![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my busy week
May. 14th, 2005 04:19 pmMy busy new time-management system
I have been very busy this last week. I have been trying a new system. I am always trying new systems, attempting to overcome my sluggishness and propensity to frittering and that desperate doomsday feeling at the end of a long day where I had no teaching and was supposed to devote my hours to my book and yet did nothing.
So, keeping in mind my success with Flylady since January (omg, wow!), I've been desperately trying out all sorts of other systems. At first, I adapted the Flylady emailing system and emailed myself reminders and motivational messages. But then I didn't read them so they served no purpose. Then I tried Flylady's 15-minute timer method and set my timer in frantic roundabouts: 15 minutes write book, 15 minutes prepare lecture, 15 minutes de-clutter kitchen, 15 minutes write D/D. But I let that lapse and never even set the timer and did 15 minutes de-cluttering and then 45 minutes D/D by resetting the timer and before I knew it, another day had passed and I had done zero minutes on my book.
Last weekend I googled 'how to manage time performance chart academic' because another mother at school who works in publishing told me how she keeps up with her work by doing daily to-do lists (well, duh, I do those but I just never stick to them) and 'performance charts', i.e. monthly charts where she writes in all the tasks she has to have completed by particular dates, and then breaks them down into smaller bits and schedules each one of those in as well.
Children are a waste of time -- apparently!
I was again inspired! The googling brought up a lot of business-oriented sites which are of some use but very geared towards City-type middle managers. One of them had the advice to eliminate time-wasters, such as computer games (fair enough) but also, and I quote, 'chauffeuring spouse and children around'. Now: how can chauffeuring spouse and children be a bloody timewaster? I immediately got annoyed. It smacked of sexism (so obviously addressed to a man, despite the little coy use of the word 'spouse' instead of 'wife' but what woman would be chauffeuring her husband round?). And to consider sitting in a car with one's children, which is a nice contained time of day for chatting and staying in touch and even important conversations and listening to programmes on the radio or on tapes together -- to identify that as a time waster!! Well, words fail me.
So I clicked my way out of that time management site and found a rather nice, straightforward academic anti-procrastination site , written by some guy who had trouble getting his Ph.D. thesis finished. This was just the thing! And it is the first system I've adapted that has now worked for longer than two days! I've been sticking to it all week and I have indeed religiously been writing (at least) ten minutes on my book every day!
TLM
I also drew up a chart with all the tasks I want and need to do, and (adapting from the management ones) I wrote T,M and L next to each one. T is top priority and means things I want to have accomplished for sure and that I would be sorry not to have done if I died in a year. M means medium and is for things I want to do but that can wait a little. L is for low priority, and the sites suggested that the L's can actually often be deleted.
I have two Tops right now: my book and two job/sabbatical applications. So I have just worked like the dickens on these. Then I added a little clock symbol to signify things I have to do (prepare a lecture that is on tomorrow) but that are not really any kind of priority for me personally, they are just part of my job. So there were a lot of these! I don't know where they all suddenly came from; swept under the carpet, I suspect, and allowed to throttle me with panic of a morning as I rushed in to the library, frantically pulling books and videos from the shelves.
Anyway, I tried to do all the Ts by every evening so I could cross them off my daily To-Do list. I also realise why my to-do lists so far (and I have many, many, many lists) have not worked because they were not slotted into a grand scheme of a) overall importantness (book! book! book!) and b) deadlines. If I had an important task to do by 'date in two weeks' time' (e.g. a job application), I never used to schedule time per day to do little bits of that task, working my way backwards from the deadline.
But getting used to this system has kept me very busy!! Especially as I am also addicted to the Flylady routines so have to do two lots of routine. But there is peace of mind, knowing at the end of each day that everything that needs to be done has been done, and everything that has not been done has been written down and scheduled in somewhere else. I used to wake up with anxiety and worry in the night!
Crap car and evil Dil Se stealers
The system makes no space, of course, for emergencies like the crappy shitty car bloody well breaking down yet a-fucking-gain, necessitating me sitting in the rain for 45 minutes waiting for tow-away guy and going from garage to garage, finding one that will replace a battery within less than 784 hours, and having to be jump-started all the time by tow-away guy. Still, the Hitchhikers' Guide-like message on our emergency card was rather nice: 'Don't panic' plus the number to ring. And I did have my to-do list with me so I frantically wrote my job application while sitting in the freezing waiting room of Kwik Fit Tyres!!
