I am sorry, everyone, but preparing class is one of the best things you can do and it saves time. I’ve often tried not to, being told that every minute spent on it is a minute I could be writing, but it is so exhausting and it takes so much energy to just walk on and teach or lead discussion from pure memory and soul.
I am against all the exhortations to find more and more ways to cut more and more corners teaching. It is true that as TAs we were paid for 20 hours per class and now we are only paid for 12. It is true that professors where I was a TA had fewer total classes than I do, and may well have put in 20 hours on each one. That does mean that I cannot spend the same amount of time as my professors, or as my own TAing self.
It does not follow, however, that I should be trying to cut down further and further, although I have been exhorted to do so all my life (and including when I was a TA). Every time I try to do it, I find myself too exhausted and stressed to run any part of the rest of my work or life normally.
Apparently, though, we are supposed to rush through teaching, speed grade everything, invent schemes to avoid service, and put alarm clocks on while doing research and writing so we can keep our pace up. Again I do not understand; to impose these sorts of working conditions upon myself merely puts me in a state of panic. If industrial workers try to work in that way, they have accidents.
What always worked for me was to estimate time realistically and give myself enough of it. That was always why I had such great powers of concentration and remained calm, and finished; in fact I always got much more done than the panic stricken types, and arrived earlier. But it seems that this is not normal, and that only a hounded rushing has virtue.
My academic advice is to spend all the hours allotted for teaching on teaching unless you really don’t need them. That way you come away from it refreshed rather than depleted. I think the reason so many people believe teaching days cannot be writing days is that the techniques for saving time on teaching are so exhausting, that afterwards all they can do is pant on the lawn with the other dogs.
I do not know where exalted professors get the idea that TAs and unexalted professors are overpreparing classes or spending too much time on teaching. Of course, if you are teaching three, four, five classes you will spend a lot of total time, buét it does not mean you are spending too much time on any single class.
I think the mantra, don’t spend too much time on teaching is just one more way exalted professors have of seeming to communicate to the masses while in fact accusing them of crimes they have not committed and refusing to pass on any actual trade secrets. Realize, though, that I am not recommending spending more than the allotted time or the time you are paid for; I am questioning the veracity and also the sincerity of standard academic advice.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Not preparing for classes? The idea fills me with horror for all the same reasons that procrastinating does. Way too stressful.
Yes, but what I was always told was that preparing for class *was* procrastination.
And in other posts, I’ve explained how research was procrastination. You should not read — not for class prepation and not for research; you should teach minimally and write a lot without concern for quality or veracity, just acceptability. From this training, I discern, one does not get the feeling that one has one’s work or a work.