the way that abortion and same-sex marriage united white Protestants and Catholics on the right. Campbell also pointed out that many white Christian conservatives are motivated by a shared sense of religious embattlement or alienation — or the idea that their Christian values are being shoved to the margins or stamped out entirely by a rising tide of secularism. “They’re driven to get involved in politics because they see their Christian identity and Christianity’s place in American life as being under attack,” he said. “On the political left, certainly there’s a lot of talk of values being under attack, but it’s not framed in terms of an existential threat to your religious identity.”

But Democrats still ignore their party’s most religious voters at their peril, said Michael Wear, who directed faith outreach for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. He and other Democratic faith advisers have criticized Hillary Clinton’s campaign for failing to engage seriously with religious communities like white Midwestern Catholics or black Protestants. But he added that he’s waiting to see whether the 2020 candidates start building up an infrastructure for reaching religious leaders and groups. “Rhetoric can be powerful, but you also need relationships and outreach,” he said. “You can’t just talk about your religious identity on TV.” This outreach, Wear said, has to be careful and sincere. As even for highly religious Democrats, religion is still just one factor among many they’ll use to choose a candidate.

As the campaign continues, we’ll learn more about the candidates’ approach to faith — especially whether they prioritize outreach to religious voters in states like Iowa and South Carolina, where religion is likely to be a more important issue than in a relatively secular state like New Hampshire. But while mobilizing specific subgroups of religious Democrats will still be important, the dream of building a cohesive religious voting bloc on the left looks more distant by the year. Democrats may not have much to lose by talking about faith and values — but it may not offer them much of a reward among primary voters either.

[the-colony-roleplay]

EMRYS “RHYS” DAVIES | THIRTY-SEVEN; ELITE

House: Brink Status: Infected - Increased Hearing Elite Specification: Head of Child Supervision

HISTORY

Emrys (better known as Rhys) grew up as the only child of a small conservative Welsh family. Although he went to a fairly open-minded school, and received excellent care, nobody seemed to notice how Rhys could barely keep up with his classmates. He managed to sit behind the smartest of the other kids, and he was getting better at finding solutions or alternative routes to deal with his lack of attention and overall confusion. His parents were convinced that their special boy could do no wrong, and he desperately wanted to avoid being a disappointment. At every parent/teacher meeting, when teachers brought up the issues with his attention span, his parents explained it away by saying he must have just not been giving it his all. He needed more discipline, simple as that. And Rhys wanted to believe this as much as they did. He acted confident, thinking that if he just pretended to be the same as the kids who made it through with flying colors, he might be able to do the same. Fake it till you make it. But despite his efforts, he barely made it through elementary school.

Middle school wasn’t much better, especially when puberty kicked in. Where at first paying attention in class, prioritizing school assignments and being on time had seemed like the biggest problems, he was now a bundle of pure energy, as well. Organization was even harder because his restlessness made it impossible to so much as sit still for more than five minutes. It was an itching feeling always at the back of his mind, and it was forcing him to run, to jump, to climb, to do anything physical in order to satisfy that crawling sensation. If only his desperate call for activity made him any good at sports as well, he might’ve stayed in his parent’s good graces; but as the years passed, and he was bringing back nothing but terrible report cards, he went from their perfect boy to a complete failure.

It was somewhere around year eight that one of his teachers suggested to his parents that he might suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder and that it would be a good idea to have him tested. However his parents were stubborn, and put their own concerns about not wanting to have a son who was ‘not normal’ before his well being. They didn’t want to admit that a disorder, however common in youth, was even a possibility, and so for his ninth year they enrolled him in a different school where they believed he would get the discipline he needed to excel. They thought he was acting out for attention, or perhaps even doing drugs, and that a change of environment would help.

How wrong they were. The change of school, the new people, the new teachers, the different classes, it all made Rhys even more unsettled than before. He just barely scraped though his finals in his remaining years, denying his parents their hopes for him to go to college or even sixth form. Instead, when he finally graduated, he looked for a job where grade school education would suffice. He went to several interviews before finally landing a position at GreenWood Family Park near Bangor.

