Logging my time

Since the College seems to have an interest in how I spend my days during the summer, I’ve decided to try an experiment of logging what I do each day. Here’s part of my log for today, starting from when I arrived on campus and ending when I left campus [1].

2018-02-05      07:35   07:45   csc151  class prep
2018-02-05      07:45   08:15   csc151  grading
2018-02-05      08:15   08:30   csc151  class prep
2018-02-05      08:30   10:00   csc151  teach class
2018-02-05      10:00   11:05   oh      csc151 students
2018-02-05      11:05   11:20   admin   academic honesty case
2018-02-05      11:20   11:50   email
2018-02-05      11:50   12:00   dept    meeting prep
2018-02-05      12:00   13:00   dept    meeting
2018-02-05      13:00   14:00   csc32x  class prep
2018-02-05      14:00   16:00   csc32x  teach class

In case you can’t tell, we have the date, the start time, the end time, the general category, and some additional notes. Time listed as email is generally all the small emails, whatever category they are in. When I have longer email messages to deal with (more than five or ten minutes or so), I generally start a separate entry.

I’ve been logging my times for a few weeks. Since the first week of the semester ended with a Posse Plus retreat, week two was probably the first normal week of the semester. I started my log on Monday and went through Sunday night. So, how did I spend that week? In order from most time-consuming to least time-consuming …

• I spent almost fifteen hours on CSC 321 and CSC 322 (csc32x in the log). I’m in those classes for six hours per week, so it makes some sense that they consume the most of my time. But I only get a half-course credit for teaching each course [2,3]
• I spent slightly over twelve hours on CSC 151. That’s about the right amount for a course. But I need a bit more time to do grading for that class.
• I spent eleven hours on things I classified as admin (general administrative tasks that I don’t otherwise categorize) or as work (lunch or dinner meetings, sitting in on a class). That doesn’t count my separate dept category for department administrative work (four hours) or my time working on things related to the Wilson committee (nearly two hours). If you add all of that up, I spent about seventeen hours on meetings, paperwork, and related activities.
• I spent over eight hours on email. I’m actually surprised that it’s that low. It feels like I spend more than that. At least 3/4 of my email seems related to work.
• I spent almost six hours musing. Since I muse for about an hour each day, that number seems reasonable.
• I spent five hours working on issues related to my job as SIGCSE student volunteer coordinator. Things are ramping up for the conference. I expect that the time may also ramp up.
• Everything else is comparatively small.

The total for work-related stuff [4]? Sixty-six hours, more or less. And I still fell behind in work. I should probably [5] figure out what else I can cut. Perhaps I’ll report on week 3 next week and we can compare [6].

In any case, I look forward to logging a more reasonable summer.

[1] I did some work before I went to campus and I’m doing some work this evening.

[2] CSC 321 is a half-semester course that meets three hours per week. CSC 322 is a full-semester course that meets three hours per week for the first half of the semester and six hours per week the second half of the semester. For the first half of the semester, it clearly feels like two separate preps.

[3] Yes, we do have a proposal in that we treat these six hours per week as equivalent to other workshop-style lab courses, which would give me one-and-a-half credits for teaching the pair.

[4] I’m not counting my musings as work-related time. I am, however, counting my professional responsibilities, including the Student Volunteer Coordinator and Information Director positions.

[5] Almost certainly.

[6] With three or four major projects due this week, it’s possible that week three will be worse than week two.

Version 1.0 of 2018-02-05.