193: Effective Pacing and Prioritization Techniques to Prevent Burnout

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring podcast. This is your host, Dra. Yvette. Today I have an episode all about effective pacing and prioritization techniques to prevent burnout. I decided to record this episode because this is a topic that is coming up a lot with my clients and with my recent femtees who have joined my Grad School Femtoring Academy.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The Grad School Femtoring Academy- if you haven't heard about it- is a six week group coaching program where I provide an overview to first gen BIPOCs about personal development and sustainable productivity. We cover a lot of different topics related to figuring out what your values are, your strengths, your areas of growth. We talk about goal settin. We talk about self care, community care, habits and prioritization, time management, project management, how to use AI effectively and ethically. So there's a bunch of stuff that we cover.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Again, a lot of people who have decided to work with me are working with me because they might be struggling with burnout or they're in the process of like feeling like they're about to become burnt out. And they want to prevent it or minimize it or overcome it. One of the things that I share- I share different strategies. But I am very open about discussing about my chronic illness - or chronic illnesses I should say- and how they have forced me to learn pacing and prioritization strategies, because otherwise I would not be able to do what I do.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

One of the things that - I'm not sure if I've talked about it on the podcast yet. But one of the things that occurred for me is that when I got COVID Last year, I am one of the people who happened to develop long COVID symptoms. For me, they manifested in symptoms that led to a diagnosis of something called dysautonomia, which is a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. And it impacts all of your body. For me, it means that it causes very, very severe brain fo- brain fog where I will get headaches and migraines, where I cannot think straight, where my vision becomes blurry, where my hearing - it sounds like very muddled, like I am underwater.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

In some cases, depending on the day and if I'm not taking care of myself, if I'm not doing the things that I have learned that are lifestyle changes that help with dysautonomia, I can be bed bound or having to be resting all day because if I get up, if I stand up, I will feel these symptoms of feeling like passing out. It's called presyncope symptom, and that means dizziness, everything spinning and blacking out. So that is kind of what I've been dealing with the last couple of months- again, since fall 2022. And it's been a combination of different dietary and lifestyle changes that have helped me to make it more manageable now.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

One of the things that has been really, really helpful has been to really be mindful of my pacing when I work because I am a recovering workaholic and I do have workaholic tendencies. And I know that it's not good for me. I know that that's what led me to burning out and getting chronically ill to begin with. So today yes, let's talk about pacing and prioritization. I thought I'd include prioritization, because I feel like the two go hand in hand. That's a part of what allows me to pace myself and still get work done and meet deadlines. It's because I pace myself. But I also prioritize all the time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Let's start with talking about what is pacing. Maybe you have not heard this term before, or maybe you have but you're not 100% sure what I mean when I'm referring to it. When I'm talking about pacing, I'm talking about energy management. So when I talk about time management strategies, I do think it's essential to also talk about energy management strategies because we all go through different waves of energy levels, both throughout the day, throughout monthly cycles, and also even through seasonal changes and seasonal cycles. Pacing is managing those energy levels, those seasonal changes, those cycles that you may go through. You do that by finding a way to balance between doing your work and taking breaks. That's pacing.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Prioritization, then, is the act of ranking tasks. You can rank them based off how important they are to you and also how urgent they are. This is where deadlines come into play. The two go hand in hand. But let me share a couple of strategies of both and you'll notice that some of these things might overlap. When I am pacing myself, one of the things that I've been doing for a while now- not just recently, but for at least a couple of years now- is time blocking. I block out time, certain times of day for me to work. And when I work I actually work in short bursts of time. I'll do two to three half hour sessions of work and then I'll take a break. I do no more than two hours straight usually, or I try not to.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I take a break, and then I'll work again for another hour and a half, two hours, maybe three hours tops. Then I take another break and then I'll work again. I do this because one- it allows me to rest and to pace myself. And also I work odd hours. I currently am living in Portugal. I don't even know when this podcast episode is coming out, so I might be in the middle of an international move when you hear this. Probably not yet. I'm moving in the summer. But anyway, now I'm losing track of what I was just saying. See, that's the brain fog that I'm referring to.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Going back to my schedule and how I work, I was saying that I work odd hours, because a lot of the people that I work with are on the US timezone. So they're Pacific Time, they are central time, they're East Coast time. I'm eight hours ahead, or six hours ahead or five hours ahead, depending on where they live. That means that I work late into the night. I work until 9 or 10pm most days, and you'd think- whoa, that's a lot. But it's actually not. I don't work more than 40 hours a week. I try to aim between 30 to 40 hours, and this includes all of the work that I do, including my work with my children and homeschooling. That may include domestic work.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I try not to overdo it because my body does need a lot of time for resting. On weeks or days that I have flare ups, I may not do much at all. Or I will do- I've told myself, okay, if I've got a really, really bad week, I'm not going to go over 15 hours of work. I determined that number based on what the minimum amount that I need to get done where I can still sustain my workload and not fall behind. But this has taken a while after doing the time blocking for so long and starting to notice patterns in my workload.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I determined the number of hours and I set my internal rule. If I'm feeling really sick, I will work 15 hours that week. If I'm doing better and it's manageable, then 30 to 40 hours a week. I try not to ever aim for over 40 hours a week because that will definitely make me sick. I've noticed the pattern. So time blocking, which is where I designate specific time slots in my calendar for different types of work. It might be work related to writing, brainstorming, generating ideas, administrative tasks. It might be time blocks for meetings. I usually have meetings only during certain hours of the day. That way, no matter what I have my time blocked for these other tasks- the writing tasks, the admin tasks.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

