Work-Life Balance, Campa Blog #8: Packed Uninterrupted Days

Up at 5:00 a.m., running gear on, out the door by 5:35.  Drove to campus to the indoor track, did some stretching and a few exercises, out the door for a run by 6:15a.m.  Weather today, 15^oF, partly cloudy and a brisk NW wind.  The workout for today was 50 solid minutes at a consistent pace with some strides at the end.  After finishing the run, I did some post-running stretches, a few exercises, showered, grabbed a coffee and I was at my office by 8:00a.m.

Wednesday during Spring Semester is a non-teaching day.  Being a non-teaching day I try to use it as a day of the week to accomplish large tasks, potentially go to the field or out of town for meetings, this week I’m using it to prepare for some upcoming classes, meetings, and a presentation.  Even though the day isn’t interrupted by going and coming back from class(es) it always seems to get packed.  Notice below the first thing I worked on was one of the tough things (see an earlier) post.  The comments for the Coffee Hour is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, however, haven’t sat down and organized.  It was nice to take a solid, uninterrupted hour (While drinking a good cup of coffee!) to do some writing and organizing for next week’s Coffee Hour. 

Afterwards, I thought a bit about Robert Boice’s work on “quick starters” (go ahead and Google this and see what you learn) and one of the characteristics of these productive individuals was that they wrote a minimum of30 min every day (usually it ended up being more than 30 min), however, their minimum goal was 30 min.  This writing has to be scholarly writing of some type-no general e-mail correspondences, no Facebook, to texting-you get the idea.   Try this and see what you can accomplish over the course of a week, a month, …

Here is how the rest of my day shaped up:

8:00-9:00a.m.  Worked on my comments for the upcoming CIRTL Coffee Hour on Work-Life Balance.

9:00-9:30a.m.  Answered e-mails regarding Graduate School and research activities

9:30-11:00a.m. Department Staff Meeting

11:00-11:30a.m. Met with a student from my class to review his materials (cover letter and resume) he is submitting as part of a job application.

12:00-1:00p.m. CIRTL Leaders Weekly Conference call

1:00-2:00p.m. Had a nice lunch with my daughter to catch up on things—it is hard to get on a college student’s calendar.

2:00-4:00p.m.  Prepared for a “guest lecture” in a colleague’s class (for tomorrow) and responded to some e-mails.

4:00-4:45p.m.  Met with a student who was in a class I “guest lectured” in last week about the field of wildlife ecology and management, career trajectory opportunities, and our curriculum.  Introduced him to our Academic Advisor to discuss potentially changing his major.  It is fun to see students so passionate about what they want to do in the future.

5:00p.m. Left for home.  On the way home I stopped at a grocery store to pick up numerous packages of cheese and crackers, small boxes of raisins, and two bags of Dove chocolates—necessary supplies for a class activity I’m doing in a colleague’s class tomorrow.  The topic of the day will be “Wildlife Nutrition and Environmental Physiology”-should be fun.

Home by 6:00 or so, ate dinner, caught up with my wife and son and then watched a bit of the news.  I’ll be in bed by 10:00p.m. tonight for a 5:00a.m. “wake-up call” tomorrow.