"How to Do Great Research" Course for Ph.D. Students
1 Purpose of this Assignment
In this assignment, you will keep a detailed record of how you spend your time. Through this exercise, you may discover that you may not be spending your time exactly as you think you are!
2 Task
Keep a detailed “log” of how you spend your time over the course of the week. Write down, in fifteen-minute intervals:
• The nature of the activity (work, recreation, etc.)
• What exactly you did for that time interval
Please be as detailed as possible. For example, if you spent two hours working, but if you interrupted your work time for ten minutes to browse the web, get coffee, etc., try to write these times down, too. Write down the time it took to transition between activities. (Why? Because context switches in the middle of work can turn out to be significant productivity hits!).
We know that this assignment may seem tedious. On the bright side, you will only have to do this task for one week; many professionals with “billable time” keep a record of how they spend their time down to 10-minute intervals.
Additionally, keeping a fine-grained record of your time will allow you to keep track of little wasted time “slices” that add up to a significant amount of time. Many productive people figure out how to make the best use of these very small time slices (e.g., reading a newspaper article while waiting for the train).