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Designing my own work week (academic) ?
msanford | Mar 24 2007
I'm completely new to GTD methodology (but will be heading to Chapters tomorrow to buy David Allen's book). I've also been listening to Merlin's podcast and getting some good ideas from it. I'm currently in the phase of preparing my research proposal for my (Master's) thesis, work on which will commence in May. As my coursework is complete, unless I'm offered another sessional lectureship next year (which is very likely barring budgetary problems) I will be at liberty to create my own work week. At most, I will have three hours of lecturing and several more hours of correcting and preparation each week to schedule. I've been looking for suggestions, studies, personal accounts, or just good old advice on setting the most efficient work week for myself. For example, I find I work best (i.e., most creatively and efficiently) in the evening. I also have obligations to family and various other extra-curricular activities (I'm a competitive level climber who's had to hang up his harness for the past 6 months for failure to make time to train!) Should I work a traditional work week? Should I take Thursday and Sunday off to break up my work so I don't lose momentum? How about never working in the morning and working 6 days a week? Just brainstorming to illustrate my idea... Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated. I hope to be able to contribute something useful from my experience to this community too! (I already posted this but it didn't appear. Maybe there's a bug relating to activated users starting a thread before being activated? In any case, that's my excuse in case this ends up being a double-post :) ) 15 Comments
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 One of the things about...Submitted by boris on March 25, 2007 - 4:32pm.
One of the things about being an academic is that you're often negotiating very different temporalities: in the teaching environment, you might be planning down to the 10-minute span, and dealing with many different people. In research, you're dealing with a time scale of months or years, and this requires a different kind of headspace. For me, the most important thing was to maximise the number of full days I had to myself to write and research. My writing would flow when I could get up in the morning and be thinking about the big picture of my work over morning coffee and breakfast, and go through spurts through the day, with time to consult literature etc. Having to "switch gear" into teaching or meetings would always make it difficult for me to get back into writing space. Unstuffed is right however, in that everyone has their own style and you have to go with what works for you. » POSTED IN:
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