In my last post, I described my scheme for getting stuff done over the summer by blocking out times to work on particular projects and other work. Overall, the scheme worked well - I was quite productive - but it needed a few tweaks. Going forward into this week, I've made some of the following changes:
1. Shortening 2.5 hour morning workout time to 2 hours. I found that I had way too much time left over in the mornings, so I'm shortening my allotted exercise time by half an hour. I should still be able to get in plenty of walks and runs in the shortened time.
2. Using smaller blocks of time. Last week, I had a number of 3-4 hour blocks for particular projects. While it was nice to have the time to focus on things, I found myself losing interest before the block was up and forcing myself to plow through the work. This week, instead of having 3 and four hour blocks, I'm using more 1.5 - 2 hour blocks.
3. Working in slack time. While last week's schedule was productive, I was also excessively stressed. While the fundamental cause was beginning of summer jitters, I also think a lack of slack "decompression" time also contributed to the problem. I can usually use my time on the train for this purpose, but now that I'm home most of the time, I need to work that time in. I've assigned myself some domestic chores and other to do's throughout the week that will allow me to take some mental time off, while still getting something done. (For example, on Thursday, I'll be cleaning out my closet for items that I can sell on eBay or Craigslist.)
4. Add designated buffer time. Late in the week, I like to devote Thursday afternoons to "Visit the Beach". I don't plan on spending an entire afternoon on the shores, but it is useful to have "disposable" time that I can use to reschedule other blocks of time when emergencies pop up. For example, if I needed to devote Wednesday morning to fighting fires, I could relocate all of the things scheduled for that time to the "beach" slot without screwing up my whole schedule. Last week, I used "beach" time for a last-minute meeting with my advisor in Evanston. (And should "beach" time roll around without having been used for something else, I will indeed head out to the beach [weather permitting] with a book in hand.)
Given that it's getting late here, I'm going to wrap this up with that last point. I think that the tweaked schedule should be as productive as last week while eliminating more stress. I'll post updates as needed.
I wrapped up the spring quarter late last week and I've been thinking about ways to be productive over the summer. I'm probably already overbooked in terms of projects, and I want to be sure that both my personal, professional, and academic goals are met during this (wonderful) period of somewhat unspoken for time over the next three months.
To this end, I've decided to try and set up a pretty robust schedule for each week that tells me when I can work on certain projects and not others. I've made time for personal goals (such as exercising and taking in the city during the summer), professional goals (working on the Audacious Software web presence, getting some iPhone apps out, and continuing the Books project), and academic goals (writing a paper for the CHI conference, working on my master's degree project, wrapping up some Web Use projects). My goal is to be able to train myself to respect the calendar and be strict enough to be able to switch projects when scheduled. Below is an image of my schedule for the upcoming week:
The schedule isn't immutable and it's able to change as circumstances dictate, but I would like to establish a fairly regular routine so that I don't go nuts trying to fight fires in an ad-hoc fashion throughout the week.
One other thing that I've done is set aside specific times for reading and responding to e-mails. I have three periods scheduled, each corresponding roughly with a meal time. This should be more than sufficient for me to keep a handle on my e-mail, so the major challenge will be getting the people who treat e-mail as a synchronous messaging channel to recognize that I may not respond to a query within an hour and if it's urgent, to call.
This should also allow me the opportunity to begin applying some of my context-sensing research in earnest to determine how well it supports this style of working. In some respects, I've already laid out what I expect some of those contexts to be in general sense - the fun comes in looking at how well those work in practice.
I'm not changing too much with respect to my to-do list management. OmniFocus will continue to serve as the manager of all of the things that I have to do. It's worked well in the past and I see no reason to alter what I'm doing.
I know that there are some productivity-minded people who have subscribed to my RSS feed. If anyone has any comments, thoughts, or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. As I see it now, I have three months of time where my day-to-day activities aren't externally determined. I also have a ton of things to do, so I need to make the most of my newfound "free" time.
