Tag: scheduling
Schedule personal time first, work second
Most academics make the mistake of scheduling work first and trying to fit life around it. Discover why reversing this approach is key to achieving better academic work life balance. Learn how prioritising personal commitments in your schedule can lead to more focused and productive work hours.
Strategic scholarly retreats
Strategic scholarly retreats offer academics a chance to step back from daily pressures and focus on career planning. These retreats, whether a full day or a few hours, provide time for reflection on research goals, teaching methods, and professional development. Regular retreats can lead to more impactful research, effective teaching, and a fulfilling academic career.
Always busy but no progress
In academia, it’s common to feel perpetually busy while at the same time, not making any meaningful progress. True productivity comes from establishing a steady rhythm of shipping important work, not just completing a high volume of tasks. Building and maintaining positive momentum is key to sustained progress.
Leverage your peak productivity hours
You only have 3-4 hours of peak cognitive productivity per day. Identify when you feel most focused and protect that time for demanding tasks. Batch easier activities during lower energy periods. Tracking energy levels, prioritising tasks, creating routines, taking breaks, and guarding peak times can help maximise your limited productive hours.
Thinking with others
Explore the concept of reading academic texts as a process of thinking with others, as a way of interpreting their writing.
Email-free mornings: The simplest productivity tip you’ll ever see
Stop letting your inbox dictate the outcomes of your day by aiming for at least 2 hours of email-free mornings.
Learning something new takes a lot of effort
The next time you’re putting yourself under pressure for not meeting expectations, remember that learning takes effort. Be kind to yourself.
It’s not your job to read everything
Information management is about improving the quality of information in my stream, not creating an infinite list that I need to finish.
Lazy productivity
A productivity approach where you tailor your environment so that the easiest, most natural action aligns with your goals. By doing so, even when taking the path of least resistance, it contributes to your overall objectives.
Meetings should enhance your productivity
Meetings should enhance your productivity, not impede it. Be choosy (if you can) about the meetings you attend or schedule.
Reduce mental fatigue with task-batching
Task-batching helps academics overcome the mental fatigue of constant context-switching. Instead of multitasking between emails, meetings, and lesson planning, group similar tasks together and tackle them in dedicated time blocks. This simple approach creates the mental space needed for meaningful academic work.
Start your week with admin to avoid feeling overwhelmed
Deliberately dedicating Mondays to admin tasks in academia can lead to a more productive week. By containing administrative work to one day, you create mental space and uninterrupted time blocks for meaningful academic work while reducing the anxiety of scattered administrative responsibilities throughout the week.