Making my work boring - Workflows

 

In listening to Cal Newport's Deep Work podcast and reading his book Deep Work, he has a point about making work boring so that we can free up cognitive space to be creative. In asking our brains to address the questions How am I going to do this? What needs to be done next? etc. we're wasting cognitive load on answering questions that have little to do with our actual work. 

To this end he suggests explicit workflows or processes for tasks you regularly complete. For this term I am slowly building these workflows, based on my ideal schedule for Spring 2021, below. 

In setting up my ideal schedule I think about what I want to spend time on, and when to NOT to schedule time. In being chairperson of my department there are a good number of days I have to focus my time and attention on something that comes up. This term I've added -0- to my schedule to be a placeholder for working on those emergent tasks.

From my ideal schedule I've been writing them in my journal (see The Time-Block Planner Feedback) and then adjusting my schedule as needed. Hopefully I'll be able to identify when my ideal schedule broke, and then create a new one for Fall 2021 with the lessons I've learned this term.

For each of those items in my ideal schedule I created the following text files to capture what I do during those times. 

A good number are blank, but over the break I thought about a few of them, below. Email is something Newport talks a LOT about, so I thought it would be good to solidify what I do first and make sure I only check email a few times a day. (I've since kept it open, but just mute the tab.)

This is how I grade quizzes, including my rubric. 

For office hours a good amount of the time students are not there, but I do need to take time to reach out to students. 

In doing this I keep feeling like I am programming myself, which on the surface seems to run counter to what academics would seem to prize; thinking about the world. Yet, what do I want to use my limited brain power on, the little or the big things?

It also feels nice to put these things down somewhere, knowing I can come back to them in the future and make them better. Maybe I learn enough AutoHotKey or Python to automate a good amount of what I do? Maybe I realize I dislike doing some of these tasks and find ways around them? Maybe I just iterate on them term over term, and come to a place of peace that I can't improve every task... Yet. 

The Time-Block Planner Feedback

 In this recent podcast episode, Dr. Cal Newport asked for feedback for his time-block planner. I purchased it at the end of last year to use over the Winter 2021 term. From that experience I bought a blank journal and created very similar organizational tools to the ones Dr. Newport has in his planner. I wrote and sent some feedback, but thought I'd share it here to describe what my planning process looks like. Here is what I sent him;

Dr. Newport,

In your recent Deep Questions podcast episode (Ep. 85: Are NFTs Frivolous or Fundamental?) you asked for feedback on your time-block planner. I used your planner over the Winter 2021 term to support my work as a math instructor and as the newly elected chairperson of the math department at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Over the term I attempted to use the planner consistently, but as with any new process I had mixed results.

For the Spring 2021 term I bought this journal from Baronfig to time-block plan. I was primarily attracted to the form factor at 7.5 in. by 5.5 in. and that it lay flat. With the previous time-block planner it felt fairly bulky, and I had to clip the left side of the planner to my desk to keep it laying flat. Working from home I didn't have to worry about carrying the previous planner in a bag, and worry about the additional weight it might add. I also tried writing in the previous planner in a chair with a table or desk and found it flimsy, and it slid around. The Baronfig journal is small enough that I could support writing in it with one hand, and it had a hard backing for additional support. 

With a blank planner I knew I had to organize the pages, and thought in drawing the tables and schedules I might be more motivated to use them. Using a blank planner also gave me the opportunity to add components I wanted in the previous time-block planner. 

The first page has a quarter plan (We are on 10 week quarters.) with major events. Excuse the coffee stain. 

I included a monthly schedule for finer gradation in tasks and events. 

In reviewing the time-block planner at the end of last term I realized I only organized the weekly overviews in terms of days, and therefore added this page before the first week. 

One thing I've been playing with are sticky notes for tasks that continue from day-to-day, or reminders I want to keep on a daily basis. 

You mentioned not having a full two-page spread for weekends, and I agree, it seemed like wasted space. So far I've just added the dates of the weekend days on each page, and am planning rough sketches of the day, and/or notes for when my mind wanders back to work. 

After having used this journal for a week and a day I am a little worried about having so many calendars to update and cross reference within the journal. Quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily feel just a tad much, so I may take out the monthly calendar.

