[Miscellany] Time tracking, refreshing my teaching examples, and new reading

1. September is for rebooting

Ah, August… I always end it feeling a little bit frustrated that I didn’t do everything that I needed / wanted to get done (including not having as much fun or rest as I was expecting or was expected to).

September, on the contrary, feels like it’s full of potential. It’s the start of a new school / academic year. There is a new season around the corner. And it is an opportunity for a reboot. To help with this reboot, I am tracking my time, using Laura Vanderkam’s 168 hours timesheet.

Laura Vanderkam is a writer and speaker on topics related to productivity and time management. I like her pragmatic, no-non-sense approach. One of her recommendations is to think of life in 168-hour periods (i.e., a week), rather than 24-hour intervals. She also recommends tracking time:

“The tool itself doesn’t matter. What matters is that you do it. Time tracking is tremendously useful to the cause of time management. After all, how can you spend your time better if you don’t know how you’re spending it now? We all have blind spots on time.”

I downloaded her time tracking PDF and spreadsheet, and I am looking forward to learning where my time blind spots are.

2. Stranger Things

We are big fans of the Stranger Things series, at home. We watched season three this summer. In addition to the storyline and the acting, I really like how it represents consumer behaviour and marketing management practices, at the time. For instance, the emergence of out of town shopping malls), and the brands (e.g., the gap white on red logo).

I need to replace my ‘Minority Report’ examples (which no longer resonate with the students, anyway 😦 ), with new ones. It looks like Stranger Things could be a great source of material.
3. What I am reading

This week’s focus is scheduling performance reviews for my team, and preparing for mine. And helping the kiddo get ready to go back to school. What does the week have in store for you?