I was, however, flustered and had to give the lecture I had cancelled during the seminar slot and promptly left my Dil Se DVD in the DVD-player of a uni seminar room and the next day it was gone and someone has fucking made off with it! That is one of my top ten evah movies and I am annoyed!!! (*stomps foot*) *wails*
D/D = L wtf??
One strange thing that came out when I was assigning Ts, Ms and Ls is that I assigned an L to the D/D. Now that was an odd insight, seeing I have been so obsessed with that opus. Ergo: it's not been scheduled in on my daily to-do lists. So what happens the other night? I have a dream that inspired another fic in my head! Now, once I have this system under control maybe I can actually find time for a bit of L here and there. It can be L for Leisure.
Self-congratulatory paragraph (very rare for me who is usually under-self-confident
But still! My sink is so SHINY, and my house is so CLEAN, and my toilet smells of the aroma of BLEACH, and I am so BUFF because the sons and I go swimming every Saturday at 9 a.m., and I look out through the windows of my study eyrie and see my SHEETS gently swaying in the breeze, and I've got TEN THOUSANDS words written on chapter 4 of my book (*fuck*, *falls over*), and I sent off my JOB APPLICATION yesterday, and the sons did the VACUUMING today!!!! They are Flyboys!!!!
And the house smells of the scent of CAKE wot is baking in the oven, and there is also home-made BREAD on the way, and have I been replaced by an alien from a pod?????
Big Brother for Babies
Oh, and we have all in t'family been enjoying those supernanny programmes that seem to have invaded British television under various titles. It's either Big Brother for Babies or Evil Teens or SuperNanny but it's all rather mesmerising viewing. It's especially good for us parent types, because it makes us feel so smug, it's wonderful. E.g. there was one family where one of the girls was 2 1/2 hours late to school because she refused to get dressed. Now, *pats self on back*, my sons have never not got dressed for school (unless ill). They might be late because their mother is a hopeless fritterer (although not lately!!) and her car a clapped-out Golf but no matter how they whine and scream, they have always been dressed for school. *pats back some more*
Also, seeing these family problems from the outside, it becomes very clear very quickly that it's not the children who are the problem but always the parents. Which is not all that smug-making except the children in the programmes are so much worse than mine that it's smug-making after all.
Cold Turkey
Goodness me, what a long post. I've obviously got withdrawal symptoms!!!
I have been very busy this last week. I have been trying a new system. I am always trying new systems, attempting to overcome my sluggishness and propensity to frittering and that desperate doomsday feeling at the end of a long day where I had no teaching and was supposed to devote my hours to my book and yet did nothing.
So, keeping in mind my success with Flylady since January (omg, wow!), I've been desperately trying out all sorts of other systems. At first, I adapted the Flylady emailing system and emailed myself reminders and motivational messages. But then I didn't read them so they served no purpose. Then I tried Flylady's 15-minute timer method and set my timer in frantic roundabouts: 15 minutes write book, 15 minutes prepare lecture, 15 minutes de-clutter kitchen, 15 minutes write D/D. But I let that lapse and never even set the timer and did 15 minutes de-cluttering and then 45 minutes D/D by resetting the timer and before I knew it, another day had passed and I had done zero minutes on my book.
Last weekend I googled 'how to manage time performance chart academic' because another mother at school who works in publishing told me how she keeps up with her work by doing daily to-do lists (well, duh, I do those but I just never stick to them) and 'performance charts', i.e. monthly charts where she writes in all the tasks she has to have completed by particular dates, and then breaks them down into smaller bits and schedules each one of those in as well.
Children are a waste of time -- apparently!
I was again inspired! The googling brought up a lot of business-oriented sites which are of some use but very geared towards City-type middle managers. One of them had the advice to eliminate time-wasters, such as computer games (fair enough) but also, and I quote, 'chauffeuring spouse and children around'. Now: how can chauffeuring spouse and children be a bloody timewaster? I immediately got annoyed. It smacked of sexism (so obviously addressed to a man, despite the little coy use of the word 'spouse' instead of 'wife' but what woman would be chauffeuring her husband round?). And to consider sitting in a car with one's children, which is a nice contained time of day for chatting and staying in touch and even important conversations and listening to programmes on the radio or on tapes together -- to identify that as a time waster!! Well, words fail me.
So I clicked my way out of that time management site and found a rather nice, straightforward academic anti-procrastination site , written by some guy who had trouble getting his Ph.D. thesis finished. This was just the thing! And it is the first system I've adapted that has now worked for longer than two days! I've been sticking to it all week and I have indeed religiously been writing (at least) ten minutes on my book every day!
