Week Two: who has time?
“I don’t mean for fallow time to be seen as just another life hack, the way that even meditation has been hijacked as something that will boost your productivity. The upside of this kind of downtime is more holistic than that — it’s working toward a larger ecology of workers who are recognized as human beings instead of automatons.”
​
- from “You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything,” New York Times, 2019

Before the webinar

  • Journaling prompts:
    • ​(Optional) Take whichever values assessments or personality assessments sounded interesting to you
      • How did the results change how you think about yourself? 
      • Were they surprising? 
      • What stood out to you? 
      • Can you use this to help determine how you want to spend your time and organize your life?
    • Ask yourself how you work best, and take some notes:
      • Are you a morning person or night person?
      • Do you need routine to keep you on track or does it stifle your ability to work?
      • Do you prefer to keep things online and on devices, or are you too easily distracted by the internet and social media?
  • ​​Some organizational tools (this will just be a list, we’ll go into specific details in relevant weeks
    • ​Google Drive
    • Evernote
    • Notion
    • Asana
    • Trello
    • Wrike
    • ToDoist
    • ATracker
    • Calendar apps
    • Integrated tasks in google calendar, apple calendar, etc
    • The bullet journal method (huge variety of options here!)
  • Without tracking your time, try to estimate how long you spend on:
    • Active research
    • Teaching responsibilities
    • Managerial tasks (lab/group related work that isn’t active research)
    • Work emails
    • Meetings/zoom calls
    • Social media/internet black holes
    • Anything else you think you might be spending a lot of time on that’s not included in this list -- feel free to come up with your own categories!

During the webinar

  • Please try to participate as much as possible in the group activities. There will always be an anonymous contribution option to reduce pressure, but this works best when lots of ideas are presented.
  • Don’t forget that all of these ideas are tools and resources and none of them is an obligation. Don’t feel like you have to implement all these suggestions into your life -- try only what sounds good to you and only continue to use things that work. Never add extra stress to your life in the name of organization.

After the webinar

  • Assignment #1: Pick your favorite time tracking method and do a detailed inventory of how you spend your time. Not just amount of time but when you do it, a running log. This will help you identify fragmented time and time sucks.
    • At the end of the week, reflect in your journal on those time logs:
      • Were you surprised at the number of hours you worked?
      • Where you surprised at *when* you worked?
      • Were you surprised about where your time went?
      • What would an ideal day look like in terms of time breakdown?
  • ​​Assignment #2: Make a list in your journal of every “project” you are on. This can include:
    • Specific research projects
    • Individual classes that you’re teaching or taking
    • Sustained outreach efforts
    • Diversity efforts
    • Projects at home​

Tools and resources from week two

Some tools and resources mentioned:
Time-tracking apps:


Productivity resources


Articles 
Why is it so hard to do my work? (re: attention residue)
Multitasking: Switching costs (re: cognitive switching costs)
Track your time for 30 days. What you find may surprise you.
You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything

Books 
Overwhelmed
Essentialism
Dot Journaling: A Practical Guide

Podcasts
The Happiness Lab: For Whom the Alarm Clock Tolls

Webinar Slides

week_two_upload.pptx
File Size: 6361 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File