It's up to you to decide- how can you time block depending on your schedule. If you've got courses, you might have your time blocks for your classes and for your homework. If you are writing a thesis or a dissertation, you might have time blocks every day for writing, or it might be a couple times a week for writing. I know that I wasn't able to write every day when I was writing my dissertation. So I would have time blocks two to three times a week for my dissertation work. And even throughout writing my book, the grad school application guide, that's coming out next year in 2024 through UC press. I didn't work on it every day. I had my time blocks a couple of times a week to focus on my writing work. And I still do that even now. We're about to turn in our revisions and there will be other workload related to the marketing aspect of the book and just getting prepared for it to come out for the launch. So I've got my time blocked for that, for my book related tasks.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Time blocking is the first thing that I wanted to mention when it comes to pacing yourself, because the key to time blocking is I want to encourage you- strongly encourage you- to also add blocks of time on your calendar for breaks and for scheduling in things that nourish you. A break might be a break for napping. It might be a break to watch a show. It might be a break to just do nothing and decompress. It might be a break to call a friend or a family member.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Definitely incorporate that into your schedule. Don't just say, I'll get to it in my free time. No, no, no. This is essential for you to take care of yourself and you should treat it that way. And that may mean having to say no to more things, having to set more boundaries, so that you can make time for yourself.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The next pacing option or strategy or tip that you can try out is to break up tasks into small manageable steps and work backwards from a deadline. Everything that I do- if I've got a workshop to do, if the workshop is next week, then what do I need to do between now and next week- every day or a couple of times this week-to get those materials ready. I break everything down. I don't try to ever do something all in one sitting because that is a recipe for disaster for me. Also, if I see a task and think about the big task all at once, I can get easily overwhelmed. So if I think oh my gosh, I've got to write this book. I'm not going to do it. It's too big and scary. But if I break it down and say- actually, today, I'm going to write two pages of this section from this chapter from the book. That's a lot more feasible than saying today, I'm just going to work on the book. So breaking up the task into small, manageable steps- trying to simplify the process for yourself is really, really good for pacing yourself because it means that you're not expecting yourself to complete a big, high energy task all in one setting.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The next strategy, which is the story of my life, because this is just how I work now and it works for me. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It just works so so well for me. It's using the Pomodoro Technique. I feel like I've said this. I'm a broken record when it comes to the Pomodoro Technique. I started doing this in grad school- timing myself for 25 minutes, writing down what my goal was for that 25 minute session. After that was over, then writing down what I actually got done, and I kept a log of it. Then after having that log and starting to notice, again, my patterns, I realized- this is how long it takes me to write. This is how long it takes me to read.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And I could do the math of -if it takes me an hour to write a page, if I have all the notes and the research, everything ready- if I have an outline. Then if I'm trying to write a 25 page paper or 25 page chapter, then it's gonna take me 25 hours. And if I've got two weeks to do it, then that means I'm going to have to dedicate 12 hours out of this week or 13 hours out of this week to get it done. Then I would break up those 13 hours of the week into multiple times throughout that week so that I'm not doing 12 hours straight because that's not again, a possibility for me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

