Hi, Kaljien here. A follow-up question to your semester plans, a fellow academic here as well. How do you factor in teaching in your semester plans? So I get the research component, but how do you factor in teaching in your semester strategic plans, that is prep and everything else? And then how do you factor in your personal semester goals or strategic goals, however you may want to call them, in the semester plans?

So looking forward to hearing from you, and thank you so much for all you do. As I said, following you for the last many, many years, so appreciate it. Looking forward to hearing your take on incorporating all the wheels of academia into the strategic plans. Thank you. Well, when it comes to my plan for the upcoming semester, I start with teaching.

That's my starting point, because obviously, the teaching is something that has to happen, and it has to happen at a consistently high level. Now, the good news about teaching is that after you've taught a class a few times, the work that's required becomes quite predictable. So you know what you're in for.

It doesn't have the same uncertainty that research does, where you don't know, is this going to work or not? Are you going to come across a topic that's interesting? Is it going to take a ton of time? Are you going to have a quick breakthrough? That can be really hard to predict and plan.

Teaching, you know. Taught this class twice before. I know what's involved. So my approach typically is to automate everything. I'm using the word automate here in an idiosyncratic way that's unique to the way I talk about work and productivity. I don't mean automate in the traditional way of some other system will do this for you, like automatically.

When I use the term automate, I'm actually using a version of this term I introduced in my book, "A World Without Email." What I mean by that is you automate the thinking and scheduling process around the work. You don't have to make a decision each week or each day about what am I going to do next?

You figure out when the work happens, how it happens, and where it's going to happen. So the stuff you know predictably goes into supporting this class. You figure out a system for that. This is when and where it happens every single week. The scheduling itself has become automated. That's in the foundation of my schedule for the semester.

So now I know when this work's going to happen. It's on my calendar for the entire semester. Now I work around everything else. So that becomes the can't be compromised on anchor of my schedule. And I know exactly where and when that work happens. And then I figure out what am I going to do with what's left.

So for example, I'm working right now on figuring out my semester plan for the upcoming spring semester at Georgetown. I'm teaching two courses. And the way those courses are arranged, which I feel good about, and doesn't always work out this way, but I think it's going to work quite well, is they're on the same days, Monday and Wednesday.

And so I have one course that's at 11 and another course is at 3.30. And that's the same on Monday and on Wednesday. So now I'm starting to work through, okay, how's this going to work? Prep is going to happen in the morning before I leave for campus. I have that pretty much dialed in.

I'm teaching a course right now at 11. So it's a good amount of time to do prep. One of the courses I'm teaching right now in the fall, and it's been heavily prepped very well. And I put a lot of effort this fall into updating all my notes so that when I get to the spring, I don't really have to do new prep for that course.

The prep time in the morning can go towards the second course. I'm going to use the time in between those two courses. I get lunch and I'm going to use all the time. That'll put me at one o'clock to 3.30, two and a half hours. That is going to be me in the office, right?

Me in the office, academic time. So I'll probably open up that whole time to be office hours in my plans. So I have two classes full of students. There's a lot of access they need. So I'm just going to basically say, hey, one to 3.20, come by my office on Monday or Wednesdays.

I'm always going to be there. That's when I'm going to be working on things. This is where I'm going, that window is where I'm going to schedule any of the other work related to these courses. So I've already figured out TA situations, who my TAs are going to be, the process with which those TAs are going to work.

They're going to come to my, I'm figuring this all out. They're going to come to my office when we have a new problem set due for us to talk it over. That time comes out of that window. When it comes time to going through and checking grading, that's going to show up on my calendar during that window between the two courses.

I mean, I'm really working out the whole thing. So that basically for me, for this particular semester, Monday and Wednesdays is all teaching and everything fits into there. Everything related to teaching fits into there just right. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday is not at all teaching. That's what I mean by automation.

I'm making a plan. So I have time for everything I need to teach these courses well. And I know exactly where that time lands and I've configured it in a way that its footprint is reasonable. And then I'll move on and say, okay, what am I going to do with these other three days?

Where am I going to do research? What about other meetings, like committee meetings? And I have a theory I'm putting together here where those are going to all happen after 2 p.m. And so the mornings are going to be just for research or writing. I'm trying to figure this all out, but that's what it looks like.

That's what it looks like when I do that thinking. So that's what I'd recommend to you, but it's also what I would recommend more broadly outside of academia. Take the work that is non-negotiable. This is a part of my job that has to happen. It always has to happen, but it's predictable.

And automate, automate, automate. This is when and how I do it. I don't want to have to think about it. I don't want to have to say, oh, should I prep today? Should I prep right now? Should I prep this afternoon? Should I meet with my TAs? When should I do that?

I guess I should do that soon. The stuff you know that's going to happen, figure out when it's going to happen, get it on your calendar, and then forget about having to worry about it. When you get there, you get there. It'll get executed when it gets executed. That's the right way, I think, to most effectively deal with stuff that has to happen again and again.

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