Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Changing habits with a Pie Chart Diary

    Recently I have been working with a number of clients who are finding hybrid working habits hard to change. Busy days blend into each other, and at the end of a week or even a month, routine tasks like answering emails or attending meetings have taken up all the time and other priorities or more creative work have had to take a back seat.

    I have struggled with this for years. Changing habits to make more time for writing, research or simply finding a moment to hear yourself think can be a challenge. Particularly when your working days are punctuated by the ping of notifications, endless emails or mandatory meetings, finding what some call the right cadence, a balance between busy work and creative tasks merits our attention.

    Setting abstract targets like “make more time for…” or “be more research-focused” can feel unachievable. So where do you start? One place to start is to get a new perspective on how you spend your time, so that you can pick a good moment to change your habits.

    For me, a bit of a spreadsheet nerd, I decided to track my time manually. I spend 2-3 minutes at the end of each day making a pie chart of what I had done that day. I continued to do this every day, always just before leaving my desk, and over the period of a month or two, I learnt some things about how I work:

    • I found that Tuesday, for example, were days when I never achieved my goals because they are dominated by meetings.
    • Wednesday mornings and Friday mornings were most productive for me.
    • I generally found time for things once I had a firm deadline.

    Here is an example of the Pie Chart Diary tool and how it can be used:

    Use it over a period of a few weeks or months, and reflect on:

    What do you spend most/least time on?
    What days of the week are you more likely to you achieve your goals?
    What is missing from your days?
    What could you change most easily to find better balance
    or to meet your goals?

    You can download this template if you’d like to try it out for yourself. Depending on your preference, you may want to print the template and write on it or simply use a blank piece of paper to make your charts. Or, if you prefer, use a spreadsheet or similar to track your categories and how you spend your time.

    The important part is to take a moment at the end of each day, and honestly reflect on what you actually did during the day. If there is something that takes up time, distracts you or interrupts you, consider adding it to your chart.

    When my dog was a puppy, my pie chart diary would have definitely included a “puppy” category as it took a lot of time out of my day to look after her.

    Look out for a podcast episode exploring the pie chart diary. As always, I’m curious to hear from you, what tools you use to track your days and what you learn along the way.

  • Monthly News, October 2022

    Welcome to my first autumn news of the year. At the start of the new academic year, I am preparing for the launch of Leading Virtual Teams, which is due to be published next month. After 18 months of sharing my work on the book as a work in progress, I am really excited to share the final Open Access publication with you all. The digital version will be free to read and download and also look out for upcoming blog posts and also the return of the remote working show. 

    Last year, the first season of the show was broadcast on DS106 Radio and the recordings were shared on my website. For this season I am trying out a new podcast format which will make the show easier to access live and as a recording, too. 
    Coaching this autumnThere are still two spaces remaining in my autumn coaching schedule. I offer 1-to-1 coaching for individuals, usually for six online sessions. Get in touch with me if you’d like to explore how coaching with me might work for you. 

    For existing clients who feel like you are just getting started or want to continue our work together I offer a discounted package of six sessions for £210 which includes six one hour sessions, a coaching plan, resources and regular check-ins. 

    Although I currently have no slots for new pro-bono clients, I do have a wait-list for new pro-bono clients looking to start coaching with me in 2023. Get in touch to join the wait-list. 

    This month Hacks for Hybrid Working, a new flex course from Reclaim Hosting, gets underway, and I am excited to work with the team to draw out some of the insights from Leading Virtual Teams for this 4 week course. Each week features ideas to try out, prompts to reflect on and resources with a host of community voices.
    Resources and blog postsYou can find free coaching resources via my website and this time I have two new posts to share: 
    Small celebrations: I embarked on a month of celebrating small daily wins to combat a sense of always striving for the next goal;
    Creating space in a packed schedule: a post and resources exploring strategies to pair habits in order to create space or find focus.  

  • Hacks for Hybrid Working starts on October 24

    I am very excited to spot the announcement for Hacks for Hybrid Working, a new flex course starting on October 24th, in the September edition of the Reclaim Roundup which links through to Lauren’s preview post of the course.

    For many of us in Higher Ed, hybrid working is here to stay. So whether you’d like to create a better work/life balance juggling being on campus with working from home, or you are looking to move from crisis mode to a way of working that is more sustainable, healthful or simply a little more joyful, this course is for you. Join us to explore hacks to create a better hybrid workplace for everyone.

    For me, this is the ideal project closely related to Leading Virtual Teams, which is due to be published next month. I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Lauren and the amazing folk at Reclaim outside of my day job and to have the opportunity to share some of the know-how gathered on how to make hybrid working work for you.

    The cherry on top is that this course is free for anyone to attend and participate, so if you are keen to learn more, register here to receive event information.

    What’s the course about?