He worked at the amusement park almost fifteen years, joking around with the kids, helping them in and out of the carts, distributing balloons, and doing all sorts of active and easy tasks. Some of the older employees took him under their wings, showing him the ropes with a lot more patience than anyone else had ever given him before. Immensely grateful, he got along very well with his coworkers; he would get them coffee, remember a lot of their personal details about their lives and listen very intently to their stories. In return they covered for him with the bosses anytime he struggled with a more difficult task or he showed up late to work. Because unfortunately, as good as he was with guests and as much as he loved working with the kids, in many ways he was sort of a terrible employee—at least from a managerial perspective.

He was happy for a while, struggling to be an adult, to pay bills, to be on time, to not buy as many bags of popcorn, to visit his parents once in a while, to be social, and whatever more adulthood had in store for him. At least he could go the park during the day and everything would go relatively smoothly. Even when things went wrong and he would feel useless for the rest of the day, there were people who had his back. And as the years passed, Rhys became more and more confident about himself and his work. His bosses even stopped paying him much mind. 

Then D-day hit.

Despite being terrified, Rhys helped to rescue many children and their parents who were stuck in the rides that had stopped working immediately when debris from the asteroids flew into the power generators. Those without loves ones lost in the park or still in the rides, fled the scene right away, looking for safer cover. But those in more dire situations stayed behind and banded together. In what would eventually turn out to be good fortune, GreenWood Family Park was outside of a tiny town and hidden in the forest. In other words, it was remote enough to go unnoticed for quite some time. Adults in the GreenWood clan could hunt in the forests, scavenge what they  could from the barely-populated town nearby, and restock on water from the river, without facing too much trouble from looters or raids.

RHYS TODAY

It was a few months after the sky fell when his headaches started. He had been put in charge of looking out for the kids, and so he worked through the pain as much as he could in order to not to scare them. At night he would find a quiet corner and surrender to a pain that felt like it would split his head in two. But in spite the massive changes hurled at him, Rhys survived. He adapted. Watching the kids soon became all that was important to him. It was his full-time duty, and though he was never left entirely alone, it was something the others in the clan felt most comfortable leaving him to tend to. 

A couple of weeks after his headaches finally stopped, the clan was found by Colony crusaders. Upon registration into the colony system, all individuals who’d reported having headaches were recorded as of an ‘Infected’ status, their specific abilities documented in Echo. But at first the results of Rhys’ headaches weren’t apparent. His fellow clan members thought his behaviour was a bit odd, and since he had no medical record to explain his hyperactivity and intense reaction to change, some argued that he was possibly Deluded. But with nothing specific to go by, and Rhys not knowing any better himself, he was listed for the time being as Infected, but Unidentified. 

He was sent to Colony 22 with a dozen others from the clan (seven children, and five adults, including himself) and promptly asked to continue working with the kids. But despite his experience, Colony Officials decided it was better to be sure about his Infection status before placing him in charge of anything. It was a long six months, during which he was under constant surveillance and regular testing, before the truth came out. And when it did, he felt a bit stupid for not noticing it earlier, but apparently his case had been something of an anomaly in its onset. He was diagnosed with enhanced hearing—but what was usually reported by survivors with this ability as an incredibly drastic, and almost unbearable sensory overload in the first week of the Infection’s onset, Rhys’ came about very gradually, starting subtle and getting increasingly stronger.  Suddenly, it made a lot of sense that he didn’t notice the effects right away, given how often Rhys was distracted by unpredictable or repetitive noises even before D-Day. 

Now that they finally knew his Infection, Rhys tried again to convince the leaders to give him a job as caretakers of the kids. This time there was much less concern about his condition, so they granted him Elite status so that he could be given a moderate set of tasks with the youngest of the Colony. Rhys didn’t care much for his diagnosis, but he appreciated that it was finally settled and he could now learn to live with the new situation. And his job was familiar, and with its familiarity came a little more sense of calm. 

