Blog — Toddler on the Tenure Track

Weekly Update: 1/21 - 1/27

January, January January. This is my third one on the tenure track and every year there’s been something that just makes it extra special. My first year it was my first term teaching (I had course buyouts in the fall) so I was figuring all that out. Along with teaching we started Ellie in daycare (for a week until deciding on the whole stay at home dad thing). Ellie and I both got really sick, she had her first ear infection and I ended up getting walking pneumonia. My second year our cats got fleas and we spent all of January (and Feb) getting rid of them, constant vacuuming and washing of any fabrics in the house. This year, we’re not sick (knock on wood) and there are no blood sucking parasites currently living in our house (that we know of), so it’s definitely an improvement, but I am putting in way too many hours in front of my computer and in meetings.

Weekly Update: 1/14 - 1/20

We’ve been traveling this past week so I’m a bit off of my typical schedule. I stayed up later than I wanted to, to get my last post up. I didn’t have another “late” night in me for this post too, so I settled for a few days “late”… I had a conference in San Francisco last week and since it’s only a ~2 hour flight from where we live (and we found cheap flights), Mike and Ellie decided to tag along. Although Ellie had lots of experience with hotels as an infant (during our trek out west), this was her first hotel experience as a toddler. All things considered, it went pretty well.

Planning Series: My Daily Planning Process

I’m ending the planning series with a look at how I plan out each day. Here are all the links to the previous posts from this series: my yearly intention, yearly goals, quarter planning, to do list, and weekly planning. Usually each day of my work week is highly structured and I leave the weekends open (other than events that are scheduled for specific times). Since I’ve already done the work to schedule tasks for each day during my weekly planning session, I don’t actually have that much to do for daily planning besides reviewing my schedule and adjusting as needed (e.g., if something else comes up that needs to get done or I finish something quicker than expected).

Planning and ProductivityJillJanuary 19, 2019scheduling, planning for the day, planning series, planningComment

Weekly Update: 1/7 - 1/13

As the week comes to a close, Ellie’s sleep is finally starting to get back to it’s old predictable self. The past three mornings we’ve had consistent ~7/7:15 wake up calls, hooray! This week marked the official start of winter term (i.e., students were back on campus) and it was exhausting. Early starts to the day with late endings and no room to adjust my schedule to compensate on other days… making me feel scattered and tense and headache-y.

Planning Series: How I Plan My Week

So far I’ve talked about my yearly intention, yearly goals, quarter planning, and to do list. These are all pretty high level endeavors. Weekly (and daily) planning are where the work actually happens. Ideally, I plan for the upcoming week on Friday at the end of the day. In reality, I’m often so exhausted by that time that I don’t have it in me. Occasionally I’ll do it on Sunday, but usually I don’t want work to intrude on weekend decompression. More often than not, I plan for the week on Monday morning. Here’s what my process currently looks like.

Weekly Update: 12/31 - 1/6

Back to reality and hello to 2019! I was still on break on Monday and Tuesday of this week, so it was a short work week for me. While I love that academic life has built in “breaks,” it takes so much of my energy to get back into work mode that sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier to do a little bit of work each day during the break so that I’m not as drained during the first week back. This could also have something to do with Ellie’s sleep lately.

Planning Series: How I Organize My To Do List

I started writing a post about my weekly planning process and noticed that my to do list plays a significant role as I plan out my week. I thought it would be helpful to write about what my to do list looks like before I go into weekly planning.

Planning and ProductivityJillJanuary 5, 2019planning series, planning, to do list, tasks, google tasks, google docsComment

Money, Money, Money, Money... Money!

Now that you’re humming For the Love of Money, I’m taking a quick detour from the (academic) planning series to talk about our budget. In addition to really enjoying how people plan out their days and spend their time, I also enjoy seeing how people spend their money. Given the number of personal finance blogs and blogs dedicated to paying off debt, I imagine I’m not the only one.

FinancesJillDecember 31, 2018student loan debt, budget, blog goals Comments

Weekly Update: 12/24 - 12/30

I graduated from my PhD program ~2.5 years ago and am still reveling in the fact that breaks actually mean I take some sort of break (even if it’s not for the entire break), instead of using breaks to play catch up or try to get “more” done. If there’s anything I’ve learned from grad school and also as an assistant professor it’s that working all the time does not lead to better results, personally or professionally (at least not for me!). All that to say, taking this week off from work has been wonderful!

Tenure and Life UpdatesJillDecember 30, 2018weekly update, working out, meditation, goals, reflection, winter break, breaks, budget, loansComment

Planning Series: How I Plan my Quarter

During my yearly planning process I outline when I’d like to achieve each of the goals that I set for the year. This gives me a rough timeline for the term, which makes planning pretty straightforward. My university is on the quarter system, so I have fall, winter, spring, and summer to plan for. I usually create my fall term plan a week or so before the term starts. Then, I’ll create my winter and spring plans during winter break. Because we don’t have a ton of time between winter and spring terms, it ends up being easier to plan everything right before winter term starts. Because I’m technically off contract during the summer, I make my plan once summer has started and I’ve given myself a little bit of a breather from the end of the school year.