DDS notes: time management
Presenters: Ixchel Faniel and Emilee Rader
Ixchel:
Found that corporate/ consulting time management skills didn’t transfer to academic environ. Here, 3 roles: teaching, research, and service.
Talked to people, read books for strategies
Judy Olsen’s slides and lecture on this topic are online
Some books helped: Robert Boyce’s
Trying different strategies and finding which worked for her was essential
Starting early and chipping away at them (rather than last minute) is Ixchel’s strategy for this environment (Boyce’s working in moderation)
Breaking up activities while they are going well makes it easier to pick them up again.
In this environment you can keep working and working on something (fix and fix mode) its important to know when to stop- not overwork it
Prep for teaching a few days before rather than a week before, so she doesn’t overwork it
Ixchel’s day to day: everyone is different in terms of the time they need to do things, esp teaching. Uses to-do lists with amount of time for tasks and records how long they actually take. In the beginning she was overworking the amount of time she spent on teaching prep- was able to compare her time spent with other junior faculty. Recording this helps keeps feeling in check about how much is accomplished. She also recorded what happened that day otherwise to see how good day/ bad day influenced how much she got done.
Realized that her expectations for getting things done on a given day were too high, unrealistic- especially on heavy meeting days. Now incorporates time for personal stuff in planning too: like on weekends, setting aside a chunk of time on weekends for personal stuff.
Notices her own patterns throughout the day for the best times for activities: writes at home in the morning when she has more energy and uninterrupted time.
Email: she closes it when she’s not using it- if she’s looking at email she’s not working. Tells students to expect 24 hour turn around on email. Looks at it 2-3 times/ day rather than checking and responding continuously.
Importance of listening to what works for you- your own intuition. Has to work for you. Writes on paper often instead of computer because she gets blocked by editing choices in word processing rather than having her writing flow.
Ixchel uses a white board for long term projects and due dates
Plans an amount of time for each activity based on available blocks of time
Mac dashboard widgets will track what you are doing on your computer
Important not to underestimate time it takes to ramp up for an activity
Free writing as a warm up- unstructured writing with less pressure for perfection- write as you talk

Emilee:
Plans time on her to do list for thinking about work too
Uses Omni Outliner software, so she can close list for other days if its seems overwhelming
Never finishes todo list for the day, can drag things into the next day to reallocate
Doesn’t get worried about planning more than she can do for the day because she can put it onto the next day
Teaching prep: if she feels totally comfortable, she has spent too much time on it.
Starts planning for teaching a section the day before so there is a limited amount of time to work on it
Keeps deadlines for conferences at the bottom of list where she might be able to publish, form which she has used other people’s work that she may want to submit to
Uses Journaler to capture thoughts, notes on readings, etc.
Started a research blog to help her keep focused on research- can justify the time because there may be a few people reading it, and it helps her keep focused
One Note is essentially the same as Journaler for PCs. Helps her keep work centralized.
Has project management software (bought OmniPlan- the open source stuff she tried wasn’t good) for timeline planning to see how many projects she will be doing simultaneously. If she has more than three projects at once she knows she needs to readjust. Revisits it once a month and saves it as a new document so she can track over time how long she spent on things, helps her set her expectations better.
Emilee and Rick have shared Google calendars—bad when she doesn’t have network access. Puts conference deadlines and travel on calendar as well as regular stuff. Can sync with iCal—Ted uses “remember the milk” for tasks which syncs with both.
Cory uses the program “getting things done” which helped him discipline his planning
Reference management- Emilee saves everything she reads in pdf in a folder on her laptop and uses bibtex for references. Copies notes from Journaler into bibtex. Exports from endnote to bibtex was not hard. Can add a field for filename (and can drag and drop file into bibtex, but doesn’t trust it not to lose her files).
Plans personal time into her schedule to help manage stress
Keeps her vita and website updated half an hour once a month, so she doesn’t have to spend half a day stressing about it later.
Keeps teaching evaluations all in one place.
Getting less sleep is not a strategy for getting more done. May need to plan in time for sleep.
Good to know when during the day you do your best work. Help make sure that the time you spend on things is more productive.
OmniFocus has a field for context that lets you track things as ‘errands’ for example, so you can try to do them all together if you want
Ayse outlines papers which helps her save a lot of time

Dharma's notes/reflections
The most important sentiment expressed by Ixchel was to listen to yourself, try a lot of things out and see what works. She and Emily had very different styles of time management. While Emily uses a lot of electronic tools (outline software, project management software, etc), Ixchel seems to use paper more to keep track of what to do and what she has done. One interesting idea they both had was to keep track of how long it actually took to do something. That way, you can learn how to more reasonably estimate time for future projects. Both also saw the value in integrating personal to do's with work/school because otherwise, it's easy to overlook the personal life (even laundry, cooking, etc).

