Start the Semester off Right: Make a Weekly Template

How are you feeling about starting the semester?



One strategy I find useful to allay anxieties about the semester is to take some time and plan out how my workweek will look. Doing this allows me to feel as if I am in control of my semester and makes it clear that it is possible to have a cool and calm semester. (I explain the importance of taking control here.)

The end of summer usually involves a shift in the daily and weekly workflow for academics. During the summer, most of us have fewer commitments and many of us do not teach. Personally, I have always made a point to avoid the lure of extra income and not teach during the summer. As for administrative responsibilities, these accrue as one advances in one’s career. However, I try to keep those to a minimum during the summer months. Because of my research interests, I also usually spend nearly all of my summer outside the United States.

This past summer, I traveled to Guatemala and Mexico - which also explains why I have not been posting to this blog all summer.

This August, once again, I find myself looking towards the fall semester and thinking about how I am going to organize my time. My children start school on Monday, and I teach my first class on September 4. This gives me some time to get used to the rhythm before the semester starts in full force. During this time, I plan to try out a new schedule and see how it works for me.

The idea is that I will create a weekly schedule that has my fixed appointments for the semester and also carves out time for things I need to do but could do at any time: prepare class, read, write, exercise, eat, and respond to emails.

Kerry Ann Rockqeumore calls this schedule your “skeleton.” She suggests making one each week. Mine does not look like a skeleton at all, so I prefer to refer to it as a template. I find it useful to make a template at the beginning of the semester and setting up repeating appointments in your calendar so that your template is ready each week when you decide on your specific goals.

How to make a weekly template

When making my weekly template for the semester, the first thing I think about is teaching, as teaching has a fixed schedule and I need to set aside time to teach and to prepare for class. I am fortunate to only be teaching one class this semester. Thus, I block out the time I will teach as well as a few hours to read and prepare for class. I am teaching a graduate seminar and we will be reading a book each week. Thus, I need to set aside time to ensure I finish reading the book. I will have time to read for this class in the evenings, after the kids go to bed, but, from experience, I know I also have to set aside time during the day to read and think about the books before class.

The next thing up is office hours. I have set those on Thursday afternoons.

Up next is writing. I know I write best in the mornings. My children will leave the house by 8:30am each morning. And, my goal is to write for two hours each morning. From experience, I know I need to set aside two and a half hours in order to get in two hours of writing, so I will set aside 8:30am to 11:00am each morning. Once I do that, I remember that I need to be more efficient on Wednesdays when I teach, so I cut Wednesdays back to 10:30 and give myself some extra time to prepare class.

I need to go up to campus on Wednesdays to teach and on Thursdays for office hours. I usually bike to campus, and it takes me about 45 minutes. So, I set aside an hour to get to campus on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Biking to and from campus also counts as exercise for those two days. Once I do that, I remember that I often don’t finish all of my administrative tasks during office hours on Thursdays. So, I decide I should go to campus on Fridays as well and take care of business. I can use Friday afternoons to write reports, submit receipts, review materials, and clean out my email inbox.

We all know how time-consuming email can be. So, I set aside another hour before lunch each day to take care of email. If I focus on email and avoid being sucked into the Internet vortex, this should be enough time.

Then, I remember I also need to set aside some time to read. As I mentioned earlier, I do find time to read in the evenings. However, I also need time during the day to download articles, order books, and select what I will read. So, I decide to set aside Monday afternoons to select readings and to read for the week.

I also need to get in my daily exercise. I will get in enough exercise from Wednesdays to Fridays by biking ten miles back and forth to work. So, on Mondays and Tuesdays, I set aside an hour for exercise each day.

I color-coded my schedule so that I can see at a glance how much time I am dedicating to writing (red), admin (green), teaching (orange), and self-care (purple).

The Weekly Template is a Model, not a Mandate

As I make this schedule, I know from experience that probably no week will go exactly like this. However, it helps me to have a structure. It also is a reminder that I am very busy and have lots of things to do, even though I am only teaching one course.

Inevitably, someone will ask to have a meeting with me during one of the times I have set aside for something else. That will be fine, though. Having this visualization of my ideal week will allow me to see what I need to move around in order to make time for a meeting.

If I need to have a one-on-one meeting, my first suggestion will be that the person come to my office hours. If that does not work, I have also set aside time on Thursday and Friday afternoons to meet. If neither of those times work, I will move things around. For example, if I need to meet on Tuesday afternoon, I will have to spend some time on Monday preparing for class. Or, if we meet on Friday at 11, I will have to get an early start on my writing and pack my lunch to take to the office. If the meeting is casual, I can suggest we meet for lunch any day of the week.

