Forum Posts Feed
Mobile analogue or hybrid organisational and time-management system
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: ‹ First < 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 >
Posted by Franz Grieser
Nov 23, 2018 at 05:56 PM
@Dr Andus
How has the system evolved that you were developing?
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 28, 2018 at 02:59 AM
Franz Grieser wrote:
>@Dr Andus
>How has the system evolved that you were developing?
Franz,
many thanks for asking (especially as it prompted me to work more on this problem).
Short answer: it didn’t.
Long answer: I tried to work with paper index cards for a few weeks to represent time blocks, but events took over, meaning a crisis occurred. I was seconded to a management project (within my university), and my system collapsed, as I needed to focus on managing a single very complex and demanding project involving many people. My tools for a while revolved around project management. I did have one analogue tool: a little notebook that I needed to capture thoughts in meetings when I was out and about (Silvine Pocket Notebook: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006O8ACCI/r ). I did learn a lot about project management, but that’s another story for another thread.
But now I need to get back to a more balanced academic life, where I need to juggle 1) research, 2) teaching, and 3) engaging with the public, which are three different types of activities.
So I’m back to dealing with the original problem. But I’ve made some progress figuring out the intellectual and practical operations involved that need to be covered by the system.
One thing I figured out is that I need to implement some kind of an internal market for my weekly (and possibly annual) time, so that the time blocks planned for each of the above three activities can be protected. I was inspired by the idea of carbon trading markets, where there is a limited amount of carbon vouchers trading in a market that in total add up to the total CO2 emissions allowed.
Basically I have decided that my total weekly work time is 40 hrs, out of which I want to spend 20 hrs on research, 15 hrs on teaching (incl. all activities associated with teaching, such as planning, marking, and any kind of admin), and 5 hrs on public engagement. I need to make progress in all three of these areas, and to some extent they represent ongoing long-term projects, which are in turn composed of multiple smaller projects.
So what I need is the ability to plan an ideal routine (a template that has time blocking with an ideal allocation of the above, which is research happening in the first 4 hrs of each day, teaching in the next 3 hrs, and public engagement in the final hour of the day. There is a 1 hr lunch break between the research block and the teaching block.
Then I need to be able to have an overlay of the actual plan, whereby e.g. I may have teaching scheduled in the morning, thus displacing the research time block, plus other events scheduled by other people, which is outside of my control.
This means I should also be able to alter my template for the given week (which thus turns into the “time block marketplace”), by reallocating my unused research time to a later time in that day or the next day, and moving the requisite teaching block forward to when it actually happened.
My most precious activity is research, so the whole system is about protecting my research time somehow, to make sure it happens, even if everyone else conspires against me and schedules my teaching or other meetings into my ideal research time. So it’s about moving 1 hr dedicated time blocks around in a 8 hrs x 5 days = 40 hrs grid. It is also about not exceeding the 40 hrs, as the rest of the time is allocated to eating, sleeping, exercise, family time, and entertainment, plus the weekend.
Another need is to have a record of the whole week, once it all happened.
It would be possible to implement the above system on paper, with the template being a photocopied A3 size paper, and the time blocks represented by 40 index cards or post-it notes. But based on my prior experience this would quickly turn into a mess, especially when things get busy, and desktop space comes at a premium (as usually computers and monitors crowd out desktop space). Plus keeping a record of it all would be challenging.
I thought of constructing an electronic and cross-platform version of this in Gingko or Google Sheets, but it turned out to be too much manual work.
Eventually I was able to construct this system in Google Calendar, though I haven’t tested it yet, as I’m on vacation. But basically I set up a separate calendar for the ideal routine template with the 20 + 15 + 5 hourly blocks for the three activities for the week. GCal allows me to display this calendar with my actual calendar as “overlay”. Then when each week starts, I should be able to move any of the hourly blocks in the template calendar around, to reflect what happened in the real day (and calendar), which should then allow me to re-adjust my real calendar to ensure that I get to protect my reallocated research time.
