Categories
Career life

On Time

The past year I’ve been working on a book. I organized my entire life to carve out and preserve my Saturdays for this project. It is finally done (almost! Just reviews of proof pages to go); I got my weekends back just in time to work them through the review cycle, and with the worst […]

Categories
Books

Book: Off the Clock

In my current round of “argh what has this pandemic done to my life” I have been thinking a lot about time. Feeling too scheduled – at work, and outside of work needing to schedule every little thing (ok, mainly the gym) was really getting to me. I came across another book from Laura Vanderkam […]

Categories
Books Organization

Book: How to Invest Your Time Like Money

One of the things I really liked about How to Invest Your Time Like Money (Amazon) is how short it was. There are plenty of lengthy books written about time management, I know I’ve read a bunch of them, and some of them have been very helpful. This book though, is short and strategic. Two key […]

Categories
life Organization

Rest Day – Buffer Day – Focus Day

My friend introduced me to this concept recently and I’ve found it really helpful. Rest days: complete break from work (I call them “no computer” days). Buffer days: get through the myriad of small things that pile up. Focus days: move the needle on Big Projects. Some observations: Rest days need to happen before they are […]

Categories
life Skiing

Making Time for Cate-Time

  On a Monday nights lately, I’m buzzed from skiing. I actually committed to something – an 8-week long, twice a week, race training program. This is massive for me, as having taken a trip a month for very nearly two years, it seemed like I had lost the ability to commit to anything. And […]

Categories
Organization Reflections

Doing Too Much

The other day, one of my friends tweeted about taking on too much and feeling overwhelmed. A mutual friend tweeted that he should speak to me. I guess I’m becoming known for that taking on too much, getting overwhelmed, crashing thing I repeat ad nauseum. Hmm. I have noticed a pattern where friends start noticing that […]

Categories
Education Extreme Blue job hunting Organization Programming Reflections

Delegation – What Value Do You Place on Time?

My friends and some of my colleagues have been mocking me for “outsourcing my life”. I don’t think that expression is accurate though – it’s more that I’ve been outsourcing details in order to enjoy life more (and achieve more). For me, it’s all about leverage. How can I leverage myself in order to do […]

Categories
Organization WISE

Do We Need Time Management Advice?

We’re having an event at WISE next week, we were hoping to have someone from SASS to come and give some advice on time management. But SASS is never open, and now we have something much better. But when I was panicking for a speaker, thinking about maybe asking another student to speak I started […]

Categories
Organization

Effectiveness and Time Management Tips

So my winter break reading consisted of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Getting Things Done, and The Power of Less (all Amazon). There’s a large amount of overlap between the first two and The Power of Less, but it’s a nice summary with some good thoughts on achieving your goals. 7 Habits is […]

Categories
Organization Reflections

Making, Managing, Creating – Time

Sacha wrote a lovely post about her free time, and how she protects it. This led me to her reflections on overtime and the whole concept of “having too much time on your hands” by herself and by Cory Doctorow. (Incidentally, it’s great when people have large archives and link back to stuff you haven’t […]