For you, even if you're not chronically ill, I want to encourage you to break things up. You can start to see assess or self evaluate or figure out what your pacing, what your timing is by using the Pomodoro Technique. And I actually don't encourage doing the Pomodoro Technique and not taking a longer break after three sessions. If you do three 25 minutes sessions back to back, I want to encourage you to take a longer break, because that is, again really helpful for pacing yourself. Along those lines- which is why I like Pomodoro Technique, because it forces you to take a break after 25 minutes.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I've been told by the optometrist. I always get the eye doctor name wrong. But I have chronic dry eyes and I am farsighted. I also have some other vision is issues or issues with blurry vision. And the chronic dry eyes is a result of too much screen time. When I worked my nine to five, I was on a screen for multiple hours straight. That's when I was encouraged to every half hour, step away from the computer. Look away. Look somewhere else. Just make sure you're not looking at the computer straight for longer than half an hour. That's what's great about the Pomodoro Technique is that it forces you to take a break from the screen every 25 minutes to half an hour.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Again, when it comes to taking breaks, it's really about learning to listen to your body. This is hard because so many of us have been socialized and pressured to work beyond our breaking point, to just keep pushing through, pushing through. That's what leads to burnout and illness and worse. One of the things that I do to help me with taking breaks is that if I know that I've got something going on that typically takes up a lot of energy, I will alternate that high energy activity with rest. So if I know that I've got this workshop that's going to take up a lot of my energy, or if I've got an event where I have to go somewhere- going anywhere for me takes up a lot of energy. If I don't take care of myself, a lot of times, events outside of my home- especially travel- will lead me to flaring up for several days straight after.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So I have to schedule in rest. If I'm traveling, I've got to have a rest day after the day of travel. If I've got a big event or workshop or speaking engagement, keynote, you name it, I'm not going to have a meeting right after that. I'm gonna give myself some time to rest and decompress from that. Similarly, you can do that yourself by thinking, what do I have that's gonna take up a lot of energy? I've got that final. If I've got a final, then I'm gonna try really hard to not schedule two finals in one day. Or I'm gonna try really hard to give myself the rest of the evening off because I completed that final. I hope that makes sense for you when it comes to taking breaks and alternating activity, high energy activity, with rest.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing that is important with pacing- I keep talking about this self assessment, self evaluation, how important self awareness is for you to take care of yourself while also getting your work done. One of the things that I encourage- which is why I have a growth journal that I've provided before for free. It's a 60 Plus page journal that has a bunch of reflective journaling prompts in it. Journaling is great because you can get started on it at any point. I recommend if you're starting to feel overwhelmed, or if you feel like you've got too much going on, or just an event was really- I don't know- it was a lot for you to journal about that incident. Journal about that moment. Journal about that feeling. That way you can start to go back and and take a look at what you have written in your journal and notice patterns. Next time something like this happens, you can shift or disrupt that pattern.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