The rise of the NWRF threw a wrench in things, of course, and although they didn’t demote him right away as he feared they would, they have made it obvious enough that they don’t quite trust him. His over-sensitive reactions don’t help instil their confidence in him, either. Like all the other Infected, Rhys now faces increased pressure and judgement, and he isn’t handling it particularly well. It stresses him out enough that he has started to fuck up on a regular basis, feeling twitchy and anxious. The colony is also growing, and as more people fill the echoey corridors, there are more and more sounds to distract him. Worst of all, he is now expected to hunt every week, and for someone who definitely isn’t the most attentive person, it is not a task that comes easy to him. Though his increased hearing gives him an advantage, in some regards, it doesn’t keep him from making a lot of mistakes, sometimes ruining shots for his fellow hunters, too. 

In a much less predictable environment, he is remembering what a bother his condition can be—the one he was born with, which has now been more or less diagnosed as ADD or ADHD with Colony nurses. Before D-Day he’d had a routine, and people who’d known him well and could look out for him. He’d found a way to make things manageable for himself. Now, however, things aren’t as they used to be. He wants to run back to his dorm and sit down on his bed at least four times a day. He doesn’t want to show how badly all the changes frustrate him, he wants to keep a brave face for the kids, act like nothing is wrong in front of those he has gotten to know, but on the inside he is often breaking apart. It is as if each day is its own downward spiral, and he goes to bed knowing the new day will hold a similar routine of anxiety, breakdowns, and trouble.

Despite the new normal he’s still trying to figure out, Rhys still tries to hold on to the past, to past friends and comforts. He tries to find solace in his time spent with the kids, and though he’s perceived as very kind, he feels more than a little lost at times. Though he tries to assert his learned and fake confidence he used so readily in school, but is still liable to react childishly when things don’t go the way he’s used to, he has frequent panic attacks, and he often gets frustrated with himself if he makes too many mistakes, even when others show him patience.

CLOSED

[brianobrienny]

The Worst Way to Test Agile Marketing, and What to Do Instead

As we square our shoulders and prepare to face the second half of this most turbulent of years, it’s no surprise that many marketing leaders are hoping to equip their teams with greater agility. Many decide to experiment with an Agile pilot to see how this approach would go for their teams.

Marketers who adapt Agile ways of working report faster campaign delivery, better alignment with organizational priorities, stronger responsiveness to incoming data and even happier teams. In case that wasn’t enough, our recent experience navigating the rockiest period in living memory has provided plenty of bumps and bruises to remind us why we need to be as adaptive as possible.

Real agility, however, can’t be bolted on top of the way we’ve always done things. It demands significant shifts from our traditional ways of doing marketing work. Such serious change can be overwhelming, and even downright dangerous, to undertake simultaneously across an entire marketing department.

And so we pilot. We test out agility in a small pocket of the marketing function to make sure that it’s actually going to help us before we transform every team.

It’s a sound concept, but here’s the problem: most marketing leaders utterly botch their pilots.

Taking a single project and “running it in Agile” is the absolute worst way to do an Agile pilot, but it’s the one most commonly used. Here’s why it never works, and what you need to do instead.

Why a Part-Time Agile Pilot Always Fails

To understand why you can’t be Agile part-time, let’s paint a picture of a fully functional Agile team in action over the course of two weeks:

Monday, 9:00 am: The team, their leader and internal stakeholders get together for sprint planning. They spend about two hours reviewing their backlog (prioritized to-do list) of work, agreeing on what they can commit to finishing in the next two weeks, breaking large projects into smaller tasks, and volunteering for the work they’ll handle during the sprint. After this meeting, everyone has a very clear picture of what’s going to happen over the next two weeks.

Tuesday, 8:45 am: The team gathers for their daily stand-up meeting. In this quick 15-minute huddle they update one another on their progress over the last 24 hours, share their game plan for the upcoming day, and put any problems before the team. They hold one another accountable for agreed-upon actions and support each other in tackling roadblocks. Their leader hears concerns and goes to address them as needed.

