Day-theming

Lesson overview

Objective: Allocate related tasks to specific days

Summary: Day-theming is a flexible approach to organising academic work that helps you maintain progress across different responsibilities without feeling overwhelmed. Instead of frantically juggling multiple priorities each day, you create intentional patterns that align with your natural rhythms and institutional requirements.

Key habits:

• Regular pattern recognition of work rhythms and energy levels
• Intentional task batching by theme
• Flexible boundary setting around themed blocks
• Weekly reflection and adjustment of themes

Introduction

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.

Annie Dillard (2013)

One of the biggest challenges being an academic is that there are so many projects to move forward. You need to teach and set assessments, mark assignments, attend meetings, conduct research, secure funding, contribute to your professional community, supervise postgraduate students, and provide input on reports. And then there’s email. How do you ensure that you’re making progress in all the areas of scholarship that you’re responsible for?

Set aside specific days for related tasks

Day-theming offers a structured approach to handling the diverse responsibilities of academic life. By allocating specific categories of work to different days, you create intentional patterns that support consistent progress across all areas of your scholarly practice.

The principle is straightforward: designate primary focus areas for each day while maintaining flexibility for urgent matters. For example, concentrating administrative tasks on Mondays doesn’t preclude addressing time-sensitive teaching preparation, but it does establish a clear default for that day’s priorities.

Here’s how I structure my week during teaching terms:

Mondays: Administrative focus - process departmental tasks and clear operational items to create space for the week ahead

Tuesdays: Teaching emphasis - align with scheduled teaching blocks to include preparation, student feedback, and curriculum development

Wednesdays: Research activities - dedicate time to postgraduate supervision, grant writing, and data analysis, with flexibility to expand research time when deadlines approach

Thursdays: Service and contribution - engage in peer review, committee work, and professional community activities

Fridays: Protected scholarly time - reserve for deep thinking, reading, and writing, with minimal meetings and a structured weekly review

The goal isn’t to create rigid divisions but to establish sustainable patterns that reduce context-switching and support meaningful progress across all academic responsibilities. This approach helps ensure steady advancement in each area of your scholarly work while maintaining professional effectiveness.

Day-theming alternatives

While the traditional approach to day-theming assigns different categories of academic work to specific days of the week, there are other ways to create rhythm and structure in your academic life. Here are some alternative approaches that academics have used successfully to create sustainable and productive workflows.

Energy-based theming

Match your work to your natural energy patterns throughout the day:

High-energy mornings (08:00-12:00):

• Reserve these peak hours for writing manuscripts, analysing data, or developing research proposals
• When your mind is fresh, tackle work that requires creative thinking and complex problem-solving
• Schedule writing sessions first, before the day’s distractions begin

Social mid-day period (12:00-15:00):

• Leverage your natural tendency to be more communicative during these hours
• Schedule student consultations, team meetings, and collaborative work
• Teaching during these hours often feels more natural and engaging

Administrative wind-down (15:00-17:00):

• Use the natural energy dip of late afternoon for lighter tasks that still need focused attention
• Process email, update your task list, or organise research notes
• These tasks help create a sense of completion without requiring peak mental performance

Location-based theming

Structure your week around where you work:

Main campus days:

• Emphasise face-to-face interactions
• Schedule back-to-back meetings with colleagues
• Run research team sessions and handle department responsibilities
• Being physically present enables spontaneous conversations that can build stronger relationships

Home office days:

• Create space for deep work
• With no commute time and fewer interruptions, perfect for academic writing, grant applications, or curriculum development
• Work in a familiar environment that supports focused attention

Research lab days:

• Combine hands-on work with mentoring
• Supervise experiments, guide research assistants, and conduct team training
• The change in environment helps maintain enthusiasm and engagement with practical research work

Project-based theming

Dedicate specific days to major projects:

Dedicated project days:

• Maintain momentum on major research initiatives
• Focus entirely on one project’s deliverables, from data analysis to stakeholder communications
• This deep immersion helps maintain context and reduces mental switching costs

Core task blocks:

• 30-60 minutes at start/end of day ensure nothing falls through the cracks
• Handle essential communications and administrative duties without letting them dominate your schedule

Floating day:

• Provides flexibility for emerging priorities or unexpected opportunities
• This built-in buffer helps maintain calm productivity when urgent matters arise

