It's clock change time in the UK this weekend - an extra hour of sleep is always a nice thing, but it means we are now officially into the "come home from work in the dark" time of year. Autumn is my favourite season, followed by winter, but something about driving to work in the dark and coming home in the dark makes work feel even more takes-all-the-time-and-energy than the rest of the year. And of course students get more unhappy about "late" classes (the latest end at 6pm - to students used to finishing school or college by 3 or 4, it is probably quite painful!). Quite a few students are on their second or third illness and starting to drag a little - yes, definitely time for clock change and late Autumn, despite the weather remaining comparatively warm.
Interesting to read that we're all not much for the highlighters - I mentioned that seeing undergrads using them inspired this topic, and to expand it was because it seemed a rather retro thing for them to be doing. This week, lets talk a bit more widely about colour - is colour important to you when it comes to stationary and the organisation of work things, or not? Do you have colour associations with particular subjects or aspects of your work? Or do you just grab the nearest folder or pen regardless of colour?
As a reminder, NEXT week is week 7, our goals review week (we planned a 13 week session ending 14th December, although we can go on an extra week if we want).
 |
| Mr Shoutypants LOVES this laser pointer cat toy (it has several different shape options - he seems to like this star and the butterfly ones best). He has developed a specific combination of meow and stance that commands me to make the prey appear so he can stalk and chase it. A blurry photo taken phone in one hand in poor light - the other hand was busy manipulating the cat toy. |
LAST WEEK'S GOALS
Daisy
Accounting
Read and comment on thesis work (3 students)
Update course outlines
Finish giant review task
Review co-authored paper
Finish grading!!
Something fun with friends
Dame Eleanor Hull
- at least 3 writing sessions (TRQ paper, think about abstracts for conferences, festschrift, how to make all this work)
- re-write grad quiz, comment on last week's in-class undergrad work, plus another if I dare assign anything else right now, grade grad quiz
- work on sample syllabus for a proposed course, also add required boilerplate to another one I mostly did last summer
- breathe!
JaneB
a) intentional movement for at least 15 minutes three days b) making a couple of times a week in addition to Inktober,
c) two gently social things (D&D hopefully)
d) keep up reading for pleasure
IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT
a) 75%+ of the weekly list of chores
b) make a plan for the shelving in the living room
c) don't make clothes worse
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
a) prepare for week 7 meetings
b) week 8 materials half done
c) limit teaching and admin to 5 hours at weekend
d) pick up graduate student applications postponed due to group paper
e) do appraisal training (new system. SIGH)
RESEARCH
a) read and comment on draft of paper for not-my-grad-student
b) read and comment on draft of paper from surprise collaboration
c) find time to work on budget planning following a meeting two weeks ago. Grrr!
d) work with lead author on revise-and-resubmit of the multi-author paper which has been ongoing for at least 5 years - get sent to rest of multi-author team.
e) confirm mock viva for Junior PhD student
Julie
2. Personal Research Plan (deadline Friday)
3. Start reading book for review
4. At least one research/writing session.
5. Self-care/fun stuff: baking, make soup, exercise, sleep, maybe do something creative, hopefully see friend at weekend.
6. Home/life admin: stock up at farm shop, take daughter for haircut, organise getting piano taken away.
Susan
2. Get a bit more of paper written for next week.
3. Set up brown bags, schedule seminars for next semester
4. Clear journals off my desk
5. Keep sorting stuff, getting rid of what I can
6. Enjoy trip to city, time with friends, and even the committee meeting
7. Keep up with exercise (cycle x 3, yoga and weights x2)
8. Make sure I keep sleeping
I love Mr Shoutypants' pose!
ReplyDeleteI like to have pretty colours around, but don't have any strong associations other than using red to mark deadlines or occasionally to flag something important in notes. I do like red, so have had diaries with red covers before, though this year's is a mint green colour (daughter's choice).