I should probably also come up with an annual plan, so that I could reallocate unused time blocks as “vouchers” to be used at a later week, e.g. in case I don’t do any of the 5 hr public engagement in a given week, I should roll it over to another part of the year, when it’s easier to do (and in turn move the research or teaching time forward). Perhaps I could track the balance of these time blocks (or vouchers) in a dedicate Google Sheet.
One important activity that is not represented in this system is the process of prioritising tasks every day and probably at the start of each week. This will have to be done in a separate app (WorkFlowy or Google Keep).
Google Keep is a a strong candidate actually, not only for prioritisation but for capturing todos, especially as it’s now integrated with both Google Calendar and Google Docs and Sheets, and can be toggled and viewed in a column on the right hand side of the screen, which is very handy.
I’ll report back once I’ve managed to test this system in the real world. In the meantime I’d welcome any comments or suggestions about possible alternative implementations and tools.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 28, 2018 at 08:15 AM
Thanks for the detailed answer, Dr Andus.
>One thing I figured out is that I need to implement some kind of an
>internal market for my weekly (and possibly annual) time, so that the
>time blocks planned for each of the above three activities can be
>protected. I was inspired by the idea of carbon trading markets, where
>there is a limited amount of carbon vouchers trading in a market that in
>total add up to the total CO2 emissions allowed.
>
>Basically I have decided that my total weekly work time is 40 hrs, out
>of which I want to spend 20 hrs on research, 15 hrs on teaching (incl.
>all activities associated with teaching, such as planning, marking, and
>any kind of admin), and 5 hrs on public engagement. I need to make
>progress in all three of these areas, and to some extent they represent
>ongoing long-term projects, which are in turn composed of multiple
>smaller projects.
That’s an interesting concept: Starting with “a limited amount of 40 hours per week for work” and distributing them to what needs to be done. Until now, I have gone the opposite way: What needs to be done is done - ending up with 45+ hr work weeks. For the next years I was looking for a system to stop work taking over ever bigger amounts of life time.
Now that I look at it from a different angle, it does look pretty simple. Just needs a shift in priorities… (Don’t ask, why I haven’t looked a things from this perspective).
Again: Thanks a lot for the food for thought.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 28, 2018 at 12:01 PM
Franz Grieser wrote:
>That’s an interesting concept: Starting with “a limited amount of 40
>hours per week for work” and distributing them to what needs to be done.
Depending on one’s needs, this could be extended to all hours of a week (24 hrs x 7 days), e.g. for someone who would want to protect their sleep time or exercise time or family time or the weekend.
So let’s say that on a Monday you stay an hour longer at work, costing you an hour of family time. Then you could re-allocate that hour and take it away from the last hour on Friday, so you go home an hour earlier and spend it with the family.
Using Google Calendar, all it would take is swapping those two hourly blocks in the weekly template for the week. The nice thing about GCal is that it asks you whether you want to make the change only for this event only or for all the following recurring events, meaning that you’d end up with an accurate record of this week, but next week’s (etc.) ideal pattern would remain intact.
Ultimately this is all about using a system (in my case implemented in GCal) to manage a limited resource and its specific allocations, to protect each allocation, and to impose discipline upon myself by enforcing planning, prioritisation, and reminders (which again can be set up in GCal).
This ability to display and toggle multiple calendars as overlays on each other in GCal is a really powerful tool.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 28, 2018 at 12:09 PM
But I guess the main outcome of this thread is that I gave up on the idea of making this a hybrid (analogue + digital) system, and for now the heart of it is all digital (GCal + Keep).
Having said this I still have analogue devices for data capture when I’m being mobile, such as the aforementioned paper notebook and my digital voice recorder.
For daily prioritisation and time blocking I also use the Boogie Board, when I work from home, as I have enough space to place it in front of me on my desk. Otherwise it’s done on a piece of A4 size paper.