Cyclical theming

Align your themes with academic cycles:

Teaching-intensive periods:

• Align with term time, grouping lectures, grading, curriculum development, and student support
• This concentrated focus helps maintain teaching quality while preserving energy for other responsibilities

Research blocks:

• During term breaks, allow for sustained focus on writing and analysis
• Use these quieter periods to make significant progress on long-term research goals

Grant writing seasons:

• Acknowledge the cyclical nature of funding opportunities
• Dedicate focused periods to proposal development while maintaining essential teaching and service commitments

These examples demonstrate that effective time management isn’t about forcing yourself into a rigid schedule—it’s about creating intentional rhythms that work with your natural patterns, institutional requirements, and professional goals.

Question

Pause and reflect

Day-theming doesn’t mean rigidly compartmentalising your work. For example, just because Monday is your “admin day” doesn’t mean you’ll ignore emails on other days, or that you can’t write if inspiration strikes. And of course, if your head of school needs an urgent meeting on your designated research day, you’ll need to accommodate that. Day-theming is about creating helpful defaults, not immovable barriers.

You’ll also encounter structural challenges that affect your themes. Teaching blocks might be scheduled across multiple days, large faculty meetings could disrupt your planned deep work time, and some weeks will be dominated by marking or grant deadlines. The key is viewing your themes as flexible guidelines that help you maintain progress across all your responsibilities, while being realistic about institutional demands and cyclical pressures in academic life.

Activity

This four-week implementation plan helps you develop a sustainable day-theming practice that works with your natural rhythms and institutional requirements.

Four-week day-theming implementation plan

Download the template [link to be added]

Week 1: Observe and document

• Track your current work patterns for one week
• When are you most energetic? What days have fixed commitments?
• What tasks naturally cluster together?
• Note which tasks drain your energy and which energise you
• Identify your most common interruptions and urgent requests
• Document your peak productive periods

Week 2: Design your approach

• Review your observations and choose a day-theming style that fits your patterns (e.g., traditional categorical, energy-based, location-based, or project-based)
• Create initial theme assignments that work with your fixed commitments
• Identify potential challenges and develop contingency plans
• Set up calendar blocks to support your themes

Week 3: Test and implement

• Start with a “light” version of your chosen system - perhaps theming just 2-3 days
• Keep a brief daily note about what worked and what didn’t
• Pay attention to how you handle interruptions and urgent requests
• Notice when and why you deviate from your themes

Week 4: Reflect and refine

• Review your implementation notes
• What patterns emerged? Which themes felt natural? Where did you struggle?
• Adjust your themes based on real-world experience
• Create a sustainable version you can maintain long-term

Bonus: Use your weekly review to track theme effectiveness over time. Consider keeping a “theme journal” for the first month to document insights and adjustments.

Key takeaways

• Intentional time allocation: Day-theming is a strategic approach to managing academic workload by dedicating specific days to related categories of work. This isn’t about rigidly excluding other tasks, but about deliberately creating focused time for different scholarly responsibilities. By allocating chunks of time to administration, teaching, research, and service on different days, academics can ensure meaningful progress across all areas of their professional life while reducing context-switching and mental fatigue.
• Flexibility is key: Day-theming is not a strict, immutable system. Academic life is dynamic, and your day themes should adapt to changing semester schedules, unexpected meetings, and shifting priorities. The core principle is being intentional and proactive about time management while maintaining the flexibility to adjust when necessary.
• Holistic workflow design: Day-theming is more than just a scheduling technique—it’s a holistic approach to designing your academic workflow. By consciously structuring your week around themed days, you create a rhythm that supports deep work, reduces cognitive load, and helps prevent burnout. The underlying goal is to reach the end of each week knowing you’ve made meaningful progress across all dimensions of your academic responsibilities, without feeling overwhelmed or scattered.

Resources

• Dillard, A. (2013). The writing life. HarperPerennial.
• Scroggs, L. (n.d.). The complete guide to time blocking. Todoist blog.
• Vardy, M. (2016). Why theming my days has made me a better dad. Productivityist blog.

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Share your experience

Do you have any experiences or insights that you’d like to share with others? What habits and routines have you implemented in your own practice that have helped in this area? Do you have any questions about your specific context that are not addressed in this lesson? Please leave a comment for other participants in the field below.