sey071

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! Here is Auntie Eva again with a post about planning or time management, I can hear you say with a sigh. But today, I'll focus on one specific element of time management: you need to learn how to manage your energy (essentially, yourself - your raw material) if you want to be able to manage your time. Why is this so important, you ask me. Because knowing yourself and being able to figure out what works for you is an incredibly important skill to learn. And you need to do the work yours...

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to see what drive the day of academics. Do we mostly plan our days based on a weekly template, based on our to do lists, based on what is in our mailbox, or based on our meeting schedule? The majority is working around to do lists. I work around a weekly template, but have a daily to do list as well. When my mailbox overflows, I need more time in my weekly template for the "email + admin" category. When I have meetings beyond my weekly meetings with my thesis students, then I have to move boxes around in my template too. Here's the wake of the poll:

I recently ran a poll to identify if digital or analog planners are more popular. The winner of the poll is the digital planner. Over the years, I have moved from using an analog planner for everything, to a hybrid solution with my daily appointments in an analog planner and longer-term planning in a digital planner, to a fully digital approach. By now, I use Google calendar for my weekly template, and fill in every day what I will be working on during which time block and add all appointments. In addition to that, I use ToDoist to set reminders for myself to follow up with emails that I sent out, to identify the tasks that I want to tick off my list on a daily basis, and to sync tasks with my pomodoro app. You can find the poll and its wake below:

A reader recently asked me the following question: Some of the language we use here (South Africa) is a little different. Could you clarify what you mean with 3:3 or 4:4?. If you are teaching 3-5 courses, is that full semester (half a year) courses? Or 'just' involved in some way with the course? Is it repeat classes? Or 3 - 5 completely different modules? Particular relevant is then what else is on your plate. Do you also supervise thesis work of other students, work on your own credentialing, research and publish, admin etc? My answer was as follows. You can also have an insight into my days here : Dear Kerry, thanks for asking! In Ecuador we have 3 semesters: Fall, Spring, Summer (short semester). I used to teach 3 courses in Fall (mid august - mid december) and 3 in the Spring (January - May). Each course is 3 hours of class a week (2 times 1,5 hours), and we don't have TAs (unless the course has more than 40 students - I never qualify for this). So I do all the teachin...