The aim of this course was to design a fixed working schedule that’s planned effectively, with protected time to complete the rest of this course.
You were going to do this by achieving the following objectives:
- Establish a fixed working schedule
- Define the different tasks in your working context
- Allocate tasks to specific blocks of time
- Batch related tasks into specific days
- Use weekly reviews to plan more effectively
Overview of lessons
You started the course by defining a fixed working schedule and making a commitment to only working within those hours. By recognising the finite limits of your time you’re forced to plan for how the necessary work will fit into fixed schedule. This is the first step in taking a proactive approach to defining the limits of your working life.
Next, you analysed the different tasks that make up the work you do, and reviewed different strategies for dealing with those tasks. Some tasks are never-ending (like email), others can be delegated, some need to be done urgently while others, though important, can be set aside for now. Recognising what kind of task it is allows you to plan for it more effectively.
The third lesson introduced time-blocking as a way to allocate specific tasks to specific periods of time in your schedule. You can’t afford to arrive at work, open your email and take it from there. We allocate time for meetings, so why not for email? If writing is important to you, make sure that you have writing time in your schedule. If you have marking to get through, allocate time to it. The same is true for reading, having lunch, preparing course materials, and even thinking.
Day-theming is a strategy to ensure that you include tasks across all relevant domains of your practice in a typical week. While there needs to be some variation in each day (it’s rare that you can work on an article all day), the idea is that each week will have at least one day focused on a key area of your academic work. Depending on your context, the exact distribution of these themes may change, but in principle, it means you end the week having made progress across all domains of your workload.
Finally, you went through the process of conducting weekly reviews. Wrapping up your working week with a review means that you can go home without the psychological baggage of the open loops that cause anxiety and stress. It means looking back and recognising the work you’ve done, and creating space to plan for the next session, whether that’s tomorrow or next week.
Bibliography
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- Burkeman, O. (2014). This column will change your life: Precrastination. The Guardian.
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- Drucker, P. F. (2006). The effective executive: The definitive guide to getting the right things done. HarperCollins.
- Fried, J. & Hansson, D.H. (2018). It doesn’t have to be crazy at work. HarperCollins.
- Laoyan, S. (2022). How task batching can increase your productivity at work. Asana blog.
- Manson, M. (2017). How to be more productive by working less. Observer.
- Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing.
- Newport, C. (2022). Fixed schedule productivity. Study Hacks blog.
- 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.