Last week:
1. Finish the damn abstracts (deadline theoretically today) - YES
2. Personal Research Plan (deadline Friday) - YES
3. Start reading book for review - YES (but not very far in)
4. At least one research/writing session. - YES (if about an hour counts)
5. Self-care/fun stuff: baking, make soup, exercise, sleep, maybe do something creative, hopefully see friend at weekend. - YES (apple crumble muffins, apple and blackberry cake, celery soup, run x 3, pilates x 1, more sleep than usual except for Tuesday night, since son returned from trip at 4.30 am, fused glass workshop this afternoon, coffee and lunch with friend and our daughters).
6. Home/life admin: stock up at farm shop, take daughter for haircut, organise getting piano taken away. - YES x 3.
Also: had coffee with student who was in my classes two years ago, is now on our Master's, but still asks to meet with me; went to a talk for Black History Month, had meeting about conference; dealt with teenage break-up with boyfriend (her choice, but still involved a fair few tears).
So not a very productive week workwise! This week is half-term, so not setting too many goals:
1. Meeting for final review conference programme.
2. Finish reading book, write and submit review.
3. At least one day research/writing.
4. Self-care: exercise, keep up with better sleep patterns, read.
5. House/life admin: renew son's passport, thank you present for guitar teacher, start planning trip away in February.
That sounds like an excellent week!
DeleteThat sounds like a very busy week, even if not much on the stuff you really want to work on. And I can imagine the drama of teenage break-up with boyfriend. Everything is high on drama at that age!
DeleteYour fun, life, and Also categories sound very good! And I must say I'm impressed by a teen girl who manages to initiate a breakup.
DeleteOh, poor teen! I mean, I'm sure that the breakup was a good idea--they usually are, if one party wants one--but it's still hard, of course. It's good that you were able to be there with her. (And I second DEH's being impressed with her for initiating the breakup; that's a real achievement.)
DeleteAdding a cheer for teen! Tough event but for good outcome in the end.
DeleteYou got a lot of things done, hope this week was calmer!
One of my previous organisational systems, back when a lot more was on paper, used colour to reduce the overwhelm of desk piles and filing cabinets - I used colour file folders and envelope folders to organise all the paper into containers, and it cut down the number of files I needed to check for a particular thing. I had blue for teaching, green for active research, orange for grant applications, yellow for professional organisations and conferences, and pink for writing-only research tasks like refereeing or writing a review article. Those were the base colours that came in the multipacks of file folders back when we could order stationary from a catalogue. I still use those colours to some extent, for example to colour code the flags in email or folders in the deeply annoying cloud storage system the university insists we use, which deliberately and actively seems to try to misfile things - I don't think it believes in folder hierarchies, you're just supposed to search files by name. Sigh! At the moment that's not a thing, but I do use colour to help organise my D&D stuff which includes quite a lot of notes on index cards, and different card colours are different kinds of information. Oh, and I'm self conscious about red pen because there was a phase when we were told not to use it because it made students feel bad, I prefer to comment on work with green or purple ink and I prefer to write in black or sepia, blue biro is just Not The Vibe (at the moment. Nothing is really fixed!).
