Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
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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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If your responsibilities include teachingSubmitted by philip.sternberg on October 23, 2007 - 9:11am.
If you have to balance teaching and research (which almost all academics do almost all of the time) the best advice I've ever gotten is this: at the beginning of each week, decide how much time will go into preparing each lecture. Put that much time on your calendar, and DO NOT BUDGE! There is no end to the time you can spend tweaking examples and phrases and rehearsing mock questions, all of which will make your lecture just a little bit better, but chances are you'll pass the point of diminishing returns after an hour or two. (Cf. this Ph.D. comic.) » POSTED IN:
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