I started my work life as a mathematician. My ongoing work was research, the content of which was up to me. Research fit in around teaching classes, which were scheduled for me; attending seminars and meetings (up to 3 a week typically); and holding office hours, scheduled as I chose. Through most of my time as a web developer, I’ve had one significant weekly meeting and the possibility of a handful of smaller ones, but the rest of my time is mine. Furthermore, one of my duties is to learn new things to meet the needs of the designs or simply to implement them in a better way than I previously knew how. What those new things are is up to me.

This means for my entire career I’ve been in charge of the majority of my work schedule and content. The key measure of my work has been “how much did you get done?” Hours per week have been borderline irrelevant, and working outside the bounds of the 9-5 weekday schedule has been the norm. Figuring out how to shape and structure my work life has been a process.

There are two key challenges:
1. How do you get yourself to work hard when your schedule is so open?
I find that having too much time to accomplish something breeds procrastination. Conversely:
2. How do you define “enough work” when you could (should?) always be doing more?
This is a problem mathematicians are prone to, I found, because there is no definition of “enough research.” It can lead to guilt over any time that could be spent working and isn’t, but less productivity during work hours due to burnout. Since there are far too many technologies to master – or truly, even to become conversant with – in any reasonable length of time, the problem has followed me to web development.

Here are five key components to effective scheduling that I’ve identified.

1. Priorities

If the collection of work you would ideally be doing is more than the amount of time available to do that work, you have to decide what’s more important or pressing and what can be let go of for the time being. This would seem to go without saying, but the amount of work required to figure out priorities surprised me when I left mathematics. I started out with a feint at professional craft design; it and web development both require a wide variety of skills that optimally you would have but clearly can’t learn all together, all at once. There are also unlimited options for projects to work on. Where to start? What’s okay to save for later?

My point here is really just to expect that prioritizing your work will take time and thought. In addition to thinking about, say, what new skill is going to have widest applicability or which project will improve your portfolio the most, pay attention to the things you know you should do but really don’t like. For me as a crafter that was what I called “the hustle”: actively trying to sell my patterns and solicit new work opportunities. I had to prioritize that very highly or I would never have done any of it.

2. Slack

Slack is the idea of unscheduled time, leaving gaps in your timeline to accommodate unforeseen problems, tasks taking longer than they “ought,” and new ideas, such as recording a blog post outline or sketching a plan to refactor some piece of code. Slack keeps those unforeseen problems from wreaking havoc with your entire day and allows you to capture the new ideas before they flit away again. You may not have much ability to build in slack when a deadline is bearing down on you, but most of the time you can simply make sure the amount on your to do list is a little less than what you expect to be able to get done in a day.

As a sidebar, slack is relevant to your physical environment too. You need space to work in, of course, but what can be lost is open space to, say, set a box on while you get something out of it, or stash a few things gathered over the weekend for a Tuesday meeting.

I got the term “slack” from the book Scarcity, in which you can read an excerpt discussing the need for both physical and schedule slack.

3. Critical Mass

I get more done when I have sufficient conflicts to make my time more precious – but only up to a point. Too many conflicts become counter-productive again. I experienced this in my teaching schedule; each quarter I would teach 0, 1, or 2 courses. Relative to the amount of time available, the one-course terms were my most productive research terms.

The number of outside demands on your time is not necessarily something you can control, but this notion does imply that canceling obligations may not be the answer to getting more done. You may be able to make your own conflicts by deciding to do X at a given time and get Y done beforehand; this doesn’t work well for me but may for someone else.

4. Deadlines

Deadlines are a self-manager’s best friend. If it doesn’t matter when something gets done, no matter how good it would be in principle to do, it likely won’t happen. Self-imposed deadlines are nearly as good as external deadlines; setting them on those “I should learn this / improve this” projects can help that work not get lost among the work other people are waiting on.

I am most productive on big projects if I work backwards from the final deadline to set intermediate deadlines – with slack built in! I edited my textbook over the course of three months or so by counting the number of sections in the book and dividing them up among the weeks to my deadline, with occasional light weeks for catch-up time. I do the same with web development projects, listing the features I want to add and splitting them out over the time until my deadline.

5. Stopping

Taking time off is critical for avoiding burnout, and ultimately getting more done than if you tried to work 80 hours per week. This can be another way to get the critical mass of conflicts to push you into higher productivity: “I’m not working tonight, so I have to get this done now.” (This version of making your own conflicts does work for me.)

Time off is also an important step in learning and problem solving. Between consecutive mathematics classes the students have “soak time” to internalize the vocabulary and concepts – I don’t remember where I got the term, but I quite like it; it is one of the reasons compressed summer courses can be more challenging than regular semester courses. In problem solving you need to pound data into your brain, of course, but then walk away and let your brain sort and reconnect the information unconsciously for a while. This can happen while you’re working on something else, but is more likely to happen while you’re on a walk or in the shower.

Putting Them Together

So, then, how do you work hard and define “enough”?

Define your goals: determine your highest-priority tasks and break them down into pieces that you can accomplish in a smallish amount of time (up to a few days is ideal for me).

Assign deadlines: if you have external deadlines (typically for larger chunks of work) work backward to split them out into intermediate deadlines. Account for conflicts and other work needs, and build in slack. Make your own deadlines for other work, but don’t overload any given time period.

From deadlines, create to do lists.

Embrace schedule conflicts as motivators.

Stop when you’ve finished your list for the day. If you’ve made your list from your priorities and deadlines (whether self-imposed or external), checking it off is enough. Breathe deep.

Photo of Maria Spelterini crossing Niagara Falls from Wikimedia Commons.