ReplyDeleteLAST WEEK'S GOALS:
SELF-CARE:
a) intentional movement for at least 15 minutes three days no, not quite sure what went wrong
b) making a couple of times a week in addition to Inktober I did some crochet during meetings which sort of counts
c) two gently social things (D&D hopefully) one
d) keep up reading for pleasure yes, and found a delightful new book by a new to me author (Flint in the Bones by Eva St John - basic concept, some magic spilled into a map drawer and now the past and present of Norwich come together in unpredictable and dangerous ways)
IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT
a) 75%+ of the weekly list of chores yes
b) make a plan for the shelving in the living room haha no
c) don't make clothes worse made clothes worse
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
a) prepare for week 7 meetings no, oops
b) week 8 materials half done yes
c) limit teaching and admin to 5 hours at weekend yes
d) pick up graduate student applications postponed due to group paper did a next step
e) do appraisal training (new system. SIGH) yes, and went to a Stupid Meeting, and failed to appropriately pretend to believe all the "this time it will be different and effective and supportive" lies around the new system
RESEARCH
a) read and comment on draft of paper for not-my-grad-student yes - it was unexpectedly good and complete, which is nice
b) read and comment on draft of paper from surprise collaboration yes - was not very good, but hopefully I made supportive comments, and the data they're writing about are very interesting
c) find time to work on budget planning following a meeting two weeks ago. Grrr! still no
d) work with lead author on revise-and-resubmit of the multi-author paper which has been ongoing for at least 5 years - get sent to rest of multi-author team. yes, this ended up taking rather a lot of time, but it did get sent out this week for comment - it has to be back a week on Monday
e) confirm mock viva for Junior PhD student mostly, after a lot of faffing.
NEXT WEEK:
I'm tired. It's partly recovery from all the drama of the previous weeks (I get very frustrated with the kind of people who cause drama, are energised by the drama, and sail on from the drama with no concern - because I just don't work like that!). Partly not eating well and not sleeping great. Partly just worry about... all sorts of irrelevant and relevant things. I'd love an off switch!
SELF-CARE:
Deletea) intentional movement for at least 15 minutes three days
b) making a couple of times a week in addition to Inktober,
c) two gently social things (D&D hopefully)
d) keep up reading for pleasure
e) eye clinic appointment, book GP appointment for medication review.
IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT
a) 75%+ of the weekly list of chores
b) make a plan for the shelving in the living room
c) don't make clothes worse
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
a) prepare for week 7 meetings
b) week 8 materials prepare other half and start week 9 if possible (because week 7 and 8 have little time for preparation)
c) limit teaching and admin to 5 hours at weekend
d) wrap up graduate student applications postponed due to group paper
RESEARCH
a) find time to work on budget planning following a meeting two weeks ago. Grrr!
b) confirm mock viva for Junior PhD student
I think this point in the term is really hard. People are sick, they are tired, and we have been going for 8 weeks without a break. But good for getting the paper out to the collaborators, and for the student paper being good!
DeleteOh, lordy, those people who are energized by drama! Who even are they and why do they appear in the lives of people who just want to get on with things in peace?
DeleteGood luck navigating the drama, that is so draining!
DeleteGlad the student paper turned out to be good, nice when surprises are pleasant!
I am incredibly impressed that you got that picture of Shoutypants, who will certainly kill that star in about 2 seconds.
ReplyDeleteColors: I'm not very systematic, but I like them. When I highlight on electronic documents, I mostly use yellow, but that's just habit. There are times when I use other colors for other stuff: the next one is almost always the light blue, and then the pink. So when writing the book, anything I had to add/fix was yellow, images were blue.
For writing, I like black pens, but like JaneB, when I still marked on paper I used green which was supposed to suggest growth. But blue is actually my favorite color, so I'm not sure why I don't use it more!
How I did:
1. Send out draft of Big Stupid Report YES
2. Get a bit more of paper written for next week. FULL DRAFT DONE
3. Set up brown bags, schedule seminars for next semester YES/ NO
4. Clear journals off my desk YES
5. Keep sorting stuff, getting rid of what I can YES. And the piles on my desk have been attacked.
6. Enjoy trip to city, time with friends, and even the committee meeting YES, but had to return early to finish paper
7. Keep up with exercise (cycle x 3, yoga and weights x2) 4/1/2
8. Make sure I keep sleeping MOSTLY
AND ALSO: dealt with first set of copyeditor queries on Famous Author
This all feels a bit like TRQ, but I got prepared for the meeting, the meeting was successful, and we all agreed that it was annoying and stupid that we had to do the work but we actually all agreed on our recommendations for fixing the bad proposal. I had fun with my friend in the Big City, and even got to a jazz concert on Thursday night. Alas, I was SO far behind on my paper for this coming Thursday that I did not stay, as intended, until Saturday. I just needed the time to catch up with life. Which I did, because I am more or less now caught up with life. I have some stuff on my desk that still needs to be filed, but the piles are MUCH less intimidating.
