E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
Tschirf / Riedenauer Time Management and Self-Organisation in Academia
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-8463-5703-3
Verlag: UTB
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Developing a self-directed and balanced life
E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-8463-5703-3
Verlag: UTB
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Dr. Andrea Tschirf ist Beraterin und Trainerin im Wissenschaftsbereich.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
How This Book Will Help You 7
I. Specific Challenges in Academic Life—Institutional Factors 11
II. Specific Challenges—Individual Factors 23
1. Knowing myself: Individual behaviour style 23
2. My goals, roles, and values: Basis for my orientation 34
3. Career planning, balance, and integration in my life 46
III. Managing Personal Energy—From Distress to Flow 61
1. Distress and eustress 61
2. Allocating, using, and strengthening my energies 75
IV. Effective Planning and Evaluation Methods 93
1. Principles 93
2. Task management 100
3. Priorities 108
4. Achieving goals 114
5. Planning top-down to organise the next day 124
6. Mastering my time thieves 140
7. Evaluation 148
8. Systems for time management 155
V. Order 163
1. Information and communication 163
2. Workplace and archives 171
VI. Time Management for the Main Fields of Academic Activity 179
1. Research 179
2. Teaching, supervision, and mentoring of students 204
3. Administrative and leadership tasks 213
4. Networking, external exchange, service, and transfer 223
Further Support and Literature 229
The Authors 239
II.Specific Challenges—Individual Factors
What it’s about:
The specific challenges in academia arise not only from institutional frameworks, but above all from individual factors. These must also be considered so that individual methods of self-organisation can bring about sustainable improvements. This includes self-knowledge of individual behavioural preferences, an awareness of one’s own values, and clarity about how these values determine role models, as well as consideration of the whole continuum of life while integrating all major life goals.
1.Knowing myself: Individual behaviour style
What it’s about:
Just as the specific challenges faced by academics due to their field of study, job, and position are varied so are their life situations, goals, and values; their personal traits, behavioural styles, and ways of working also differ along with their individual strengths and weaknesses. This must be considered so that you, as a unique person, can select and implement those methods that sustainably improve your self-organisation. Personal behavioural preferences significantly influence time management.
Individuality and structuring time
Every human being is unique, is an individual in the emphatic sense. This concerns all levels: the biological (cf. fingerprint or genetic make-up), the cognitive (intelligence profile1), the ethical in the sense of the ethos expressed in values and goals, the historical, cultural, and social life situation with its influences, but also the behavioural style. Of course, all of this is interrelated and more or less mutually dependent. These factors influence the personal structuring of time, for example the daily performance curve, the energy budget, the way of thinking, the priorities placed on values, traditions, and social status, and, above all, the character.
Some jump out of bed early in the morning full of energy, others are not fully ready for action until late in the morning but are still awake late in the evening. Some can easily concentrate on one thing for two hours, while others switch between different activities more often. For some, large charts and detailed plans help with time management, while others are terrified by them and prefer to stick reminder notes with small pictures or symbols on their computers and desktops or on their doors. Some always have an open ear for their fellow human beings because they want to be there for them, while others introduce limited office hours and otherwise close the office door and turn off the phone. One analyses and decides quickly, the other regards that as slapdash and insists on a thorough discussion of all relevant points of view.
Many time-management training courses and advice books take little account of individuality and find it difficult to do so, since it is objectively difficult to do justice to all possible styles and offer individually accurate help in a short seminar or a book with unknown readers. By necessity, they limit themselves to general rules and standard tips and leave their selection and adaptation entirely up to the reader or the training participant. However, the more a profession is shaped by the personality of the person practicing it, the more open it is to design, the more important it is to take individuality into account.
How can we get a little closer to this goal? One possibility is to use typification, i.e. a level between individuality in the strict sense and the general that should apply to everyone. On this basis, a person can be offered help for individual assessment and then work more precisely on adapting time
management tools and strategies to individual behaviour.
