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I think if we all put together a list, it’s going to be easy to identify these troublemakers and avoid them. Actually, a better question would be what are the activities that get the most bang for your time, but they may vary a lot from discipline to discipline. Straightforward application of Pareto’s principle should go a long way.
By the way, is any of you keeping any kind of log of where your time goes? Or running any application like rescueTime?
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AMA citation:
Quesada J. Academics: What are the one or two biggest wastes of time?. Academic Productivity. 2008. Available at: https://academicproductivity.com/2008/academics-what-are-the-one-or-two-biggest-wastes-of-time/. Accessed August 29, 2011.
APA citation:
Quesada, Jose. (2008). Academics: What are the one or two biggest wastes of time?. Retrieved August 29, 2011, from Academic Productivity Web site: https://academicproductivity.com/2008/academics-what-are-the-one-or-two-biggest-wastes-of-time/
Chicago citation:
Quesada, Jose. 2008. Academics: What are the one or two biggest wastes of time?. Academic Productivity. https://academicproductivity.com/2008/academics-what-are-the-one-or-two-biggest-wastes-of-time/ (accessed August 29, 2011).
Harvard citation:
Quesada, J 2008, Academics: What are the one or two biggest wastes of time?, Academic Productivity. Retrieved August 29, 2011, from
MLA citation:
Quesada, Jose. "Academics: What are the one or two biggest wastes of time?." 15 Aug. 2008. Academic Productivity. Accessed 29 Aug. 2011.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Time management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 16th, 2008 at 11:44 am
My biggest wastes of time are
1. Surfing the internet – I get caught up chasing links and distracted from my original purpose of coming online
2. Incessant email checking
3. Perfectionism in the little things. I waste a lot of time trying to get something perfect when it really just needs to be good enough
4. Self doubt. When I doubt myself and my ability to complete my PhD, I waste a lot of time that could be spent actually doing research. Worrying is a waste of time!
August 16th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
A related question is how much productive work on hard things is reasonable for a given day? I think a lot of my issues come from exagerating this amount. I was surprised, for example, to recently read (Fields Medal winner) Terry Tao talk about his time management. He mentioned how on some days, if feeling good, he gets “an hour” of hard math thinking, while other days he just catches up on e-mail, writes blog posts, etc…
August 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
For those compulsive websurfers/bloggers/inter-whatevers, I highly recommend the leechblock extension for firefox. I’ve got it setup with access schedules for different websites, based on week/weekend, and categories, rescue time tells me I’ve become much more productive since implementing it.
August 17th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Alex, I will definately try the leechblock, it sounds like it might be really good for me. Cal, this is a question that I have struggled with since I began full time research. Particularly when deadlines approach, and I really cut down on my web surfing time, I find that I cannot work on my thesis for 8 hours a day. I find it impossible. The most I can do is an hour or two at a time, then I need a break, for at least a half hour, after which I can return to my work. I find working from home really good because I can spend the half hour break cooking, running errands, playing with the cat etc. I have often felt like a failure for not being physically able to work on my thesis for 8 hours a day, and felt very guilty being exhausted from working when my SO comes home from work, as he is a manual worker, and I feel therefore has a reason to be exhausted!
August 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Geri: I think intellectual work of the type required to write a thesis or paper is the -most- exhausting. And there’s a reason for it:
“Although the brain represents only 2% of the body weight, it receives 15% of the cardiac output, 20% of total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of total body glucose utilization. The energy consumption for the brain to simply survive is 0.1 Calories per minute, while this value can be as high as 1.5 Calories per minute (100W) during crossword puzzle-solving”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain#Brain_energy_consumption
Cal: I also follow Terry Tao. He is a great example of someone who is very transparent as to what works and not for him (most people don’t know).
I designed the interruptron exactly to answer how many hours of ‘good’ work (no mail, meetings, etc) I could get in a day. I find that 5-6 hrs is a good average.
I find that writing is the most demanding task. Then, reading, then programming/ data analysis.
I cannot keep a 5-6hrs average writing for a long time; after a while (say weeks) I crash and have to revert to menial tasks, or nothing at all.
On the other hand, I can do several 14hrs days programming. More if it’s pair programming; but still, I think the real ‘good work’ part of that, where I actually do design and do problem solving, is probably only 3-4 hrs a day. The rest is ‘showeling snow’, as Murakami would say.
In any case, the academic life is designed to introduce bullshit at random times so you can rarely concentrate for that long anyway
August 18th, 2008 at 3:39 am
I find that internet surfing and feed-reading eats into my research work. Also easy, fun tasks like PubMed-surfing. So I have started to use a timer on my computer and limit myself to 15 minutes a day on those tasks. I still spend to much time blogging, but I have improved.
Also, the procrastination tends to spiral out of control when I haven’t done enough experimental work recently. Regardless of the stage of my project, I try to do some sort of experimental work each day. It keeps my mind on the job, and gives me more data that I have to deal with when I sit down at my terminal.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
My top productivity eater is web-surfing.
I surf news pages, Blogs, Wikipedia (check out who directed that one movie & then go on from there…) – sometimes for several hours a day.
I have Rescuetime installed, but I only find it so-so useful. It gives you a rough estimate about how much “wasteful” things you’ve done, but only if you have it configured correctly, which takes time as well!
Leechblock sounds great, will try that out right away.
I also agree with Geri’s points, especially “wrong perfectionism” is a real bugger.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Multitasking, distractions and interruptions. They are not time consuming by their own, but they dillute your focus like crazy. Which means less time for really productive work.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:44 am
[...] Academic Productivity blog recently asked the following question: What are your one or two biggest wastes of time? The [...]
August 21st, 2008 at 9:17 am
This reminds me of the art installation “How to work better” by Swiss artists Peter Fischli & David Weiss, painted on the wall of an office building in Zurich:
August 29th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
[...] (found in comment at: Academic Productivity) [...]
October 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
I have to say that the biggest waste of time is having a friend there who is a joker and doesn’t want to study. They always distract you and you will never get any studying done. I also agree with others that the internet can be a huge distraction as well. It all depends on your style, whether it be finding the right people to study with or studying alone.
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:20 am
I agree that surfing the internet and incessant email checking are huge time wasters, but when I was in college and was single, my biggest time waster was thinking about girls.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Cleaning up messes made by other faculty.
Self doubt.
Giving in to the drained feeling a day on campus can elicit.
Self doubt.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Quoting DanGTD:
Multitasking, distractions and interruptions. They are not time consuming by their own, but they dillute your focus like crazy. Which means less time for really productive work.
I web surf a lot but I don’t allow it in work hours – it is officially play.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:22 am
“Also, the procrastination tends to spiral out of control when I haven’t done enough experimental work recently. Regardless of the stage of my project, I try to do some sort of experimental work each day. It keeps my mind on the job, and gives me more data that I have to deal with when I sit down at my terminal.”
This from Dr. Cris is also interesting. I am not sure how to transfer it to my field but I do speed up and focus when I am doing certain kinds of work that I’ll have to define better – “experimental” sounds right.