The Time Management Waltz

So the back is feeling a little better, though we’re told by the physical therapist and Young Dr. Kildare that it will never be 100 percent again.

The most obvious immediate cause of this predicament is my habit of spending hour after uninterrupted hour in front of the computer.

Yesterday, for example, I woke up at 12:30 a.m. Couldn’t get back to sleep. Finally gave up a little after 1:00, got out of bed, and sat down in front of the computer. Graded 14 student papers. Wrote a blog post. Answered e-mails.

Fell back into bed after dawn, around 5:30 or 6 a.m. Couldn’t get back to sleep. Rousted out of bed by Gerardo, shortly followed by M’hijito, who dropped off his sick dog to preclude a gigantic floor mess at his house.

After all that dust settled, parked myself in front of the computer again. Edited a lengthy article by an ESL writer. Read a broad and random selection of news and play-nooz stories online. Commented on fellow bloggers’ sites. Fielded e-mail. Responded to student queries and plaints. And on and on and on and on… Shipped off the edited copy to the anthology editor about 8 p.m.

This

has

got

to

stop.

So later in the evening another activity that occupied time in front of the computer monitor was an analysis of just how much time I do spend and how much I should spend sitting in front of the computer monitor.

It occurred to me that, with the help of a cheap kitchen timer, I should be able to establish some limits on the amount of time per day that I spend sitting in a back-demolishing desk chair. Set the thing for 30 minutes or an hour and when it goes off, get up and do something else for a while. Or — outlandish idea — just stop working!

Thinking about this some more, it struck me that I tend to work at random, plowing through whatever pile is on the desk in an attempt to get through it all as fast as possible. So on some days, I’m doing things that don’t really need to be done that day — they could be put off. This habit tends to keep me sitting in front of the computer for unnecessarily long stretches.

Because I have several enterprises going at once — teaching, blogging, making jewelry, writing the proposed books that never get finished because there are so damn many other things to do — there’s always something that either needs to be done right now or could be done right now. And that creates the illusion that everything must be addressed right this minute.

Not, of course, so…

I took it into my head to list the things I typically do in a day, strictly limiting them to the smallest number of minutes or hours I estimated it would take to do them. This, I figured, would allow me to get a grip, simply by setting a timer for the designated period per task and then stopping and moving on to the next task each time the timer bleats.

The bare minimum number of hours needed to accomplish all I do in a typical day came to slightly over eight.

Holy sh!t. No wonder I spend my entire life in front of a computer.

Finally, it crossed the feeble mind that one could, at the start of any given day, decide what will be the dominant task of the day. Knowing that x or y will be emphasized that day, one could then schedule enough computer time for that job and, if desired, for one or two other jobs. And then, knowing what amounts of time should be scheduled for the given computerized projects of the day, one could limit that time.

The result, with any luck, would be fewer hours spent at the desk and more hours devoted to getting a life.

This thought appears to be on the right track. I created a spreadsheet showing what would happen if one spent x number of hours on one task and y and z hours on other things. The assumption here is that eight hours is the absolute maximum I wish to spend in pursuit of profit. The number of hours slated for each specific activity appear as negative figures, so they will subtract from the 8 hours allotted per day using the ∑ button.

Here, the hours per task are subtracted from eight hours budgeted per day. The “Remaining hours” row shows the time that could be used getting up out of the bone-crushing chair or devoted to tasks that don’t get done during the time allotted to the scenarios posited in the top row (i.e., spending more hours than usual blogging, or more hours on editing).

The first column, “On Average,” represents the number of hours I typically spend on any given task — assuming nothing out of the ordinary is going on. So, if on a typical day I spent only the typical number of hours on those activities, they would occupy about eight hours.

As a practical matter, they’d occupy a lot more than that, because few of these activities limit themselves naturally to the periods shown in column 2. That’s because I tend to work on something until I’m done, rather than stopping after a reasonable time.

The bottom row shows the number of hours each scenario would have me working.

Let’s say I follow this scheme to allocate time. If I spend three hours on blogging, one or more other tasks will have to be cut back or go away altogether — as we see in column 3, to provide three hours for blogging and still keep the workload at 8 or fewer hours, I’d do no editing, no other writing, and no jewelry-making. Teaching time would be limited to one hour. And so on.

Some of these task allocations would free up a significant amount of time. Others…not so much. On a day when I did a lot of blogging and then tried to complete one four-foot-long beaded lariat, I’d end up spending 9 hours (at least!) with my nose on the grindstone. As a practical matter, this would add up to much more than that, because it’s not easy to stop when you’re on a roll. The kitchen timer went off about five minutes ago, and I haven’t stopped typing…

In theory, I should get up right now and vacuum the floors. But wouldn’t it be good if this post went live before the day ends on the East Coast? To make that happen, I have to sit here and FINISH the damn thing!

But a few helpful guidelines do present themselves from this exercise.

• Get a timer and set it for one-hour periods. Once an hour, get out of the chair and spend 15 minutes moving around the house or yard.

• Editing and serious writing really take it out of you, and each requires large chunks of uninterrupted time. Do not try to do these on the same day. (I don’t put blogging in the “serious” category because it doesn’t require a lot of formally cited and documented research, nor, like writing fiction, does it require you to transport yourself mentally into a detailed imaginary world and enter the minds of fully conceived imaginary characters.)

• The jewelry-making is ditzy and demanding. One needs to focus on that for a lengthy period, too. Don’t try to do it on the same day as editing or real writing.

• Occasionally, the work of teaching is also somewhat demanding and tiring. Do not try to combine a lengthy stretch of course prep or grading with a lengthy stretch of editing or serious writing.

• Don’t assume the budgeted time must be consumed by the assigned tasks. If the work is done, stop. Spend the rest of the day socializing, exercising, cleaning, gardening, playing with the dog, or loafing.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well. Let’s see if mindfully following this scheme works…