Additional notes

Different need of time management with different environment. Company vs consulting vs academia. Consult your colleagues on what they do.
Different things works for different people. Try out different thinks and figure out what works for you:

• When best time to do certain activities: when best to write, when bes to read, etc
  • Specify exact time
  • vs an estimate on when to do
  • vs just to-do list.
• Sense of time: how long it takes you to do things
• Closing email => source of distraction
• Some people will incorporate personal, daily choirs, etc and some don't.
• 
  

Good time-management habits:

• Create a daily to-do list.
  • Give you a sense of what things need to be done
  • Balance between listing and personal comfort level => Not to freak out/stress out what needs to be done.
• Record how long you spent on a task
  • Stuffs takes longer than you expected it to be.
  • You also underestimate
  • Recording help to make them reasonable and know your habits
• Constantly review them to see what works for you:
  • Where you are spending your time
  • How long it takes you to do things
• Be realistic on your daily activities.
• Set time to think out an assignment besides time to do it.
• Make various level of granularity.
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Semesters
  • Yearly
  • Life
• Blocking off free-time for things.
  • Plan time to not work!
  • To manage stress.

Start early on tasks and chip away at it as you go along:

• Know when to stop, can't be perfect all the time.
• Don't overwork things. Academia is an environment where you can always fix and fix and fix. But need to stop somewhere,

There is difference in Long-term vs short-term planning:

• Set fix deadline and routine
• Routinely review where you are at completing them

Guide to start writing:

• Dictation software to note what you are saying
• Freehand writing
• Blogs as way to try writing =>.experiment for writing.

Every time management system needs investment:

• Lot of startup time
• Daily investment to keep them up to date.

Updates from 10/2/09

Some advice on time management, work/life balance:
-learn to say no to extra commitments that might take away from working on what's important. In other words, don't accept everything that comes your way.
-slot time for research on your calendar and put specific tasks
-leave some things to last minute or they will expand and overtake your time
-keep track of how much you're working. 45-55 might be considered normal..sometimes you will go beyond this, but it's good not to let it become a habit.
-try to avoid feeling guilty for taking time off
-ask advice from senior colleagues if doubtful about taking something in particular on
Set priorities...this speaker's was Family, Health and Work in that order

Academics is an endurance sport-make time for exercise
Working early in the day helps you get space in which people aren't expecting things like replies to emails. Can work without distraction at that time.
This profession is about 50 hour/week career. 10 hour days-you have to figure out how to find those 10 hours.

And oh yeah: Snickers satisfies.


assertiveness

• most important, politely reject; talk to senior colleagues, advisior to see what is appropriate to reject
• more important to make a strong, good impression on people you work close rather than on your weaker ties
• however, good to get involved in things like talks,etc. as long as you can keep up with other, core, commitments

schedule / block off time for research
40-45hr work week; good to keep of it to see if I am below or above; helps to get away, get time off,

multitasking may not work some; check if it works for you

set your priorities:

1. family
2. health
3. work

Paul prefers to work early in the morning (4am - 7am?) b/c nobody expects you to even be awake at that time and people don't bug you

find time for exercise every day, integrate it in your day, bike to work, walk, take stairway

meetings:
every 1hr meeting is in fact 2 hour meeting (transportation, preparation + future commitments)
meetings also have a social value to them
face to face more efficient than email

food:
coffee may be good for you (concentration) unless side effects kick in
insomnia common among academics; better not to work at night
protein bars, balanced bars good for food cravings,
tap and track - tracks calorie consumption. FoodJournal and DailyBurn for iPhone are also worth checking out