My best advice is to do what works for you. Think about your other commitments, your habits, and how and when you work best, and all will be well.

In general terms, I'd advise against too much fragmentation of your time. I'd also suggest you specifically allocate some non-prime time for the drudgery part of the work: keeping your email under control, managing your paperwork, all that stuff. Get it done when your brain is at its best, and save the sparky times for creative work on your thesis.

One of the things about being an academic is that you're often negotiating very different temporalities: in the teaching environment, you might be planning down to the 10-minute span, and dealing with many different people. In research, you're dealing with a time scale of months or years, and this requires a different kind of headspace.

For me, the most important thing was to maximise the number of full days I had to myself to write and research. My writing would flow when I could get up in the morning and be thinking about the big picture of my work over morning coffee and breakfast, and go through spurts through the day, with time to consult literature etc. Having to "switch gear" into teaching or meetings would always make it difficult for me to get back into writing space.

Unstuffed is right however, in that everyone has their own style and you have to go with what works for you.

Indeed! This is one of the things I've been struggling with, actually. I also have an 'open-door' policy with my students. As I work predominantly in my office, and I encourage my students to come whenever they can, I run the risk of suddenly "losing" (re-purposing is probably a better term) hours one day. I should probably fix that...

I was thinking the same thing, despite having posed the question. Ratification of my gut instinct is always good, though.

Thanks for the insight!

(PS. As promised, I bought David Allen's book and am, ironically, finding it hard to fit time into my day to read it! It's an interesting recursive problem: I need the information contained within the book to plan my time effectively enough to be able to give myself time to read it).

Another comment, which might as well go here, though it is off topic: reading the first sentence of the book "It's possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control" (p. 3). I couldn't help but think of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy: "DON'T PANIC" :o

Bzzzzt! Turn that around right now. The only academics I know who are productive in their research and on top of their teaching are ones with defined consulting hours. It takes something of the order of 10 minutes to regain focus after an interruption (if you're interested, I can try to track down the source for this: I read it recently, but that's all I can remember). With academic work, it can be much longer, because of the complexity of the concepts and the necessity of holding so much background in your head to support the concepts.

Think of it like this: there you are, in the warm bath of your academic creativity, when a student comes in and metaphorically dumps you out into the snow. Even after they've gone, and you've climbed back into your warm mental bath, it's going to take a while to get the chill out of your brain.

So set defined consulting times, make sure the students know them, and make sure you stick to them. If they knock on your door when you're working, just don't answer, or answer but tell them to go away.

One other thing that works well is having a bulleting board for questions. Students post their questions to the board, and you set aside a certain time each day to answer them. This way, the whole class (or those who are paying attention) gets the benefit of the question and the answer, and sometimes the students answer each other's questions. It's highly beneficial in the cases I've seen, and can generate a mutually supportive community among the students.

It also means you don't get the same question 200 times. ;)

Spot the mathematician? That's good if you are, because that's where most of my experience lies (that and Comp. Sci.), which means the stuff I've seen working can translate directly.

For now, here's a recommendation: if you're looking first for the practical aspect, start with Section 2. You can read the rest later, and it might even make more sense. I've read the book about half a dozen times now, and I keep getting more out of it, but the nuts and bolts is in section 2.

For the bare bones of time management, try this: block off some hours during your week (as many as you need, if you can get away with that) for research/writing. Use the times when you're at your best, so you're not wasting that prime thinking time on menial stuff. Fit the other stuff around that. Then tweak as necessary as you go along.

If you're interested, I've worked out an incremental approach to GTD: most of my clients can't commit two full days to get set up, then several weeks part-time to implementing and monitoring. So I've broken it down into four stages, so they can incorporate the basics and get those working while they're firefighting, then when they've got those habits they can move up to stage two, and so on.

Exactly. :D

This 43folders thread has some good stuff on GTD and academics:

http://board.43folders.com/showthread.php?t=104&highlight=university+students

Now that you mention it, the most successful academics I know in my institution do that exactly...

Your analogy of regaining focus is especially apt: I am just over the borderline for ADD.

(Actually, I'm a linguist, but one with a strong pure sciences background?math, physics, astronomy?and I'm a part-time PHP/MySQL programmer and translator (English/French).)

