Simple living in the country - back to basics

Cheery_Daff

OK, so a list for tomorrow... I want a relatively low stress one, but I do want to get a few bits nd pieces done.

* cafe breakfast
* banks/YNAB/ shuffling
* figure out how much I need to withdraw from Premium Bonds and put request in
* check Premium Bond high value winners list (no call from Agent Million today but we might still have won £100k! 😂)
* text friends re holiday
* ring other friend I've been meaning to ring all week
* ring and pay vet 
* spend some time tidying/decluttering in my study
* possible trip to the tip 
* decide dates for our holiday
* make a meal plan for the next week
* maybe some more batch cooking? Possibly some kind of snack item that I can take into the office?
* some kind of exercise

That'll probably do!

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, list of high value winners is up! And we are not on it 😂 Never entirely sure which county to look for - we are geographically in one, but our postal address lists another. Irrelevant anyway on this occasion 🙄

I was pleased to see that someone with just £180 bought in 1998 has won £25k - what a nice surprise! 😊 I found myself listening to a radio station I don't usually listen to the other day, and there was a competition where a lady won £100k and she was just crying into the Pot Noodle she was eating 😂, what a lovely surprise for her too 😊

South_coast

Bluegreen143 said:

@South_coast both points are good but your second point REALLY hit home for me. Terrible for doing chores in work time and work during personal time. 

I think the question to stop and ask yourself is "Would I be doing this right now if I was actually at work?"

Cheery_Daff

South_coast said:

Bluegreen143 said:

@South_coast both points are good but your second point REALLY hit home for me. Terrible for doing chores in work time and work during personal time. 

I think the question to stop and ask yourself is "Would I be doing this right now if I was actually at work?"

Possibly not, but I might be having a tea break with a colleague and talking about something completely unrelated to work, or spending 10 minutes walking between buildings, or trying to fix the photocopier.

However, you're right that I wouldn't then think 'I spent 10 minutes doing something irrelevant earlier, I'd best spend an extra hour finishing this to make up for it' if I was in the office.

I'm definitely going to have a serious audit of activities and see what I can get rid of though. I spend a lot of time doing stuff that I wouldn't get sacked if I didn't do, but that help keep the gears of the profession working, and are technically in my job description in some form under something like 'contribute to the work of the profession', like reviewing other people's journal articles and applications for ethical approval, sitting on student conduct panels, being on external committees for professional associations. I get a certain number of hours a year for those things, but do far more of them than I officially get hours for.

Should help now I've got my grant too - I've built hours into that which should buy me out of other work. I do get some time for things like applying for grants, but over time last couple of years I've spent those hours several times over.

So yes, I do need to look at day to day activities and make efficiencies where I can, but I also need to look at the bigger picture too. Don't want to end up being that person who complains about dropping down to 4 days but still doing 5 days worth of work!

Cheery_Daff

OK, I have worked out my hourly rate as per SC's suggestion, and it was quite instructive... If I do ONE hour over my contracted hours, it reduces my hourly rate by 77p. Two hours reduces by £1.55, four hours (which would just be 1 hour per working day) reduces hourly rate by £2.98.

On average over the course of the year I would say I probably don't do too much more than that, although obviously some weeks are ridiculous and others are pretty slack. But even so. Definitepy worth another bout of proper time tracking I think.

BORING WORK/NUMBERS CALCULATIONS ALERT 

I've also looked again at my work plan. Our working year is split into hours and we are allocated a set number for each task/set of tasks. So while I generally think of my job as just being a salary/getting stuff done, contractually I do have actual hours and tasks (however loosely interpreted). 

A lot of the boxes are specific (x hours for teaching on y module etc) but there are three more vague boxes...

One is for 'general duties' - everyone gets this, and it covers eg staff meetings, filing reports for various things, stuff like student conduct panels, university ethics reviews. I get 140 hours a year for that, which works out just over 3 hours per working week roughly (although obviously not split evenly over the weeks).

One is research/scholarly time. Again, everyone gets this, and it covers any research where your time isn't bought out, writing journal articles, applying for grants, as well as keeping up with new knowledge in your field, keeping up with stuff that will inform your teaching. Also covers stuff like professional organisation activity etc, and contributing to wider field (eg journal reviews). I get 136 hours for this, so 3.09 hours per working week.

I also get extra general research time - without going into specifics, I have to apply for this each year, and it's not guaranteed, but if I don't get it, the university can't count me as a 'research person' for the purposes of external assessment. This is worth 128 hours a year (so just under 3 hours per working week) and I have to demonstrate my research contribution/output is over and above what I could achieve in the normal research category above, but it includes broadly similar activities.

I'm going to post this in case I lose it...

starnac

All this talk about work/life balance is pretty interesting. I have busy times and quieter time depending on the time of year and I find myself working at 7am while the kids are eating breakfast or back doing something after they've gone to bed. Reading these posts though I realise that I also do "house stuff" during my work day. I think it's an easy habit to fall into when you are working from home. 
Maybe I also need to have a look at this. 

Cheery_Daff

Those last two categories together are 264 hours a year, which is 6 hours per working week on average.

That's the bit of my time I have most control over - teaching always expands to fill however much time it's given, and while I've made some efficiencies in terms of having set times students can book meetings with me, using resources from past years, accepting my lectures won't be the world's most brilliant with only one hour of prep time per one hour of teaching, obviously some students struggle more than others and I will never turn them away, so I can't make many more cuts there.

Anyway, research time. I'm on two different external committees, and I'm a trustee of a work-related organisation too. 

