What if Your Work Doesn't Fit in Your Pocket?

A week or two ago I wrote about pocket work as a means of squeezing more work out of your day.

Matt B. offered an important comment that's true for most of us:

I try to do this but sometimes I find that sometimes the work I have can only be done at a desk or has some other limiting factor. How do you handle this type of issue?

My Response:
Honestly? It happens to me and drives me crazy! Sometimes even though you really need to be at a computer to complete a task, there are portions of many tasks that you can do while you're out and about. For example, one of my writing projects requires that I create lists of objectives that guide a reader through the material. Ultimately I have to compose it on a computer, but the thought work can happen elsewhere. In this example, I brought an outline of the chapter with me - condensed on to a page and then drafted a list of objectives while on the subway. Not to brag, but it was a crowded subway too :-) Of course there's a brief window of time in which my handwriting is decipherable, so I had to get to a computer within the next day or so or it would be lost. You get the idea, though.

Try thought work -- just thinking about what you need to write and how you might organize it. Depending on your field, think about research studies, how to organize and run them. Think about problems: Why isn't your experiment working? How will you organize your review paper? Who will you ask to sit on your dissertation committee? I think the most important point to take away is that much of our work is thought-work and we can do that anywhere and if other tasks don't fit in our pocket, thought tasks certainly do. An amorphous answer, but I hope it helps.