Now that marking is done and only the index for the book remains to be checked, I am trying to plan the next few weeks so that I can concentrate on reading and writing. I have five different projects, all collaborative, at various stages of development that I am very keen to get back to. But let's see what gets in the way.
It's now 3 pm and I've been working at home since 8 am with two half hour breaks, six hours in total. How did I spend that time?
My to-do list, written last night, started with follow-ups to last week's PhD viva at another university. There were some glitches in the pre-viva admin processes so, when I had completed my expenses claim, I emailed the people concerned to let them know the claim was on its way and to make some gentle comments on how the process had been managed. This was a PhD by published work and, although the viva went well, it transpired that the advice given to the candidate about structuring the commentary to demonstrate the contribution of the work had not been as helpful as it might have been. We examiners discussed this at length and I had promised the internal examiner that I would send some general observations on how this might be addressed for the future. This was quite a tricky email to write so in total these follow-ups took about an hour.
My own PhD student has been wrestling with the amendments to his thesis required by the examiners after his viva. There were about twenty of these but they were not conveyed very helpfully: they were not grouped in any sensible way and it was not easy to see which were the most important. He sent the list together with his responses and the amended thesis first thing this morning and, as time is of the essence if he is to graduate next month, I felt I should reply as soon as possible., He has done a very good job of responding in my opinion - let's hope the examiners agree! As I'd already seen his first attempt last week and had spent an hour or so checking through the revised thesis, looking at this version took less time - about half an hour and a few minutes to email him with a couple of corrections.
While I was doing that, my inbox started to fill up.
1. A request from an administrator for my CV in a prescribed format for accreditation documentation for a course I don't teach on, needed in two days' time. It would take me at least half an hour to rejig my CV into the format so I sent the CV as it is - two minutes to find the most recent version of my CV.
2. A request from the editor of Economia, the house journal of ICAEW for me to write an 1800 word essay by the beginning of July. They asked me earlier in the year and I put them off as I was too busy so I think this time I'll have to say yes. This is the example they have sent me - Gordon Brown, no less:
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/90f7acee#/90f7acee/62 Twenty minutes of reflection on what I might write about: gender diversity on boards? The blurred boundary between governance and management? Both topics I've been thinking about a good deal in recent months.
3. A request to sit on a professorial appointments panel in Newcastle in ten days' time. I happen to be free on that day but, having spent about ten minutes trying to work out if it was logistically possible given my commitments the day before and the day after, had to decline the invitation.
4. A request for my revised impact case study for the REF submission. As I have been told that it won't be included, this could be cheerfully deleted.
5. Umpteen other messages relating to meetings which needed sorting out in my calendar. Electronic calendars are all very well but seem to generate a lot of email. The original invitation often does not contain a meeting location so a revised invitation later arrives when a room has been booked. As the change made is not specified, I need to check again to make sure it is just the location that has been added. More precious minutes used up.
About two and half hours so far. Then I remembered that while I was at an event in London on Friday I had been sent sent a Dropbox link to the photos taken last month at the BAFA awards reception. I had promised to send them on to the editor of the university newsletter as soon as I received them, together with the citation and a note about how I felt about receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. Accessing the pictures, choosing the most appropriate one and downloading it took rather longer than I expected and it was nearly an hour before I could send everything off.
Other emails included three journal ToC alerts: checking them quickly I found one paper of considerable interest and spent twenty minutes downloading and skim reading it. Following up alerts to discussions in two LinkedIn groups I belong to took a further twenty minutes. One of these groups - Boards and Advisors - is very active and provides a useful discussion arena as there are practitioner members from all over the world as as well as academics. Interesting articles are regularly posted there and I am involved in several current discussions.
This reminded me to check Twitter where I found new tweets linking to new entries on Stanford and Harvard blogs about corporate governance, with further links to relevant academic articles - more downloading and skim reading. There was also a link to the 2013 Women on Boards survey from GMI Ratings, immensely useful data covering many countries: downloaded and skimmed, saved for reference. (I also discovered that I've won a Nook in a Blackwells prize draw that I had forgotten about entering!)
Next I checked my iGoogle page which collects together blogs that I follow, including the excellent LSE Impact of Social Science blog and PhD2Published which has very helpful tips about writing for PhD students and early career researchers, as well as Robert Goddard's corporate governance blog which keeps me up to date with many useful things which I might otherwise miss. I'm very grateful to all these bloggers who provide such valuable support to my research activities. Links:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
http://corporatelawandgovernance.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.phd2published.com/
Five hours so far. Back to the inbox which now contains many more messages including papers for a meeting taking place the day after tomorrow (I'm away at another university tomorrow so will have to save these to read on my journeys) and a request from a funding body to review an application (that will be at least half a day's work). Prioritising all these, filing some away under Pending, and starting tomorrow's to do list, takes another half an hour.
There are still three substantial items on today's to do list, to be addressed after the cup of tea which I've been drinking while writing this blog. And I haven't made any progress on the research projects that I really want to get on with...
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