The idea here is to chronicle a day and see where the time escapes to. To see how much "dead time" there is in a typical work day.
Monday morning (March 14).
7-8. Got up. Showered and dressed. Check email. Made and drunk coffee. Cleared snow off car (WT?) and drove in to work.
8-9. Graded rewrites of papers. Why do students rewrite papers and not even address what was wrong in the first place? (WTF!). Xeroxed exam to give at 11. Wrote course description for Fall course on idioms and proverbs. (Checked what other course I'm teaching in the Fall. Ah, joy, advanced composition and grammar!) Checked itinerary of speaker coming on Thursday. Started this post.
What I'm learning so far is that the 8-9 a.m. hour can be very productive, despite the snow.
9-10. Saved Zambrano chapter and sent to myself as email attachment. Read a post on Thomas's blog "Research as Second Language." Began to read introduction to Ellas tienen la palabra for my afternoon seminar. Wrote email messages with feedback on two student presentations. No dead time yet though perhaps too much multi-tasking. Tweeted a proverb. Where is that student from Arkansas with the 9:30 appointment with me? (WTF? Maybe it's the snow.)
10-11. Continued to read for Graduate Course. Spoke briefly with my department chair. Read posts on Clarissa's blog. She links to my post on cultural capital! Took break for coffee (10:30-10:50).
11-12:20 Gave exam while continuing to read for Graduate Course and make some notes on revising article in chapter version. Also looked at Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor which will be useful for next Fall's course.
12:20-1. Ate lunch. Talked with Jake.
1-2. Checked in on the Wriing Group. Then some dead time randomly checking blogs. Then wrote some notes to myself on how to revise my Zambrano chapter and a blog post at my other blog on the 1930s. Read some more poems for the 3 p.m. course. A little more dead time to tweet some aphorisms. Another blog post on Lakoff and Turner's More than Cool Reason. Ordered a book from library. What I'm learning is I'm really efficient so I can do this quickly and then waste some more time inefficiently.
2-3. Checked in with the Stupid Motivational Writing Group. Had coffee with my departmental chair. Then some dead time. Then reading for class, with random thoughts about what I should say about gender, sex as identity, sex as desire.
3-4:20. Graduate Class.
4:20-5. Some decompression time after class. Checked in with writing group (good work, fellow writers!). Drove to Massage Envy.
5-6. Massage.
6-8:30 Drinks with friends and dinner.
8:30-9:15. Checked in with writing group, answered misc. emails that had accumulated since 4;30. Looked at little at my Zambrano chapter, deleting some extraneous material from it.
9:15-11. Tinkered around. Watched some netflicks videos without settling down on any. Took a shower. Listened to music.
11 bedtime.
3 comments:
This is extremely useful. I have a huge problem with not knowing where the time went. Wednesday is a free day for me but I never manage to get anything done. So tomorrow I'll write everything down like you did and see where the time goes.
It was useful to me to. Those free days are particularly difficult, because I tend to get less done than on busy days when I'm teaching. You'd think it would be the opposite.
One recommendation I heard from a teacher was to check where you are every 15 minutes throughout the day (rather like keeping a food journal if you're dieting -- just see what your current habits are). Do that in an observational way for a couple of days to see where your time is going.
Bonus points if you want to "grade" what you're doing based on value.
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