One of the things I’ve been wrestling with this week is figuring out a way to mark off some time for everything I want and need to do–and still feel like I can kick back with a beer on the weekends. Some of this work will have to wait until I return on Tuesday because [...]

I am currently somewhat GTD challenged. Oh, I have my lists. I’m putting things on lists so that they’re not in my head. I’m keeping a relatively empty inbox (from over 400 today to 101). But the lists, they are not getting smaller. The stuff on the lists is all little stuff, sticky stuff, stuff [...]

I have some random thoughts I want to capture here that I’ve been thinking about over the last few days. I haven’t exactly figured out how this all ties together or exactly what I think, but I’m putting it out there anyway. I’ve written before about the ways in which administrative work is intellectual work [...]

Reconstructed after a browser crash. Ugh. Using ScribeFire instead of Google. Sigh. Usually I save as I go, but failed to so this time.Anyway, I will not be able to elegantly retie all the threads I had going, but I’m going to try anyway. I’m normally a David (GTD) Allen fan, but today he has [...]

As I was gearing up for the weekend and planning how I was going to juggle multiple soccer games, an evening out, and general housekeeping, I realized that essentially I could work 24/7 and still not get everything done. Rather than being discouraged by this, it was actually comforting to know. I have always been [...]

I reduced my inbox by a magnitude. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. Let the productivity and calm begin! Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

I spent over 2 hours this evening finally getting my inbox down to less than 50 messages. Everything that’s in there now are things I’ll be addressing in the next couple of days. I also went though my folders and purged messages (and whole folders!) that I no longer need. As I was purging an [...]

I still have 344 emails. Going through the 100 emails generated probably 30 tasks or so. I have 12 projects. Only two of these have an end. The others are ongoing, e.g. faculty development and Blackboard support. I should probably add Blogging as a project. I know there are projects I’m leaving off. Maybe I [...]

Before this weekend of sloth, I had been assessing my work flow (or lack thereof). Every once in a while, I’d find myself thinking “I need a better way to do this.” What I’m finding problematic is keeping up with the little tasks that come across my desk and fitting those into the big picture. [...]

Here’s some math. On any given day, I receive about 40 emails. About half of these require a response. I’d say that each response requires an average of 8 minutes. Conservatively, then, I could spend 2.67 hours every day dealing with email. That doesn’t even count dealing with our help system in which, on average [...]