This coming week I leave Wednesday for a conference, so very limited goals.
Goals for this week:
1. Finish paper/ set up slides
2. Schedule talks for spring
3. Get grad student TA assignments sorted out
4. Send out revised draft of report that we shouldn't have had to write
5. Have fun at conference
I am totally behind your goal #5!
DeleteAlso: do we need t-shirts with a gloating Shoutypants boasting that he CAUGHT THE RED STAR? Yes, I think we do. They could be our official Writing Uniform.
DeleteSigning up for T-shirt!
DeleteSo glad trip for report was worth it and had some good fringe benefits. Enjoy the conference!
I belatedly realized that my color-coding of dead languages might be considered highlighting, though I do it in pencil rather than ink: blue for subject and main verb, pink/red for direct object, green for genitive case, orange for ablative, yellow for dative. There's no particular reason for these colors, just what I picked up when I started doing this.
ReplyDeleteI prefer to write in black, and correct papers in green or purple, sometimes teal. I have a whole array of colors for marking up drafts of my own papers, partly for critical commentary, partly for tracing related ideas. Apparently the color of notebooks also affects whether I write in them. I have some turquoise Moleskines in a shade that is pretty enough in the abstract but somehow when it comes to using them it sets my teeth on edge! I had to use a lot of washi tape to make them usable. I'm doing better with a royal blue for now (though its pages are lined rather than dotted or squared, which I prefer). Red is also encouraging. I should probably just get black and add washi tape to make it more interesting. I used to do something similar to JaneB's color-coding of file folders, not at work but at home.
How I did:
- swim x2 or x3, cardio x3, weights x2, yoga x5: YES (swam twice, only about a mile for the week, but much better than no pool)
- at least 3 writing sessions (TRQ paper, think about abstracts for conferences, festschrift, how to make all this work): TWO. It was a meeting-heavy week.
- re-write grad quiz, comment on last week's in-class undergrad work, plus another if I dare assign anything else right now, grade grad quiz: NO, YES, YES, NO: I realized that if I dropped a quiz and delayed the ME quiz, I could use the one that I was going to have to re-write, so I did that.
- work on sample syllabus for a proposed course, also add required boilerplate to another one I mostly did last summer: NO, YES (actually I think I did this the week before last and forgot to delete this bullet, but I'm willing to take the credit again!)
- breathe! SOME.
ALSO: cut my hair, finally mailed late birthday present to great-nephew, did presentation to important people/potential donors, created an activity for undergrads that they both enjoyed and (I hope) learned from, spent an hour on the garden (harvesting the last of the chard and some herbs, cutting back dying peonies, ripping out tomato and cucumber vines that are dead or dying; no real weeding, alas).
New goals:
- swim x2 or x3, cardio x3, weights x2, yoga x5
- annual online trainings (TRQ at this point)
- at least 3 writing sessions
- revise undergrad syllabus to cut or cram in reading, work out days for final "experience" work, grade grad quiz
- more work on sample syllabus for a proposed course
- clear my own Chair of Doom (I did laundry; why won't the clothes put themselves away?
- acquire some sort of Halloween decorations: at least a pumpkin or two
Lots of extra stuff! And garden care is always good!
DeleteI LOVE the colour-coding for dead languages, that is so cool!
One of the really great things about this group is getting to see a bit of how other people write and research and do things in fields I know nothing about :)
True! That is definitely one of the many, many worthwhile things about this group!
DeleteThe colo(u)r-coding is a way of assisting with reading, without translating the whole thing. I hope someday to move on to just reading . . .
You remind me I used to do something like that back when I was learning ancient languages as a teen - helped a lot with knowing where to start or making informed guesses at sentences!