Stand-ups proceed each day for the sprint until two working weeks have passed. Then the team convenes for their two closing ceremonies: sprint review and the retrospective.

Friday, 2:00 pm: The sprint review, or demo, shows off what the team has accomplished during their sprint and how previously released work is performing. Other marketing teams come to see how they might benefit from the learnings of this team, stakeholders see the progress on their requested work, and the team gets the warm fuzzy feeling of having gotten a lot done in a short amount of time.

Friday, 3:30 pm: To close out their sprint, the team gets together to talk about their Agile process in a 60-minute retrospective. They chat about whether their standups are effective, how useful their tools are in visualizing the work and point out any issues they encountered with stakeholders, agencies, partners, etc. At the end of the retrospective, they’ve identified a handful of actions to make their next sprint work even better.

On Monday, the cycle starts again.

This system assumes these team members aren’t doing anything except working with their single Agile team on a shared to-do list of tasks. So the handful of planning and review meetings aren’t that time consuming because they only take a total of six or seven hours over the course of two weeks. But if each team member is on multiple Agile teams, that number quickly skyrockets.

Lack of Time, Lack of Focus

If an Agile team needs an average of 3.5 hours of someone’s time each week to run effectively, and I sit on five Agile projects, I’m now spending 17.5 hours in Agile meetings. This completely defeats a core purpose of Agile ways of working, which is to free people up to actually get work done.

Number of Agile teams Weekly hours in meetings  1  3.5  2  7  3  10.5  4  14  5  17.5  6  21

Sitting on multiple project-based teams also robs people of the ability to focus on high-value activities. When they’re on one team with a single, common backlog they can see exactly what’s a top priority and tackle it. But if they have five teams to worry about, they have to navigate five different priority sets. And chances are each and every one of those project leads believes their project is the most important and pushes their members to work on that project right now.

Even if someone is part of the “Agile” pilot project, they’ll still be jumping around from project to project as they always have. The only difference is that one of those projects is making them go to a weird 15-minute meeting every morning. Just putting some Agile meetings around projects doesn’t magically improve productivity. It doesn’t align teams around a shared purpose, it doesn’t reduce the mental load on individuals, and doesn’t show the true power of Agile.

In a word, it fails.

Create Stable Persistent Teams Instead

So if projects won’t work, how do we test Agile marketing? The only way is to create teams the way they’re meant to function inside an Agile framework. This means each person is part of one team, with whom they work 100% of the time. That team works on multiple projects at the same time, but they prioritize work in one unified backlog.

If you’re thinking this sounds a lot harder than just picking a single project, you’re completely right. It’s WAY harder. But if you want an accurate test of the impact you’ll see from using Agile, this is the only way to get it.

It can sound daunting when we’re used to viewing everything through the project lens, but there’s a bit of a hack you can use to identify the work that could make it possible to pilot in this way.

A Simple Way to Hack Agile Pilots

Step 1: Get your marketing leadership together and list everything they’re planning to do in the next three to six months. This should be as comprehensive as you can make it, so collect everyone and devote a good solid hour to the process.

Step 2: Find the commonalities in your list. Does a lot of the work ladder up to a particular initiative or OKR? Is there a ton for one specific business unit? Will you be spending quite a bit of time and budget revising your event strategy? Look for a bucket that’s full enough to keep your pilot team of five to 10 busy 100% of their time for the next several months. This will become their team’s purpose.

Step 3: Review your options for team members, and be sure the majority of the candidates can be fully present on the Agile team. If you have one or two specialists who aren’t needed for the entire effort, they can jump in and out, but that should be the exception rather than the rule. If some of your pilot team members are currently attached to active projects that would pull them out of full dedication to the Agile team, either choose another team member or wait until their current work winds down to start the pilot.

Step 4: Formally launch the new Agile team by having them build their backlog of work together, write a working agreement, and generally mark the beginning of their new life as a cohesive unit. Turn them loose and watch the magic happen.