If I am asked to join a group meeting, I will suggest that the meeting happen on Thursday or Friday afternoon. My next preferred time will be a different afternoon. As usual, I will do my best not to schedule meetings during my writing time, as I know from experience that mornings are my most productive times for writing.



What about you? What will your ideal week look like? Do you find making this kind of schedule helpful?

How to Take Control of Your Email in a Few Simple Steps

Do you spend too much time on email? Are you looking for a system that academics can use to manage email? In this blog post, I describe a system that will allow you to take control of your email.

Email is an amazing way to communicate with people around the world. But, it also can be a time-sink. Academics usually have to spend a lot of time on email. This amount of time tends to increase over the course of your career as you accumulate more students, colleagues, publications, and service.

A couple of years ago, I searched around for a system that would allow me to manage my email more effectively. I had thousands of emails in my inbox, and felt that my email was getting out of control. I found this post by Leo Babauta immensely helpful. The steps I describe below are based on this approach, but tailored for academics.

First, I describe what you can do right now to relieve an overflowing inbox. Then, I explain how to develop a system that keeps your inbox under control.

If your email inbox is overflowing, here are three steps you can take to gain control of it.

Three Steps to an Empty Inbox

1. Create three folders: 1) Temporary; 2) Archive; and 3) Action.
2. Take all of the emails that are more than 30 days old and place them in the “Temporary” folder. You will deal with these later, at your leisure.
3. Start at the top of your inbox and make a decision about each email in your inbox. If you need to do something in response to the email, place it in the “Action” folder. If not, it goes into “Archive.”

If you ever find yourself with spare time, you can return to the “Temporary” folder and attend to any important emails in there. However, if a month has already passed, you probably do not need to respond to them. And, if you do need to respond, you likely will get a reminder about whatever it is you need to do.

If you are using your university’s email system and are running out of space, one idea is to create a gmail account and have a copy of every email sent to you sent to your gmail account. That way, you have a record of every email you receive in an easily-searchable database. If you do this, you can delete emails from your university account instead of archiving them, as they can be automatically archived at your gmail address.

Only place items in your “Action” folder that actually require you to do something. Let’s say you receive an email reminding you about an event. If that event is not yet on your calendar, you can put it in “Action” until it’s on your calendar. Once you have it on your calendar, it is no longer an “Action” item. Now, it is on your calendar – which is a much better reminder system than your “Action” folder.

Once you have a nice, clean, empty, zen inbox, it’s time for you to implement a system to deal with email on a daily basis.

How to Manage Your Email on a Daily Basis

1. Don’t check email first thing in the morning. One of the best ways to avoid email turning into a time sink is to do other important things first.
2. When you first check email for the day, process each item in your inbox. Emails should fall into one of these categories:
1. Respond immediately: Emails that require a quick response “Yes, I can review that article.” Or “No, I can’t make that committee meeting.” If it takes less than a minute to respond, answer the email. Then, archive the email.
2. Action items: These are items that require a bit more effort. Perhaps you have to check your schedule to see when you can deliver a talk next semester. That might take a bit of planning and though. Place these emails into your action folder.
3. Archive: These are emails with information that may or may not be important. If it’s interesting or relevant, read the email. If not, archive it.
4. Other folders: Ideally, I would have just those three categories. However, I also have two other folders that are more or less useful. I am the chair of a major committee, and find it easier to place all emails related to that committee into one folder named “Committee.” I also frequently receive news articles and updates related to immigration that I want to read. I place these in a folder called “To read.” I have yet to actually read any of them, but it makes me feel better to have that folder.
3. Quit your email. Once you have processed all the emails that came in over the night, and responded to the most pressing ones, quit your email program and focus on something else you need to do, like prep class or write that grant proposal. It is not a good idea to have your email on all the time as it is distracting.
4. Check your email periodically during the day (fewer times is better). Set aside at least one of those times as the time you attend to your Action items. You see, the action folder will work a lot better if you know for sure that you are going to do your action items at some point during the day.
5. At the end of the week, make sure that your inbox and action box are empty. Your inbox definitely should be empty. Ideally, your action box will be empty too. However, I often let emails sit in their for a while because I am making a decision about something or have yet to write that letter of recommendation.

I recognize this system is not perfect, but it is better than no system! What about you? How do you organize your email?