About the course
This online two-week course offers you the chance to create and deploy a four-layer life design system: making a weekly plan that honours your intentions for the summer, making daily plans in line with your week’s goals, and setting session goals aligned with your plan for the day. It’s assumed that academic writing will be somewhere in the mix, but the system also works for any other personal or professional goals you may have for summer 2022. Good planning is as crucial for the fun stuff as for the less fun!
The course is run by Emily Troscianko, a coach, researcher, and writer with particular interests in eating disorders, consciousness, and the psychological effects of reading narrative. She also created a writing programme for humanities graduates and postdocs at Oxford University and runs courses on academic writing, habit change, failure, and other aspects of what it means to work and live well.
Week 1 consists of two half-day meetings, one at the start and one at the end of the week. These will help you treat each session, each day, and the whole week as part of the wider context of your summer. Building on the summer plan and weekly review you'll have prepared in advance, Monday morning starts with guidance for meaningfully and effectively planning your day, followed by two writing sessions and one admin session (each including planning and review and separated by physical movement and screen breaks) to start to put your tiered planning into action. From Tuesday to Friday you'll practise making daily plans based on your plan for the week, and on Friday afternoon we return to write together, review the week’s achievements, make a plan for the following week (again referring back to your summer plan), and discuss problems and solutions.
Week 2 is lighter-touch: we meet briefly on the Monday morning to plan for the day and prepare for a writing session, before logging off and completing our sessions independently. Then on Friday we meet to review the week and the fortnight, and plan for the week ahead, linking everything back to your summer plans.
Event partnerships
To help you keep your daily activities aligned with what you’ve decided to do, you’ll be paired with another participant and decide on Day 1 what kind of contact you’d like to have during the two weeks: anything from shared writing/work sessions to a shared spreadsheet or reminder emails/texts.
Your commitment
You'll be asked to complete an activities overview, a summer plan, and a weekly review before the course begins, using the templates provided. You should commit to attending all sessions in full, and to being disconnected from your phone, email, social media etc. throughout (including the breaks). If you have caring responsibilities or other reasons why you can't make yourself unavailable by phone and/or email, you are very welcome to attend the course. We ask that you please let Emily know in advance if you will require access to your phone and/or inbox.
Schedule:
- Monday 27 June, 08:30 to 13:30 BST
- Friday 1 July, 13:45 to 17:45
- Monday 4 July, 08:30 to 09:30
- Friday 8 July, 16:30 to 17:30
If you have any questions about the course, feel free to email emily.troscianko@gmail.com.
To register:
Please register via Inkpath, by Monday 13 June 2022.