What's an example? I recently was talking to someone who was a professor who was saying that when she goes out and has to commute for her classes, it takes up a lot of toll and energy for her. She has an autoimmune disease. That's another thing that kind of affects her. She struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome. She has to show up to her classes because they're in person classes. But she found out that the policy at her institution is that you have to be in person teaching for up to 75% of the time. So she realized, oh my gosh. This is so much. It's so hard for me to commute. It's so hard on my body. How can I shift this? For her, she leaned into that policy, and thought- well, if it's 75%, then I'm going to take that 25% and take advantage of it. Now, she schedules in 25% of her time to have online classes or online instruction. And I thought that was brilliant. I'm like, that is amazing. And if it becomes too much, there's also the option of requesting accommodations. But that's a whole other conversation.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The point of this is to reflect, assess, figure out- what's been happening? What am I struggling with? How can I change this next time? The last thing I want to say when it comes to pacing is to give yourself permission to do less, to give yourself permission to say no. I have been working with students. And I noticed that a lot of them- because I work with First Gen bipoc students who a lot of them are also children of immigrants. A lot of them, like me, like my former self, are people pleasers and try to avoid conflict. They have a tendency of saying yes to things. Then when they realize that maybe I shouldn't have said yes to this or they regret it or they've got too much going on. They don't want to say no. They don't want to back out because they feel really bad. They feel ashamed. They don't want to displease someone or disappoint someone.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And because of them avoiding that discomfort and avoiding whatever potential conflict might come up from them saying I can no longer do this, they are suffering. If you are listening to this and you feel like you are that person, you're in a similar situation, I want to tell you that unfortunately, in life, there are going to be a lot of incidents where you're going to have to have difficult conversations and you're going to have to face discomfort. This is a good time for you to practice that skill,to practice putting yourself first. If you really, really, really struggle with it, then talk to someone that you trust and ask for their help.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Hey, can you help me with drafting this memo so that I can let my job know that I'm no longer going to be able to work, to give my two weeks notice? If it's like a part time job. Or can you help me draft this memo, so I can let folks know that I'm going to need to do less or play a smaller role for this organization, or this student org of some sort? Or can you help me with practicing out a script of what I'm going to say to so and so just to let them know that I'm no longer going to be able to help them or I'm going to have to help them less than I have in the past.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

There are different things that you can do to practice that skill. But I just want you to be mindful. If you're already burning out, something's got to give. You have to do less. You can't keep going at this pace. Otherwise, you're not going to get better. Instead, you're going to get worse and you're going to reach a breaking point. A lot of people, when they reach a breaking point, that's when they have to completely do a 180 and shift things around. That might mean they will take a leave of absence or medical leave, or they might just make a completely big shift in their life. So if you want to avoid having to make this big, big change because of a breaking point, then you're going to have to slowly but surely do less, slowly but surely say no to more opportunities. Because each time you're saying no to opportunities that are not values aligned, that are not high importance things for you to reach your goals, then you're saying yes to yourself.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And you have to say yes to yourself. Because if you're not healthy, if you're not feeling good, then what's the point of all of this? Some people say health is wealth. If you don't prioritize yourself, your physical, mental, spiritual health, then again, what's the point of all of this? That what I had to say about pacing. Now let's talk about prioritization. One very popular prioritization technique that I share with my clients and that you can probably look up. If you look up, what are techniques for prioritization? One thing that pops up over and over and over again is this thing called the Eisenhower matrix. The Eisenhower matrix looks like this quadrant.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