TLM
I also drew up a chart with all the tasks I want and need to do, and (adapting from the management ones) I wrote T,M and L next to each one. T is top priority and means things I want to have accomplished for sure and that I would be sorry not to have done if I died in a year. M means medium and is for things I want to do but that can wait a little. L is for low priority, and the sites suggested that the L's can actually often be deleted.
I have two Tops right now: my book and two job/sabbatical applications. So I have just worked like the dickens on these. Then I added a little clock symbol to signify things I have to do (prepare a lecture that is on tomorrow) but that are not really any kind of priority for me personally, they are just part of my job. So there were a lot of these! I don't know where they all suddenly came from; swept under the carpet, I suspect, and allowed to throttle me with panic of a morning as I rushed in to the library, frantically pulling books and videos from the shelves.
Anyway, I tried to do all the Ts by every evening so I could cross them off my daily To-Do list. I also realise why my to-do lists so far (and I have many, many, many lists) have not worked because they were not slotted into a grand scheme of a) overall importantness (book! book! book!) and b) deadlines. If I had an important task to do by 'date in two weeks' time' (e.g. a job application), I never used to schedule time per day to do little bits of that task, working my way backwards from the deadline.
But getting used to this system has kept me very busy!! Especially as I am also addicted to the Flylady routines so have to do two lots of routine. But there is peace of mind, knowing at the end of each day that everything that needs to be done has been done, and everything that has not been done has been written down and scheduled in somewhere else. I used to wake up with anxiety and worry in the night!
Crap car and evil Dil Se stealers
The system makes no space, of course, for emergencies like the crappy shitty car bloody well breaking down yet a-fucking-gain, necessitating me sitting in the rain for 45 minutes waiting for tow-away guy and going from garage to garage, finding one that will replace a battery within less than 784 hours, and having to be jump-started all the time by tow-away guy. Still, the Hitchhikers' Guide-like message on our emergency card was rather nice: 'Don't panic' plus the number to ring. And I did have my to-do list with me so I frantically wrote my job application while sitting in the freezing waiting room of Kwik Fit Tyres!!
I was, however, flustered and had to give the lecture I had cancelled during the seminar slot and promptly left my Dil Se DVD in the DVD-player of a uni seminar room and the next day it was gone and someone has fucking made off with it! That is one of my top ten evah movies and I am annoyed!!! (*stomps foot*) *wails*
D/D = L wtf??
One strange thing that came out when I was assigning Ts, Ms and Ls is that I assigned an L to the D/D. Now that was an odd insight, seeing I have been so obsessed with that opus. Ergo: it's not been scheduled in on my daily to-do lists. So what happens the other night? I have a dream that inspired another fic in my head! Now, once I have this system under control maybe I can actually find time for a bit of L here and there. It can be L for Leisure.
Self-congratulatory paragraph (very rare for me who is usually under-self-confident
But still! My sink is so SHINY, and my house is so CLEAN, and my toilet smells of the aroma of BLEACH, and I am so BUFF because the sons and I go swimming every Saturday at 9 a.m., and I look out through the windows of my study eyrie and see my SHEETS gently swaying in the breeze, and I've got TEN THOUSANDS words written on chapter 4 of my book (*fuck*, *falls over*), and I sent off my JOB APPLICATION yesterday, and the sons did the VACUUMING today!!!! They are Flyboys!!!!
And the house smells of the scent of CAKE wot is baking in the oven, and there is also home-made BREAD on the way, and have I been replaced by an alien from a pod?????
Big Brother for Babies
Oh, and we have all in t'family been enjoying those supernanny programmes that seem to have invaded British television under various titles. It's either Big Brother for Babies or Evil Teens or SuperNanny but it's all rather mesmerising viewing. It's especially good for us parent types, because it makes us feel so smug, it's wonderful. E.g. there was one family where one of the girls was 2 1/2 hours late to school because she refused to get dressed. Now, *pats self on back*, my sons have never not got dressed for school (unless ill). They might be late because their mother is a hopeless fritterer (although not lately!!) and her car a clapped-out Golf but no matter how they whine and scream, they have always been dressed for school. *pats back some more*
Also, seeing these family problems from the outside, it becomes very clear very quickly that it's not the children who are the problem but always the parents. Which is not all that smug-making except the children in the programmes are so much worse than mine that it's smug-making after all.
Cold Turkey
Goodness me, what a long post. I've obviously got withdrawal symptoms!!!