Seven-Day Timelog

InsideHigherEd had an article earlier this week titled “Counting the Hours”. The writer chronicles lessons learned from keeping a seven-day log to find out where her time goes. For a number of years, I’ve asked my first-year students who are also my academic advisees to do the same. In the current iteration, the students complete the task sometime in the month of October. I started doing this because I’ve found it personally valuable – I started tracking my time my first year as a tenure-track professor so I know where my time goes.

Students stop by my office individually to tell me what they’ve learned from keeping a seven-day timelog. I don’t ask to see it, although sometimes students voluntarily show me the details because they want to explain a particular observation. I simply want to know (1) what jumped out at them, (2) if they’re happy with the way they’re spending their time, and (3) if there are any changes they think they should make about how time is spent. I don’t provide any tips or strategies unless the student asks for advice about a specific issue. Often the students come to a realization of what they’d like to change and start working on it even before they come by my office to chat with me.

It’s been neat to hear what students learned about themselves and where their time goes. Some of them decide to keep doing it because they found it useful. I usually share the story of how I decided to just keep track of my time the first month on the job, and then I did the second month, and then kept going, and now I have years of interesting data. Even if they don’t continue the practice, practically every single person has told me that it was a valuable exercise.

Exercise is one of the things that most of my current students have been good at keeping up. The college is located in a part of the country where people seem to care about these things and there’s an internal culture to keep fit. One of my students decided she’d like to push herself a bit more and picked out a triathlon she’d like to train for. (She used to do these in high school, but hadn’t been training with that regiment and realized she missed it.) Another student actually thought she was spending too much time on exercise. Most of my students are doing decently on sleep at this point, although some of them pointed out that they were lacking and needed to do something about it. They’ve usually started putting plans into action – maybe because they know I’ll ask them about it. I suppose that’s one good thing about having at least a tiny amount of accountability.

Eating was another thing that came up. A number of students didn’t realize how much time they spent at dinner socializing with friends. By and large, this was not a bad thing –the students realize that it’s important to take breaks and that socializing over a meal is a good thing! One student realized that eating lunch while doing homework was less productive at least for her. Another student realized that he needs to wake up a little earlier so he can have a proper breakfast and that helps him concentrate better in his classes the rest of the morning.

A few students were surprised at how easily distracted they were by their cellphones while trying to do homework or study – and that it took much longer to get through their work because it was constantly being interrupted. They actually took immediate steps (closing or moving apps, turning off the phone) to remedy this without my making any suggestions, so that was cool. One musical student was surprised how much time he spent on his keyboard (which he enjoys, and is a good outlet). Several years ago, I had one student who was surprised at how much time she spent in the shower. Students sometimes note the disproportionate amount of time spent on different classes. Perhaps not surprisingly, my chemistry class had the most outside-of-class work time-wise for many, if not most of them.

Hopefully the lessons learned in October are taken to heart in November! I’m glad my students find the exercise valuable and I expect to keep having it in years to come. Here’s the slide I showed my students when introducing the exercise. (From a Google Images search. Not sure who made the original pic.)