Drawing the calendars, tables, and charts is a nice crafty task I do at night with some music on. Drafting in high school apparently left a mark on what I find meditative and calming. While asking users to draw their own schedules in a consumer product might be a step too far, adding in elements where users customize them for their needs may be useful.

I also looked at The Perfect Notebook (https://perfect-notebook.com/) for its modularity, but I'm still trying to sort out what I want in my journal and went the hand-written route this time. In the future I would like the option of doing a little up-front work to customize my planner, but then it's set and I don't have to worry about that part again. This might be a nice way to tie in quarterly reflections about the previous planner, what worked and what didn't, and then create your new planner with those lessons in mind. 

Thank you for sharing your organizational methods and your expertise. I have greatly benefited from both. 

Highest regards,

Robert Weston 

 

Pre-Fall Term Psychic Exorcism: Statistics class ideas on a page

Past two weeks between summer term and the faculty work week has been spent packing (we bought a house!), cooking a lot of good food, watching Star Trek: TNG, and reading a variety of books and articles meant to 'help' my teaching. Not sure if they are helping right now, I just have a lot of ideas floating around in my head that I need to put somewhere, namely here.

• I've been browsing Technology-Supported Mathematics Learning Environments 67th Yearbook (2005) and while focused on a K-12 audience, I have taken up a few ideas from it:
• Teaching Strategies for Developing Judicious Technology Use by Ball and Stacey helped address my concerns of letting students run amok with calculators (mathematical totems I call them in class). They suggest, as is a common theme with many education best practices, that we have to model how to use technology tools. And not just their actual use, but whether to use them or not. I am hoping to incorporate some of the strategies below into my in-class activities, through question prompts, discussions, or demonstrations.
  
  
  
• Comparing Distributions and Growing Samples by Hand and with a Computer Tool by Bakker and Frederickson focused on middle school students and their conceptual development of data, samples, population, and measures of center. This passage in particular struck me:

• We can compare this situation (focus on calculation of measures of center) to the proverbial tip of the iceberg. It is the substance beneath the surface that makes the iceberg float. In this metaphor, mean, median, and mode are the visible tip of the iceberg. What is beneath the visible surface is the knowledge and skills that students really need to understand and sensibly use these measures of center. 

While it is necessary to be able to do the computations, it is much more critical for students to develop an understanding of when these measures are appropriate, and then apply and use these numbers in context. This reinforces the need for students to write these numbers in context, and base decisions on them. My in-class activities should always contain summary questions that ask students to write in words what their calculations are, and what they mean.


• Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty by Barkley offers a wide variety of ways to get students engaged with course material. One I found especially useful was the two-page section on "Try to rebuild the confidence of discouraged and disengaged students." Teaching statistics usually means teaching a student population that has some mathematical knowledge, but are not confident with that knowledge. Below is a list of strategies based on Motivating students to learn by Brophy (2004).
  
  
  
  
  
  I tried having students set goals in my summer Calculus course, asking them to describe what their study plan was for the weekend. I think this helped with planning, understanding consequences, and overall helped students understand responsibility. I will definitely incorporate these questions into post-quizzes for my statistics course.
  
  The entirety of Chapter 8: Tips and Strategies for Promoting Active Learning should be tattooed on my body somewhere. I know and apply a number of the strategies (Activate prior learning, clarify your role, limit and chunk information, etc.) but found the section on "Teach in ways that promote effective transfer." useful. I regularly refer to Bloom's Taxonomy in my classes, but the below table really hit home that your strategies and methods for developing those cognitive tasks should be different for each level of understanding.
  
  

So in summary, for my Fall Statistics course I will:

• Include judicious technology use questions throughout in-class activities. 
• Have questions that ask students to interpret their calculations, and make decisions based on them. 
• In announcements and post-quizzes write comments or questions that have students think about what they have accomplished, set realistic goals, go to different support services, and to reflect on their own cognitive processes. 
• During the start of the course, and during exam review sessions, share the Learning Strategies table and have students determine what a question is asking, at what level, and possibly how they should study for such a question. 

Glad I got those ideas out, and can now refer back to them after the term to keep me accountable. What ideas are floating around in your head for the upcoming term? Any exciting projects, new ways of doing things, assignments, assessments? Feel free to share below.