These last two weeks have offered me an exercise in extreme patience. My “to do” list is growing, but somehow when I’m not teaching other stuff creeps up. This other stuff varies from my usual advising responsibilities, mentoring, general department business, and the good old work/life balance concerns. I’ve freed up my schedule from teaching, yet those hours are replaced with meetings–meetings that are important.

Having children caused me to get more used to working in short, productive increments. I had to throw out my wonderful daily planner and move to a weekly planner of sorts. This has worked well for me. I have found that with my heavy teaching load I still use the weekly planner of sorts, but I have modified this some to a monthly to do list, as well. Yes, monthly.

This morning I am trying to reconcile my lists and see what I can manage for this week and for the next month. I have also reminded myself to fill in “my time” in Outlook via bubbles. Why? Well, colleagues can schedule or invite me to meetings if they see free space! I don’t feel guilty about scheduling my project time. The one thing that so many of us know is that you can schedule the time, but will you actually write that day? That is another blog post! Until then–working in increments.