If at all possible, benchmark your organization’s key metrics pre-Agile and compare them to the results your Agile team puts out. These can be efficiency metrics like speed to market and rounds of review, or marketing metrics like MQLs generated per campaign. The point is to be able to actually measure the impact new ways of working could have if applied to the entire marketing function.

Dedicated Agile Pilots Always Win

Agile frameworks are built around dedicated, persistent teams that work together around a shared purpose. If you attempt to pilot Agile practices on part-time, project-based groups, you’ll end up with frustrated team members and very little (if any) improvement in your process.

Instead, find a shared purpose for your Agile pilot TEAM to work on. Compare their performance to the non-Agile work, and you’ll finally see what all the fuss is about.

The post The Worst Way to Test Agile Marketing, and What to Do Instead appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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[realtalk-princeton]

being in school is basically a prolonged "program" structure that we've all grown up in. and on top of school, many of us were also deeply involved in 1+ extracurriculars, like in a very structured way. but as a fresh college grad, life now just seems like a giant free for all, make your own adventure. no more obligatory programming or structure, for better or for worse. so how exactly do i transition from having my whole life programmed out to designing my own life?

Response from Sulpicia:

I feel that way too; I’m in a job that I know will be temporary since I’m going to grad school, but in the cycle of going to work, coming home, doing chores, etc. there is a sense of “what now” or “to what end am I doing all these required daily tasks”?

I feel like school provides two major structures: goals to work towards and activities to do, and you can provide both of those for yourself. First, I would try to set goals for yourself. Where do you want to be in one month? Six months? One year? Five years? These goals can be professional (e.g. that you want to be promoted), financial (e.g. that you want to have saved X amount, or that you’re hoping to one day own your home), health-related (e.g. that you want to exercise 3 times per week, or run a marathon, or give up sugar), related to hobbies (e.g. that you want to have seen 100 classic films, or gone to every museum in your city) or personal (e.g. that you’d like to have strong relationships with your friends or spend time with family once per week). These goals can always change as your life changes, but setting ambitious yet realistic goals an really help give structure to your life. That way, even if you’re just reading a book or drinking more water, you feel like you’re moving forward in your life. It’s really silly and cliche, but I’ve gotten into baking sourdough bread, and even though there’s not much going on for me right now, I feel like every time that I bake a better loaf of bread, I’m making some sort of forward progress.

The next thing is “stuff to do.” While it may be harder to find, there are hobby activities for adults and I would see how you can continue your interests that way (of course, this may be difficult at this very moment but will be less so soon). If you’re religious, an obvious place to start is a religious organization, which has a lot of opportunities to volunteer and connect with the community, as well as a social aspect where you’ll meet people who (obviously) share your belief system. Lots of communities and large workplaces also have intramural sports leagues, or I would even google your interests and see if there are local associations that cater to them. I would also join your local library, since in addition to endless books, they also tend to have free programming on a variety of different topics. You might also want to join a gym, if you’re interested in exercising, or look for volunteer opportunities in your area where you can help out, even if it’s just a few times per week.

Through this, hopefully you’ll continue to make friends. American society is, at least in this era of our history, fairly isolated; even when we weren’t social distancing, adult life was not really set up in a way that encourages the prioritization of friendships or their cultivation in adulthood. We have a “script” for dating but less support for making friends. I think being friendly and social at work and through your hobbies and staying connected to old friends and family is very rewarding. You could also, if that’s your inclination, try dating, which I think is a way that a lot of people bring meaning to their lives.

I wouldn’t put a ton of pressure on having it all figured out right away. I’m generally happy as long as I’m moving forward in some respect, so goal-setting is really important to me. I think you can learn a lot from any experience you have, and that all times in your life can benefit you; it’s okay to do things that just are (I’m currently working right now to make money more than advance my career in any meaningful way) and see how they work out, although now is really the time to take a hard look at yourself, ask “Who do I want to be?” and start making concrete sets to become that person.