Managing My Time

In my last post I talked about my first attempt at getting back into the groove of academia, having neither the environmental cues related to actually being on campus nor the scheduling cues derived from taking and/or teaching courses. In short, I set up my own home office of sorts. My hope is that by working in that office I will gain some compartmentalization of my life, and that the office space will provide a new environmental cue to work.

The second act I have implemented is to track my time. I considered the idea of making up a schedule and sticking to it, but I decided that wouldn't work as well for me. I need something more fluid, but which still provides accountability. So, first I have a fluid schedule:

20 hrs per week on academic stuff
10 hrs per week on my research job (which will end soon)
14 hrs per week on household chores/ childcare
63 hrs per week sleeping
61 hrs per week to burn
_____________________________________
168 hrs in any given week

I have 6 hrs between the time I drop off the kid at school and when I have to pick her back up. If I worked straight through those hours, I'd get my academic and job stuff in. But I know that ain't gonna happen. For one thing, I'm thinking about going to the local YMCA for the MW exersize class. Also, I just have a tendency to piddle.

So my plan is to spend about 24 of those 30 daytime hours working, then make up those extra hours either in the evenings or on weekends. I usually do work at least a little bit on the weekends, so that should be fine.

I've decided that what I need is a way to keep track of my time; something to provide accountability but that also would work as a motivational tool.

And what is more motivating than Legos? In my search for time management software, I came across the Lego Method, found via Lifehacker. When I found it, it just seemed serendipitous, since it just so happens that the way my new office is set up, I am staring at a window. However, to to the left of that window is a GIANT TRANSPARENT BIN FILLED WITH LEGOS.

What I like about this is that I can set aside a certain amount of Legos at the beginning of each week, and then I can set a goal of using all those Legos up. And as long as I use those Legos, I can use the rest of my time however I see fit. At the end of the week, I can transfer the data into a spreadsheet -- or data analysis software if I want to get all fancy with it.

Here's the basics:

I have four colors: red = academic stuff, blue = research job, black = chores, yellow = filler. I chose this color scheme just because of the relative number of pieces I have for each color. If I stick with this I may purchase more Legos and then color code in a way that makes more sense to me. Plus I could get additional colors and make more specific categories!

My green block has seven black bars, one for each day of the week. Each bar is eight circles long, so 1 circle = 7.5 minutes, 2 circles = 15 minutes, etc. adding up to an hour. The hours stack on top of one another. I block out each hour with my color-coded Legos.

The system isn't perfect. For example, I walk my daughter to and from school every day, which takes up an hour total (15 minutes 4 times). I could drive her, and it MIGHT be quicker, but I walk because it also counts as exercise. And it gets me out of the house, and the time spent walking by myself is relaxing.

But it is also something that must be done, so that time will be blocked in as a chore.

More tricky is my time spent blogging and reading feeds. Some of it kind of counts as academic work; reading and commenting on sociology blogs sort of counts as networking with other academics, some of my posts are about sociology, etc. But it is a stretch to call that work, so that time will be blocked in as filler.

I can already tell I'm going to want more colors.