Hah! I thought so. :) So you've got a highly abstract mindset, and like many creative/abstract thinkers, you're borderline ADD. In that case it probably takes you even longer to get back to the zone after an interruption. You really can't afford to sacrifice your work in order to be accessible at all hours of the day or night, and that's exactly what you're doing when you let students (or staff) just wander in.

One other thing that I think I read about on LifeHacker is the use of pink noise. From what I gather, pink noise is the sort of fractal, non-repetitive natural sound that blocks out distractive external noise without drawing your attention to itself with rhythms. I think the most common ones are things like ocean sounds, wind in trees, that sort of thing. As well as blocking external distractions, they interact with your monkey brain to help induce a calm, meditative, and hopefully highly creative state.

Hi

I started as a university professor last June. I read David Allen's book, learned a few things specific to academia by trial and error and also by reading a great book by Robert Boice (Advice to new faculty members). Professor Boice spent most of his research life studying successfull faculty members (i.e. that got tenured, that published scientific papers and that students ranked highly) and compared them to their opposite, the ones that did not make it. I highly recommend it. One specific point that comes out of his book is that working in brief sessions regularly (everyday) will get you much closer to your goal than trying to block half a day or a whole day and say "ok, now I have time to do XYZ (writing, thinking, preparing class, conference talk, grading...). He says that big chunks of time do not happen in academia and if you wait for them, you end up working under a deadline and "binging", which is not good for productivity nor for your mood. Its probably true for other types of professions and it scertainly true of PHD dissertation writing, although we all do otherwise.

So I started setting a time for working on my next scientific paper, and another brief session to work on the course I am giving in the Fall, only half an hour each in the morning, but every morning. AFTER this writing session, I read my emails, answer my students questions (I have a web forum for my class as mentionned by somebody else, I love it and the students love it, they help each other, etc), go to the mail room, get a coffee and chat in the hallway, open my office door for interruptions... then the day goes depending on my list of NAs, meetings, students, collegues that come by, hard landscape deadlines like grant submissions, grading exams...

I work 9h to 16h or 17h and work again in the evening for an hour or two in my home office. That way I can be with my family (while the kid is awake), and get work done, which is my version of "designing my work week". I try not to work on week ends.

I read David Allen's book while commuting. I don't think I would have done it other wise. I had the same feeling as you when I wanted to read Robert Boice's book, I thought, well, when I get tenured, I'll have time to read books about getting tenured ...

I think if you look seriously at it, most academics take a Noon friday to Noon sunday weekend as it is. This is a holdover from ye' ole' college days. There's some sense in this arrangement, and the problem with bucking it is that you're out of sync with other people. If you need feedback and they're on "weekend" and you're not, you're SOL. It screws with dependencies.

I've also found that I can work fairly intently for about 3 hours at any given time, but stretching that can be a problem. Know what your magic number is and plan around that. Also whatever your best time of day is for working is worth firewaling around. If you're going to be up late at night, make sure you can take a nap in the afternoon or sleep in, and vice versa. People say "do works best for you." That's true, but I think that the common interpretation of this is just do what you've been doing because clearly it works, which isn't entirely true, it's about finding all the variables and being able to tweek them just right.

Also, learn how to caffeinated right, and not just habitually. I find if I can wake up the right way, I don't need caff to wake up, more to perform sim functions when I'm working to help stay focused and what not. Figuring out how much you need and what time you need to consume it and working that into your day is crucial for me (at least) to be productive. Best,
sam

Everyone > Sorry, I haven't been getting emails telling me of replies, and only now have made time to check 43Folders again.

Unstuffed > I'll look into pink noise, thanks for the tip!

Mme La Marmotte Masqu?e > (I'm actually from Montr?al; I grew up in St Lambert and went to Ottawa to study). I'll take a look at Robert Boice's book. I also liked your line so much that I added it to my signature :) I've found that working late is best for me (between 21 h and 1 h) when the faculty is dead. Of course, this isn't sustainable in the long run...I also wish I could read while commuting, but I do that either on foot or, rarely, by car.

tychoish > Very insightful comments! I have considered scheduling naps, I just don't think I'm good at it. Also, I've long ago noticed that I self-caffeinate automatically during the week when I wake up on the weekend and don't need coffee to feel awake. I've since switched to "half-caff" and drink less.

Thanks for all your comments, everyone!