Not only the profession itself but, as far as possible, the self-organisation must fit the individual personality, i.e. not only the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’. Where this does not match in the long run, achieving high performance becomes very exhausting. Conversely, success beckons those who organise their personal environment and routines to use their personal strengths and not be slowed down too much by their weaknesses. It is even better to move from individual self-knowledge to self-development and thus use one’s full potential to respond better to the diverse demands of specific situations. It is therefore about a two-way adjustment of environment and behaviour, which we perform intuitively all the time, but which can be consciously improved in order to avoid the losses due to friction, which can go as far as blockages. Those who have achieved a high capacity for such adjustments become aware of it through faster and more effective work, higher satisfaction and well-being and, in normal cases, more success. Such people are often said to be ‘completely themselves’ in what they do—whether it is the quiet and solitary work at the desk or the inspiring lecture, effective leadership, or valuable collegial collaboration in the research team.
Why does one lecturer like to give oral exams and enjoy the opportunity to get to know the students personally to some extent, and does not mind running over time in the process, while another prefers to develop and use multiple-choice tests because they enable standardised and rapid assessment?2
Why does an institute director immediately seize an opportunity to apply for a large third-party funded research project and take the necessary steps even in the face of resistance, while a colleague thinks about it for a long time and ends up with more concerns and counter-arguments than concepts? Why does one professor seem to be grateful for personal conversations and then quickly and with inspiration returns to work, while another
feels jolted out of concentration and disturbed by every visitor?
These examples show how a person’s behavioural style influences the many daily decisions related to time. They do not suggest that there is only one ‘right’ behaviour in diverse situations, but that it is important to know one’s natural behavioural preferences, to identify causes of ineffectiveness, and to secure the conditions under which you can work well with respect to others. Also, appropriate planning depends on it.
•How important is it for me to reserve large blocks of time for drafting a lecture or writing a paper, in which I eliminate interruptions as much as possible?
•How important is it for me to receive inspiration through discussions, such as at conferences?
•How much quiet seclusion do I need? How often should I discuss my projects with others?
All these questions allow for an interesting psychological debate. This is not the place and time for such a debate—our aim is to provide you with a heuristic instrument to help you systematically better understand and control your personal behaviour, the effectiveness and dysfunctionalities of which you know to some extent from experience. In doing so, we rely on a scientifically validated personality model that has been excellently elaborated in practice and proven a million times over.
A model for the description and development of behaviour
John G. Geier3 developed a model based on the theoretical work of William Moulten Marsten that describes an essential factor guiding human behaviour, known colloquially and inaccurately as character or personality. Of course, cognitive beliefs and values also play an important role in decisions, and personal experiences since birth shape individual behavioural dispositions. However, Geier’s model captures readily observable behavioural tendencies, and this has four implications.
First, the model describes behaviour at the interface of a person and a context, which can also be perceived by others—nothing hidden deep ‘inside’ or in the past. Second, it is about spontaneous tendencies, which of course are not automatically implemented, because normally a person can decide on a different reaction. Stressful situations increase, however, the probability of reacting according to spontaneous behavioural preferences. Third, these tendencies or behavioural dispositions characterising the individual are changeable within certain limits. They have developed in a person’s constant interaction with the environment, starting with relating to parents up to fitting into a specific academic setting. These behavioural tendencies can and must be adapted to new situations and other people. Fourth, through these mostly intuitive adaptations to various demands from a context, we have all developed a repertoire of behavioural styles particularly appropriate for different situations and people: The head of the institute will act somewhat differently as a boss than as a parent of a small child. Or, the faculty member will show different behavioural tendencies in a committee meeting than when a student begins to cry desperately in an oral examination.
It follows that in your self-assessment you should think of a typical situation for which you want to better understand your behavioural preferences.
•Would a fellow sports fan describe my typical behaviour differently than a listener to my lecture?
•In which common professional situations do I feel confident, do I feel that I can easily fulfil the requirements? In which situations, do I feel insecure and suspect that different behaviour would be better at this moment?
Two factors directly determine a person’s behaviour disposition: seeing a setting as hostile or friendly and perceiving oneself as strong or weak. These perceptions affect how decisively or cautiously a person reacts to a...