There are four different things on the quadrant. On the top left is the things that are urgent and important. And then you've got the things that are important but not urgent, then you've got the things that are not important but urgent, and then you've got things that are not important and not urgent. Based on this matrix, you have to list your tasks according to one of those four things. If they are urgent and important, those are the things that you should be doing now or very soon. If they are important, but not urgent, those are the things that you schedule in. You make sure you add time in your calendar for those things. If they are not important but urgent, you probably want to find a way to delegate those tasks. If you can't delegate, then maybe you've got to find a way to do it later.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The last thing is not urgent, not important. Find out- what are those things that are taking up a lot of your time that are actually not urgent and not important? Maybe you don't have to do those at all. Those are the things in the not do. I don't have to do that at all, because it's not urgent and not important. Sometimes this might mean like, oh, my gosh. I said yes to a commitment and it's actually not important to me. It's not even urgent for me to be doing this at all. You might need to again, go back and re assess your commitments, and let go of some of those things that don't nourish you and are not helping you get from point A to point B, are not very urgent and important for you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The other thing I wanted to say about this Eisenhower matrix - a lot of us get stuck with the urgent and important stuff. You get so caught up in like, oh my gosh, this is urgent and you wait until the last minute to get something done. You don't make time for important and not urgent things. You want to work your way towards eventually doing the bulk of your work in a way where they are important and not urgent. So this is where the pacing, time blocking and reverse engineering is helpful. Because I always- I have to, I just have to. I can't rely on my body to be reliable, or I can't rely on my body to be functioning in the same way every single day. I know there's a good chance that I might get sick on the day of the deadline. So I always try to get my work done well in advance of a deadline. Most of the things that I work on are important to me and not urgent, because I've calendered them in so that I get them done again when they are not urgent, when they are not due the next day. That's another kind of tip for me to ask you to try out- to work your way backwards so that you make time to work on things that are important to you well in advance of a deadline. You're working more on those important and not urgent tasks.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another prioritization tip that I have mentioned before is the ABC method. I'm pretty sure I recorded an entire episode on the ABC method of productivity. I'll have to link it in the show notes if you want to listen to that one. But when I talk about it, there's two different ways that folks talk about it. One is ABC as in labeling your task based on levels of importance. So A is very important, B is important, and C is not very important. And then working on your tasks based on that level of importance.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But actually, when I talk about the ABC method of productivity, I'm talking about energy management, not just like priority management. For me, I think about ABC as your A time, B time, and C time. A time is when you're most alert. B time is when you're less alert. C time is when you're the least alert. You want to schedule in tasks during your A time that require the most energy. So for me- we all have different chrono types. We all have different energy levels and when we are most alert. Some people say they're night owls. Some people say they're morning people. And people like me, I'm an afternoon person.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I know afternoon is the best time, so I'm going to schedule in the high energy tasks, the things that require the most concentration,that are more difficult to complete, I'm going to do that during my A time. My B time is the evenings. So things that are still requiring some energy but don't require as much energy as the A time tasks, I'm going to do those in the evening. And C time, which is the time that I have the least energy, that's my morning. My mornings, I feel terrible. My symptoms from my chronic illnesses are the most prevalent in the mornings. So I try to take it easy in the mornings, because I have to. If I do do work in the mornings, which I don't always do, I try to work on the things that are C level tasks, that are very, very low energy, easy things to do. There you have it. That's the ABC method of productivity.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another another one is implementing the rule of one or three, or just kind of figuring out what is the top one to three things that I have to get done today. Let's say you're having a really rough day, or you're feeling sick, or you just don't have a lot of time, or whatever it is that's preventing you from getting a lot done on any given day, you have to ask yourself constantly- what is the absolute most important tasks that I need to get done today? Maybe the absolute most important task that I need to get done today is to finish the one thing that's due tomorrow. Maybe I really wanted to get these, all these other things done. But realistically, the most important thing is that one, so that's the one that I'm going to prioritize. If you've got a little bit more energy, than maybe step it up to the top two or three things that you absolutely have to get done today. Then remind yourself, like put it on your task calendar or on a post it. These are the things that are high priority today. That way, you can focus on those. And when you catch yourself getting distracted, or procrastinating by doing other work that's not important and not urgent, you can look at it and say, oh no. I need to get back to that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Lastly, I want you to adjust your expectations about what you can reasonably do. If you're struggling with burnout, if you feel like you're about to burn out, if you're trying to prevent burnout altogether, you really do have to adjust your expectations. That may mean straying from the norm, or what's typical, or what's expected of you. Because if you are in higher ed, or you have experience in higher ed and still have certain workaholic tendencies that maybe you learned from your time in higher ed, a lot of times we set really, really high expectations of ourselves of the amount of work that we can get done. And realistically, some of us just need to do things differently or need to do less. You cannot prioritize everything all of the time, too.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So remember, we have multiple different roles and responsibilities. We don't just have our work to do. We don't just have our education and our careers. We have whole ass lives outside of this. We've got our family, our friends. We've got our physical, mental spiritual health. We've got our communities. We also deserve to have time for leisure and to learn about financial literacy. There's so many other parts of us in our lives. And we cannot prioritize all aspects of our lives all of the time. So then you have to ask yourself, like when you're thinking about adjusting your expectations. What season am I in? Is this the season where I'm prioritizing my career? Is this the season where I'm prioritizing my mental health? Is this the season where I'm prioritizing my family? Is this the season where I'm prioritizing my community?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Adjust your expectations accordingly. I feel like right now, I'm like shifting into a season of family and community. I do think that the work that I do with Grad School Femtoring is part of community building and giving back. That's the season that I'm in. In grad school, I was in my schooling and my mental health were two really really big priorities. But you figure out- what season am I in? How can I adjust my expectations so that I don't absolutely have to get everything done and do everything all of the time?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

We are not machines. We are not super humans. And you deserve to make time for yourself. You deserve to incorporate wellness in to your schedule within your productivity strategies. That is how you avoid burnout and that is how you do this work in a sustainable way. That's it for today. I hope you all found this helpful and I will talk to you all next time.