How I spent my time in Summer 2021

At the end of each semester, I review how I spent my time that semester. I’m doing a bit better in terms of overwork, but it’s still an issue, and I have logged between 48 hours and 57 hours of work each week. At least it’s less than the 65 hours during the Spring semester.

In terms of categories, here’s how I spent my time:

• Writing papers: 24.47% of my time
• Managing ACI Avances en ciencias e ingenierías: 13.06%
• Blog: 11.68%
• Triaging email: 8.78%
• Service: 8.33%
• Teaching-related tasks for USFQ: 6.99%
• Teaching-related tasks for TU Delft: 5.41%
• PhD student 1: 4.03%
• Admin: 3.12%
• Meetings TU Delft: 2.15%
• a whole slew of different tasks that took less than 2% of my time each

I’m glad I got to put in a lot of time on writing papers. At the same time, I see that my tasks for the journal of which I’m editor in chief have spiraled out of control and I won’t be able to keep up in the Fall semester as I return to teaching. A lot of my time that is logged as triaging email actually goes beyond just triaging: I answer questions and take care of things that take me less than 5 minutes of time or that appear to be urgent.