Thread by @hollybik

In an attempt to claw back some work-life balance this year (and fight some longstanding feelings of burnout at work), I've been taking a data-driven approach tracking how I spent my time as a #NewPI (THREAD - 1/n)

Every day since Jan 1, 2019 I have been keeping track of my "science work" on a daily basis - calculating the number of hours I spent on Research (anything leading to grants or publications), Teaching (course prep & lecturing) and Service (all the admin duties & other stuff) 2/n

I've also been keeping track of a category I call "Deep Work" - uninterrupted brain time that is typically part of Research time blocks (e.g. where I turn off social media, emails, and get into a "flow state" of thinking). After Cal Newport's book: amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focu… 3/n

So now the good stuff: my data. First graph is the absolute number of hours I've worked every week - *on average* my trend line is ~40 hours per week. This is only the time I'm at my desk (time doesn't include lunches, commutes, walking between meetings, etc.) #NewPI 4/n

I'm not happy yet with how I'm spending my time - been wasting too much time on admin, and I'm not doing enough "Deep Work". But tracking my time like this has really helped me shift my priorities and bump up the total amount of "Research Time" this spring. #NewPI 5/n

The 4 weeks where I worked ~50 hours per week were BRUTAL - so I've also been learning my physical (and mental) limits for how much science I can pack into a week. I'm not joking when I say those weeks left me absolutely wrecked. Productivity dropped after each as I recovered 6/n

Background on my schedule this year: I taught a full course by myself during winter quarter (January - March, requiring a lot of new course prep), and also had a fairly heavy travel schedule this spring (but thankfully mostly 1-2 day local/regional trips on the West Coast). 7/n

Now for more graphs! Here is my % split of Research/Teaching/Service each week. Again, not happy with these trends yet. I'm slowly trying to get my % Research to >50% per week (and >4hrs per day), to align better with my Tenure/Promotion priorities! #NewPI 8/n

Finally, I've also been tracking my writing time (and number of words written per week) - here's that graph. During my best week I wrote for almost 10 hours and put down ~4500 words (!!). But based on this graph I'm still being too much of a "binge writer" #NewPI 9/n

The goal of this to "work smarter, not harder" - I can now easily see where I'm wasting time or where my priorities doesn't align with my merit and promotion criteria. Also, I'm trying to gain more consistency in key tasks like writing, research, and "Deep Work" #NewPI 10/n

Some of the remaining barriers are mental and emotional - still feeling burnt out most weeks, waking up feeling overwhelmed with a neverending To Do list, being put into a foul mood by lab emergencies or crappy admin tasks #NewPI 11/n

I've been tracking "personal life" things too (time I wake up and go to bed, amount of exercise per week, violin practice, fiction reading) - and generally the more I make time for non-digitized fun stuff the better I feel about work (and my productivity goes up!) #NewPI 12/n

If you're interested in implementing this yourself, I highly recommend "The 5AM Miracle" amazon.com/M-Miracle-Domi… (where I got my guides & templates for time tracking), and "Monday Motivator" emails from the NCFDD geared towards the #NewPI facultydiversity.org/the-monday-mot… 12/12 END THREAD