Committee A usually has two all-day meetings per year, and each requires at least 2 days of prep, totalling 45 hours a year. This year they asked if we'd be willing to do the same work again, and I foolishly said yes - so that's taken 90 hours this year at least. I have gained SO much from this work though - can't tell you how valuable it has been for me, and it's great service to wider commimunity. My term runs til the end of next year.

Committee B is a lot less formal - it's regional, fun, and we usually only have about 4 meetings a year, although there is stuff to do each month, and we usually organise a couple of events per year too. Roughly 40 hours a year if we do 2 events.

Trustee work is for the same organisation as Committee B. Again, this has been really interesting, not something I've done before. 6 meetings a year, plus prep for each, so 18 hours a year without any of the other work that arises from it.

Oh, and Committee C! I forgot! A local strategic group - I feed in and feed back but it doesn't usually generate any other work. One meeting of 1.5 hours a month, so approx 18 hours a year

Between those things, then, that's 166 hours, leaving me just 98 a year (or 2.2 per working week) for applying for funding, writing articles, presenting at conferences, reviewing other people's journal articles etc.

Hmm. As I said yesterday - I have stuck my fingers in too many pies... 🙄 Fun pies 😁😂 But too many of them. I could ditch all of these and not be sacked (I suspect nobody at my actual job would notice...) but then I'd have had not a chance of promotion at all (and work would be far less interesting!)

Clearly I need to ditch some stuff though, so as an initial plan 

* Stick to just the normal 2 meetings a year for Committee A - no extras

* See if I can pass on responsibility for Committee B. I'd like to remain on the committee, but at the minute I chair it, which is a lot of the work.

* Maybe attend every other meeting of Committee C? This is the least stress one as it's literally just the meeting itself.

* limit the number of journal reviews I agree to - each takes at least 2-3 hours and I've already done 3 this year I think (and refused 3). Requests come in thick and fast!

The trustee role has the most potential to generate extra work at the minute so I need to be mindful of that.

Things will be easier over the summer anyway, and will change next year because my new project has hours attached - 472 for the year, so overshadowing a lot of my other things. If i do get the promotion that will change things as well, so not much point doing longer term planning until I know about that- I'll be more expected to do external committee stuff than I am now, and will have reduced teaching anyway, which will make things more manageable.

Anyway, as usual, apologies for the extensive waffle 🙄😂 It's helped to have a good look at all the things I've added in- they make my job fun, and in some respects not feel like a job, but clearly something has to give unless I'm going to essentially treat some of them as 'voluntary work'  - and if I felt I had time for actual voluntary work, it would likely be around rescuing chickens or community gardening, not stuff that was essentially the same as my actual job!

Right, the cafe is filling up round me and my coffee is finished, so I'd best relinquish my seat...

EssexHebridean

That’s such an interesting breakdown - and probably quite useful to have it all set out like that too I imagine? The thing of doing personal stuff in work’s time, I do a LOT of this, but equally part of my role is simply just being there, manning the phones and being a presence in the office. There are times when I can fill my days almost entirely with physical “actual” work stuff, but there are others when I definitely can’t - and there is literally no point in me sitting staring at the walls at those times, so personal stuff it is. I’m not going to beat myself up or feel guilty about that though - it’s just the way things are. The flipside is that I am VERY easy going about holiday days (Technically I could have claimed all 2020’s days while ai was furloughed but that would have meant the firm paying me in full so I didn’t as that would have impacted them, even though financially it would have been better for me), and I’ve not had a pay rise since ai went employed with them a few years back now. Swings and roundabouts! 

A hard yes to not mixing up “work work” with “voluntary work” of a completely different type too - those things you choose to do currently may well be fun, but yes, they do fall inside the parameters of the job don’t they! 

Karmacat

Cheery, that's such an interesting analysis - not waffle at all, and very comprehensible even to non-academics.  Maybe the most important going forward is your analysis right at the top of the post time-stamped at 10.24, about the effect on your hourly rate of extra hours - that's *definitely* something to think of, along with "what voluntary work would I choose".  As you say, you're getting a new project anyway, so things are definitely up in the air, but there's a principle there - if you take on more, 472 hours more, no less, then things will have to change anyway. My word!  It's great to see you doing this!

Cheery_Daff

Sounds very sensible to get non work stuff done in work time in your case! You are actually doing the job of being there at the same time, so certainly no need for guilt I say! Always good to hear swings and roundabouts of different work environments too. I have a lot of flexibility and an very fortunate in many ways, I don't ever forget that. (I do realise I'm currently on strike 🙄 but a lot of that is to do with conditions in the wider sector, not my personal job!) 

And yes, those work/fun things do fall inside job parameters - if I retired tomorrow I'd definitely ditch them all 😁 If I was thinking of this purely as a 'job' I'd just be doing what I NEEDED to to tick the boxes, but for me it's a longer term career, which means shaping it to be more interesting where I can - but there's a flip side in relation to work/life balance, clearly...

Sometimes I think you have to do some personal stuff in work time - I remember when we were moving house for example and I answered SO many phone calls at work 😮 And quite frankly my brain would be completely fried if I didn't have a bit of a break from it occasionally.

When I go back on Monday I'm going to get on the case with time tracking again for a few weeks. I've done this before quite strictly for short periods and it's helped me nip some bad habits in the bud.

Anyway, today! Not at work! Home from the cafe, Mr Cheery had a wave of fatigue and went off for a nap, and I am trying to get warm. I've put the heating on for a bit as it was 9 degrees in the living room (warmest part of the house) - brrrr.

Time for a bit of banking I think...