♦ It is evident that I will have to work a lot this semester if I am to make any headway. I cannot waste any time doubting, I cannot waste any time working when I am too tired to work well, and I cannot waste any time recovering from overwork.
♦ I think the most I can work might be 9 or 10 hours in a given day — and not every day. I can do more but it carves time out from the following day, so it is not useful. Definitely after the tenth hour I must stop and ideally, I will stop sooner.
♦ I do not think it is realistic to work 60 hours as we are assigned to do, but I am not sure I can fit everything into 40.
♦ In my experience people who act “efficiently” make mistakes that waste time for others and I do not respect this.
♦ Perhaps I could do “everything” in 40 hours but I notice that the people who say they do this have almost no service or administrative responsibilities to speak of and they apparently have very functional campuses. Just call me slow, then, or point out that I could be faster, I do not care. Yes, I will still be in the beautiful café doing reading while others are already playing catch, but how important is this in the end if I am relaxed?
♦ I think my department chair is actually putting in the 60 hours and not wasting time. To do this, though, you have to have someone else doing most of your house and yard work and your shopping, and the planning for these things.
♦ Perhaps 50 is a good compromise number. This can be scheduled in many ways: M-Th 9 10, F 5, and weekend 5, divided between two days or else all shunted to Friday.
Today, Friday, seems to be a day I am taking mostly off but I must absolutely:
– go to the bank
– read and think about two essays, and post a study question
– figure out what I am doing Saturday and Sunday, which must be work days at this point.
I also want to figure out what to do with my pesky novel manuscript. And I want to reorganize my files, which are chaotic at this point — some in the Ubuntu cloud and some in Dropbox, and others elsewhere, and they overlap.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
All right. So far I have updated one course in Moodle. I want to complete the Moodle sites for all three courses this weekend. That would be one a day, and I can do it.
I also want to do all reading for the next two week of classes. I think I can do this. That would give me Wednesday morning for writing, too. 🙂
9×4=36, 36+5=41. Where are your other 9 hours?
AY no wonder it seems so flexible. HM.
What this is is a really good argument for the 41 hours, though: 8-6 with an hour off for lunch M-Th, then 5 hours sometime over the next 3 days.
Or: 9-6 with an hour off for lunch M-Th, then 4 hours Friday and 4 Saturday or Sunday, would be 40. HMMMMM.
Can you pro-rate your hours over the full year, or do you also teach in the summer? If you’re paid on the assumption of X hours per week for Y weeks on contract, but actually divide X by Y + Z, where Z is some number of non-contracted weeks, you can lower the number of hours per week. I, too, like the idea of several heavy days followed by some lighter ones (but not no work—just don’t do well with more than one day of “real” break).
On the subject of putting in the 60 hours and how this requires having “someone else doing most of your house and yard work and your shopping, and the planning for these things”… there is a term for this condition: “Job with wife”. Such occupations are historically premised on the assumption that the male job-holder will have a wife, not otherwise employed, who handles all the shopping, laundry, housework, yardwork, social planning, etc.
Precisely.