Tag Archives: time management

Deadlines

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Deadlines – often a necessary step to move things forward, but we need to talk about unnecessarily short windows of opportunities over traditional holiday and family times, and deadlines that implicitly encourage working through weekends. Of course there are some unavoidable short deadlines or deadlines constrained to a particular date, but here I refer to those deadlines where these is no particular time critical aspect. Short windows over traditional holiday times, particularly discriminate against those with caring responsibilities, especially those with school age children who are forced to take holiday actually LOOKING AFTER children during the school holidays. Whilst by no means exclusively affecting women, this may particularly discriminate against women, and against staff in certain age groups. Deadlines that seemingly encourage working over weekends or outside normal working hours are potentially more broadly damaging at a time when mental ill health is on the increase amongst University staff.

Some examples of, in my opinion, poor practice, include:

  1. an internal deadline for research proposals on the day that University and Schools return after Christmas. Whilst I know that these are set themselves relative to research council deadlines, in reality it means one of two things. Either you plan to get it done before the Christmas break (our University shuts down entirely between Christmas and New Year, and obviously some of us need to look after children during the School holidays even if that were not the case), or, you will be working over the Christmas break, squeezing in writing and editing around family or other commitments, and missing out on a chance for even the shortest of breaks. Some people will say the former is impossible due to teaching commitments. If your proposal involves multiple collaborators the latter becomes way more likely. There is of course a 3rd option, to decide not to apply, but this is a bold move given pressure to bring in funding.
  2. A similar internal deadline for internal promotion cases – given the relative under-representation of women in the professoriate, it is unfortunate that I know of several women for whom Christmas family responsibilities preclude working on promotion cases. There are doubtless men for whom this is also true, but I have not heard them speak about it explicitly.
  3. A research Council deadline for funding applications with the online application system only open for two weeks at the end of August. Despite notice being given, this short period of accessibility to the submission system discriminates against those forced to take holiday in the school holidays – the proximity to the bank holiday also makes this a popular holiday choice for many others. Holidays are often arranged a long time in advance and cannot be rearranged easily.
  4. A research council deadline for applicants to respond to the reviewers’ comments on their proposal, originally timetabled for the whole of August but subsequently narrowed to one week at the end including the bank holiday – similar problems to the preceding example – and interesting justified on the basis of needing to give the final panel at least two weekends to look at the papers (possible multiple problems here – but at least there is presumably a week in between the weekends!)
  5. Papers appearing at 4 pm for a 9.30 am meeting the following day OR at 4 pm on a Friday for a 9.30 am meeting on the immediately following Monday morning is also fairly unacceptable since it likely requires people to work in the evening or over the weekend or attend the meeting unprepared – a waste of time for everyone. For me working part-time, finishing at 3 on Fridays to do the school run – it guarantees I will not read them and therefore will not be able to contribute effectively to the meeting. Not exactly inclusive practice to enable diverse voices to be heard.

I am delighted to report that once attention was drawn to occurrence 4 above, positive changes were made. An email from one of the applicants resulted in an extension of the response period back towards the original plan, with reviewers’ comments being delivered as soon as they were received. In the case of 3, a solution is also under discussion. This willingness to reflect and react when the potential problems are pointed out is admirable and should be recognised. However, consider how much better it would be if organisations looked at their deadline setting through an inclusive lens from the get go.

Of course, no deadline will ever please everyone. But, there are perhaps some more obvious things to avoid:

  • Short windows of opportunity in August (admittedly England-centric view)
  • Deadlines immediately following significant national holiday periods
  • Deadlines on Mondays

If deadlines are justified on the basis of timescales need to complete process, then either lengthen or shift the entire process, or perhaps preferably, consider whether you can simplify and reduce the process or paperwork to speed things up.

And if you want me to contribute in an informed way to a meeting, I need papers at least 2 working days in advance!

 

 

 

How (not) to manage my time.

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Time management has been a long term challenge for me. I am a classic multi-tasker, love “to do” lists but can procrastinate for England. The challenge increased when I took on the Head of Department role, as the number of meetings and “interruptions” multiplied. Last year I found it really hard to carve out any lengthy period of time in order to focus on any one task. So in October, I resolved to try some time management techniques (again) to see what I could achieve. The basic plan was to ring-fence two 3 hour periods each week, protecting them from meetings and telling my PA that only in exceptional circumstances was I available. I originally had the idea that these would be designated “research time” and I would actually get some hands-on analysis or coding time. The reality is that although many parts of my role have benefited from a focussed period, e.g. designing the work-load model, reviewing a paper, planning a lecture, preparing a proposal or writing a blog, hands-on analysis time is still lacking. But there are many ways to “do” research, and in reality there are plenty of people better at the hands-on stuff than me these days. Last term this seemed to work fairly well. Most weeks I managed to keep at least one of these periods free and spend a blissful 3 hours immersed in one of my “important, not urgent” tasks.

Last week however, this aim led to a spectacular own goal. The flip-side of ring-fencing time is that the myriad of meetings ends up crammed into the remaining days. For some years I’ve tried to put all my research meetings on one morning or afternoon. I still like to touch base with all my postdocs and PhD students weekly whenever I can so when I succeed in lining them up, it can mean 4 or 5 hours of successive meetings on related but quite different topics. Although I am usually tired at the end of them, it is exhilarating to be thinking about so many interesting questions, and I get to talk to lots of enthusiastic people (most of the time). Last week however, I thought I was being “efficient” in lining up 5 hours plus of administration related meetings back-to-back on both Thursday and Friday. On Thursday I went from Head of Department meeting to budget meeting to staff meeting to Royal Meteorological Society committee meeting. On Friday it was 2 research meetings, a staff review and the school steering committee. As a result, by Friday night it felt like all I had done for two days was collect action items, and no space between meetings meant I couldn’t tackle even the smallest of these. I went home feeling panicky and dissatisfied about the working week and woke at 5 am stressing about my work “to-do” list – something that usually only happens in the 3 weeks leading to a field campaign.

Reflecting on this from a little distance I can now see my mistake. Whilst back to back research meetings work on the whole, back to back admin meetings don’t. Firstly, with the best will in the world, I don’t tend to pick up any concrete action items from meetings with my postdocs and PhD students (wise on their part). It is entirely appropriate that I pick up actions from the leadership and administrative meetings that I had at the end of last week. But I was surprised how quickly the list became lengthy and how overwhelming it felt to have no opportunity to do anything about them. Secondly, my research supervision meetings tend to take place in my own office or at least nearby. The admin meetings of last week took place in other buildings and rooms, with no escape to my pictures and my coffee mug. So, although I continue to ring-fence “no-interruptions” time, and would recommend this, I also have to be vigilant that by doing so I am not storing up trouble and stress for the rest of the week. Some weeks, it may just have to not happen. Finally, if I do have to stack up these meetings, it might be better to stack them at the start of the week so that the weekend isn’t destroyed by worrying.

It’s probably also a good idea to end this reflection by identifying the time management successes. I find the Important/Urgent matrix (See an explanation here ) very useful, although invariably end up with too much in the “important AND urgent box”, and find it hard to put time in on the  “important but not urgent” tasks. I also find that turning off my email for most of the day (or even just minimising the window) limits distractions, and I no longer have my twitter account open on my desktop. If I want to spend time brainstorming about something, then moving to one of the campus cafes is the best way to do it. It frees me from the feeling that I should be ticking off things on the urgent list, and the buzz of being surrounded by students somehow both grounds and energises me.

Right, so, it’s Thursday again. It took me until last night to get back to grips with everything from the end of last week. So what does today look like? Hmm… perhaps next week will be different.