It's been a while!
Some goings on: LG got two job offers, enrolled in their top choice university, and got a driver's permit, as they skipped driver's ed when their peers did so at age ~16. A lot of adulting. But also very much teenager who can't manage to put their used plates in the dishwasher and so on.
This is not really the point of my post. I was asked to take on a new administrative role, which looks like it's going to happen not next year but the 2023-2024 academic year (my choice). But during the time in which I was contemplating this, our department leadership team had a conversation about work load. Who is doing what? Is it equitable? Etc.
In practical terms, this opened up a large can of worms (must look up origin of that phrase!). How much is the "right" amount of work? While I very much agree with Oliver Burkeman's take on things, that there's always going to be too much to do, it also became clear to me that I have overscheduled myself for so long I don't know what the "right" amount of work is. Is the sign of the "right" amount that the tasks that one agrees to do and wants to do can actually be completed "on time"?
I worked for ~5 hours over the weekend and am still heading into this week feeling behind on most of the things... It would be great if it was as simple as just cutting the things I didn't get to do, but unfortunately a lot of them are still fairly high priority (like, I didn't get to finish commenting on my students' work or get my tax documents together!). My schedule doesn't have much in the way of cushion, except doing things like writing this, which has at this point taken the sum total of ~7 minutes.
Looking forward to exploring this further....when I have the time.
