GENERAL INFORMATION
This page will present information on those aspects of faculty life that do not directly influence teaching and learning but nonetheless play important roles in a faculty member's success.
MANAGING TIME MORE EFFECTIVELY
Here is a list of helpful hints from Boston University's Center for Excellence in Teaching.
This article from Psychology Today reviews a published article that analyzes why faculty procrastinate and what steps they can take to be more productive. (The original article is titled I Can Start That JME Manuscript Next Week, Can't I? The Task Characteristics Behind Why Faculty Procrastinate by David S. Ackerman, and Barbara Gross, Journal of Marketing Education, vol. 29, No. 2, August 2007, p. 97-110, and can be downloaded from our library's eJournals collections.)
Another paper with a lot of practical suggestions is Time Management for New Faculty by Anastassia Ailamaki and Johannes Gehrke, SIGMOD Record,, 32(2); 102-106, June 2003.
A useful set of time saving tips for faculty comes courtesy of Michael Arnzen.
The article Seven Suggestions for Becoming a More Productive Writer by Mano Singham, Change, March/April 2008, p. 40-43, suggests ways in which you can improve both the quality and quantity of your writing output.
Here are some other suggestions:
Never check your email first thing in the morning. Do it only after you have done two hours of scholarly work.
Turn off the automatic email arrival notification. Check your email only at regularly spaced intervals with a minimum of two hours in between.
Block off time on your calendar for the important things. Don't take for granted that the time you hoped to use for scholarly activity (writing papers and grants, reading journal articles, analyzing data, etc.) will not be taken up by other things like meetings, phone calls, visitors to your office, etc. Once these items are on your calendar, they should no longer considered "free" time and you should refuse to let other things take their place unless they are true emergencies.
Make a list of things you must do and by when, and block off time on your calendar to do them. There is a lot of good free software out there that you can use for this purpose.
Create deadlines for yourself to help you make progress on long-term projects. Offer to give seminars and conference talks on your scholarly project, and work-in-progress talks to your departments.
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