DeleteColour is not something I have any strong feelings about. For pens I tend to grab whatever is closest, and for marking I use any bright non-blue/black pens I have just so I can easily see the marks. I had a system for folders but it did not last except for the accounting folders, they are always the bright yellow ones.
ReplyDeleteThis week’s goals
People-managing issues ONGOING
Accounting DONE
Read and comment on thesis work (3 students) DONE
Update course outlines DONE
Finish giant review task DONE and only a couple of days late
Review co-authored paper ONGOING
Finish grading!! SORT OF
Something fun with friends YES
It was an awful week. People-managing is insanely stressful and is going to be ongoing for a while. At least our HR office has been very helpful and supportive on all sides and my department head is awesome, so not dealing with it solo. But it sucked up a whole week, and will continue. I actually drove out to a small regional industry conference for a day just to get out of the office and have 5 hours each way in the car, all alone. The rain and dark and endless construction turned that into more like 7 hours but it was still worth it for today’s conference stuff, hope drive back tonight is better. I have a student conference I have to go to on the weekend, several of mine are presenting so they will take most of my time for the rest of the week when I get back.
This week’s goals
People-managing issues
Student posters and presentations
Paper review
Work on co-authored paper
Well . . . lots of DONE but a week with both accounting (DONE though it is) and ongoing people issues does sound like a lot! And if it pushes you to 10-14 hours driving just to be alone for awhile, that's even more of a lot! I hope this week is better.
DeleteA very long drive for a good day, so overall worth it even if slightly idiotic on paper!
DeleteUgh people issues...
DeleteConfession: I'm questioning my pursuit of TLQ right now. Not that I don't love this group! Because I do! I just feel that I've been neglecting it--and also that I haven't been doing anything that isn't pretty much urgent/required. I've taken over as Undergraduate Program Director while my colleague is on medical leave for the rest of the year, and am also stepping in as chair of one of her graduate student committees; plus, I dunno, there's just a lot of stuff! I spend nearly all of my time on service/admin, and it's a relief, really, not to also have to worry about research and writing. *But* I think that it would be good for me to dip back in to my research, just a little tiny bit, too.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Read ch. 3 and 4 of the dissertation - DONE
2. Run event and get organized for colleague's service/admin position - DONE
3. Final (??? I hope) edits to book MS--I just got another email with some very fiddly questions that I need to answer - YES, DONE! They were quick
4. Gift for baby shower - YES
5. 35 pages of Italian, keep up with workouts - YES
This week:
Is almost over.
1. Write rec for friend on the market, trying to flee her terrible state
2. Get through the rest of the week, which is now almost over
3. Begin (re?)reading something towards the essay that's due in July and that I'd like to get a little start on in January
Much empathy on the feeling of TLQ questioning - you have SO MUCH going on that is crowding out research and writing. But... maybe think of seasons and different seasons getting different emphasis. Maybe TLQ for you this season is purely keeping sane with healthy habit things, fun things, breaks or good distractions from the rest? No rule that says TLQ cannot adapt to changing circumstances! I feel like I'm at the level of one or maybe two "researchy" things every week at the moment, but those as still worth it.
DeleteGood luck, and hang in there!
I think Daisy is wise! You're both doing admin things now, so it makes sense that a lot of your daily life is TRQ (nature of the role!), but you still have TLQ things to consider.
DeleteIt's really hard to step up into administrative responsibilities especially without planning! personally I think anything which doesn't have to be done TODAY is TLQ - that's partly the ADHD part of my brain which only really handles time as "now" and "sometime in the future" - a lot of my anxiety around things like calendars and diaries and leaving early for appointments and setting alarms is because, in my brain, everything not today is just a comfortable fluffy flock of future - making those things concrete and ordered takes active, ongoing work. Hence many of the goals I bring to this group are things which need to get done this _week_ but don't have a specific time they have to happen, or which are trying to build a habit - so I don't use it properly but it is still hugely useful to me!
Delete