Productivity, Managing Time, & Workflows
How do you go about your work (and life balance – though that’s an entire post in and of itself)? How do you determine what to do and when to do it? I find that answering these questions (and putting the answers into action) is a needed skill for students & faculty alike.
This post gives an overview of processes and resources I apply in my own work to determine what to do and when to do it.
Updated 2023-01-01
While some people might refer to this as productivity and time management, I think there’s more to it than being “productive” or “managing” time (and I acknowledge that there are plenty of folx who find these terms and ways of thinking to be problematic.) Our life circumstances also relate to our decisions. For instance, I plan and organize my day differently as a parent than I did prior to having children. Planning and making good decisions about what we will do and when we will do it is key.
If you are like me, you might find it helpful to learn how people manage their time and work in ways that are generative. Since I’ve learned much from other people sharing their approaches to work I’m sharing my own processes and approaches to “time management” and “productivity” in case it might be helpful in developing your own.
Some context & caveats. . .
The context I’m discussing here is academic work, where there are often days when it’s up to us to provide structure to the day and figure out what to do and when to do it. As Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Anthony Ocampo from the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity suggest, “every semester needs a plan.” I agree with their point that it is important to revisit our plans, processes, and approaches at the start of each semester. While I don’t discuss health and wellness in relation to managing time and workflows here, I think that these are also important factors in what we decide to do and when we decide to do it.
If you are in academia and aren’t already a member of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, I encourage you to find out if your University supports membership. The organization shares a wealth of resources to support faculty in their work.
This post focuses on the types of decision making and planning we might do on a day to day level for getting things done, working on our longer-term goals, and being generative. The post includes some affiliate links.
Overarching Decisions
To help make overarching decisions about priorities and what to work on when I have multiple options (always the case for me and most folks I know), I find Cal Newport’s book [affiliate link] Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World very helpful. Newport makes a case for eliminating distractions and taking steps to identify and pursue the “deep work” that addresses long-term goals. It is particularly useful for people who engage regularly with social media, email, and other technologies that can be distracting. It is also great when you find yourself working on many smaller tasks that take up cognitive space or expend a lot of time and energy. Similarly, the idea of deep work is very helpful for people who have many day-to-day work responsibilities combined with longer-term projects. Identifying what constitutes your own deep work is valuable in and of itself. I think of long-term goals and projects in relation to deep work. Deep work is not always possible but being able to design a day for deep work is important.
How I plan and make decisions about what to do is largely impacted by how many events or teaching responsibilities I have during the day. For instance, on Tuesdays my day is generally completely filled from 8am to 8pm with classes and meetings. Any open time I have tends to be in between meetings or classes. On Fridays, however, my days are much more open with meetings or events scheduled sporadically but more extended open time to work on research, or other work.
Decisions For Planning a Day
When it comes to making decisions about how to plan out a day (when the majority of commitments are not predetermined events like classes to teach), I often use a timeblocking approach. To help figure out what I should focus on throughout the day, I balance commitments and projects with deadlines and deep work. Some of these commitments and projects might be considered deep work when they congtribute to longer-term goals but I often have numerous tasks that need to be completed but don’t contribute to my own longer-term goals. It’s when I have many obligations with upcoming deadlines and distractions readily available that I find Newport’s perspectives and suggestions in [affiliate link] Deep Work helpful in making sure I keep the deep work in mind.
To support organizing a day into blocks of time oriented around particular tasks or projects (time blocking), at the start of the day (or in some cases the prior evening) I open a “Daily Note” in the app Obsidian and use a template that includes a list of each hour of the day from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM and jot down what I plan to work on for each portion of the day. To help make decisions about what I plan to work on that day, I use Omnifocus to keep track of my varied tasks and projects and prioritize those that have upcoming deadlines, flags, or tags of “do today.”
How strictly do I follow the plan? I treat it like a guide and deviate as needed, particularly if I feel like I’m in a good groove for a particular project or if things come up that I need to address. This is where my process for making decisions for specific moments (discussed below) is helpful.
I prefer to use Obsidian for this process rather than blocking time out in my calendar app. I detail my use of Omnifocus a bit more in the followint section.
Decisions For Specific Moments
When it comes to making decisions about what to do at a given moment in time that I don’t already have planned ahead of time, I use an approach loosely based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. The app OmniFocus is invaluable in this process. I use OmniFocus on my laptop, iPad, and iPhone on a regular basis. OmniFocus is key in addressing David Allen’s notion of capturing every thought and getting things (tasks, deadlines, projects etc.) out of our heads and into an organizational system of some kind. An important part of this approach is reviewing everything you put into your system once a week to plan ahead. Since using this approach, I’ve moved away from putting things to do on my calendar and limiting items on the calendar to events or deadlines that have a definitive date. This can be very uncomfortable for people who tend to load their calendar with notes to do things, but having a system in place allows you to make decisions about what makes the most sense to work on at a given moment. This is also why reviewing the set of “things” you need/want to do is important.
OmniFocus is extremely valuable since it can sync across devices and the calendar program as well as organize tasks by project or context (it pays to take the time to learn more about the app and there are countless tutorials and Omnifocus-dedicated sites on the web.
Since I have all of my tasks organized in Omnifocus by project and tagged with information such as how much energy or focus I might need or other contextual information, I can make quick decisions about what I might do given the amount of time I have or how much concentration I need to have to complete the task. For instance, on a particular Tuesday when I have 20 minutes open, it might make sense for me to compile receipts and fill out forms for our business office whereas on a particular Wednesday when I have 20 minutes I might work on an email response that takes a bit more focus and headspace.
While I prefer OmniFocus, there are many other task management apps. I’ll possibly outline more specific approaches to using OmniFocus and other task management apps or platforms in a separate post or video on my channel.
I know a lot of people swear by micro-time management systems such as the Pomodoro technique but I tend to work on tasks for longer chunks of time as I can and take short mental breaks as they seem necessary. Physical movement of some kind is helpful (and I like to work with makeshift standing desks)!
Physical Reminders
As much as digital systems such as Obsidian or Omnifocus are supportive in getting things done, I’ve also found using printed or physical reminders of the big picture of my projects and responsibilities organized by teaching – research – service in my school office and using a medium-sized whiteboard in my home office to set 3 – 4 work goals and 3 – 4 other goals when I’m working from home. Get yourself a whiteboard – there’s something satisfying and helpful about physically writing the set of goals you have for the day and then erasing them when they are complete.
So, what happens when all of these strategies meet the realities of emails, phone calls, people stopping by with questions or requests, and new meetings to attend? This is where I find the combination of Deep Work and Getting Things Done helpful in deciding how to move forward, get things done, and keep the big picture in mind.
Tracking Time
From time to time I’ve also found it informative and valuable to track the time I spend on different aspects of work. The app, Toggl has a free version that works in the cloud and with mobile devices. In addition to organizing the time you work on things by theme/project/category, Toggl, also answers the question of “what did I do with all of my time” when leveraging the web for whatever you are using it for. You can create reports that visualize how you used time over varied durations and even review the websites you may have visited while Toggl was running. If you’ve never kept track of and analyzed what you do with your time for a week or so, I highly recommend it.