    Lauren explains in her post:

    We’ll be meeting over the course of 4 weeks beginning late October through November to unpack hybrid working and all that it entails. These sessions will be a continuation of our OER22 presentation, Building Connections with Virtual Teams, as well as our radio broadcasts that I’ve outlined in my post, Working Habits, Self Evals, and Finding Connection. I’m really looking forward to diving further into personal working habits that take shape in virtual/hybrid settings, evaluating our relationships with digital tools, and building out a Hybrid Working Roadmap.

    Here’s our topic list:

    • Week 1: Hybrid Working Unpacked
    • Week 2: Digital Tools in the Virtual Workplace
    • Week 3: Exploring Hybrid Working Hacks
    • Week 4: Complete your Hybrid Working Roadmap

    There is so much fun in store, including a special radio session and a SPLOT site alongside the course materials and tools we’ll be trying out.

    How can you take part?

    Sessions will premier on watch.reclaimed.tech/hybrid-working when the time comes, and we’ll also be chatting in the #hybrid-working discord channel! Also, make sure you check reclaimed.tech for weekly blog posts with supplemental resources, quick links, a SPLOT or two, and even some homework.

    When: October 24 – November 18
    Weekly video sessions each Mondays at 11am ET
    Live Q&A/discussion time on Fridays at 11am ET

    We are really looking forward to seeing you there 🙂

  • Submitted! My Senior CMALT Portfolio update

    In January I blogged about getting the process of updating my Senior CMALT Portfolio underway, and my intention was to blog monthly to share my process. Alas, we are not in late September and although I haven’t blogged or indeed progressed the task at hand, today I am doing both!

    I have updated my portfolio AND am blogging about it, so YAY!

    To recap, here is what I set out to do:

    Updating my portfolio

    ALT requires portfolios to be reviewed and updated every three years in order to maintain Senior Certified Member status and I am afraid my three years were up in late 2021. I applied for an extension (last year was manic for many reasons), and now I need to get underway with my review process.

    I have had a look at the guidance first (I haven’t actually ever updated my portfolio before) and here is what I need to do:

    First I am going to have a look at my original Senior CMALT portfolio. Then, I need to add the following sections:

    • Summary of recent work/practice (500 words)
    • Overview of CPD activities over the past 3 years, with 3 examples discussed and reflected on in greater depth
    • Updated future plans (300 words)
    • Updated Confirmation and date

    At first I was not sure what I was going to use as examples of CPD activities over the past three years yet, but I once I reviewed my list of CPD activities, I found it easy to choose the examples.

    You can have a look at my updated portfolio (which has been submitted for assessment).

    Sign-posting updates

    My portfolio is a Google doc and a number of related files, all shared by a folder. For the three year review I made a copy of my original document, re-named it and updated that.

    To make it easier to assess, I highlighted the updated sections.

    What I didn’t do

    When I first submitted my Senior CMALT portfolio in 2018, it was an updated and expanded version of my original 2016 CMALT submission. It formed part of the pilot group for Senior CMALT.

    In an ideal world, I would have liked to review and update/refine all aspects of my portfolio, including moving it over to a WordPress format, a task which I have been making little progress on for over four years.

    On reflection however, I feel that I have done what the 3 year review process is designed to do and found it valuable to take stock of my development over the past 3-4 years.

    I also find that the current format, the Google doc, really works well for me when it comes to making these updates. I am comfortable working in the format, so I don’t waste time fiddling with images or making it look more impressive.

    As an assessor I see some beautifully presented portfolios, and I am always full of appreciation for professionals who can not only showcase their accomplishments and reflect on them, but to do so with real style! Kudos to you folk out there who create bespoke images, video and more.

    Personally, having struggled to complete this task since September 2021, the thought of moving to a new format or doing a major update put me off. I am glad to have completed the required sections, which turned out to be fairly short at 500 words and 300 words and 3 examples of CPD.

    If you are in the same boat as me and staring at the portfolio review deadline, good luck! You’ve got this 🙂

  • Creating space in a packed schedule

    It feels like it’s been a very busy week (month, year, decade…) and if your schedule is anything like mine, you probably don’t have enough time for being creative, taking breaks or anything else that injects a little bit of joy into the routine.

    There are many strategies for tackling this problem, and one approach I have been experimenting with is pairing habits.

    What’s pairing and how does it work?

    I first came across the concept in Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before and basically this strategy is about pairing a new habit you want to adopt, such as doing a short meditation session, with an established behaviour, such as getting up.

    There are two ways in which pairing can work: in positive ways (for example listening to an audiobook whilst walking the dog to create extra time for reading) and also in negative ways (buying too many snacks in the cinema).

    Finding focus

    I found for example that I associate standing at my desk with being responsive on chat and email. That focus on being available and the consequent constant interruptions made it very hard to focus on tasks that require space to think.

    Although I was still productive and got a lot done, I was putting off tasks that would need more focus and started on other things that I could fit around communicating.

    The solution was to pair tasks that need more focus with stepping away from my desk. Now I take my laptop with all email or DM apps closed to a table and write away from my inbox. When I sit down, even though I am physically less than 3 feet away from where I usually stand, I find it easier to focus on the task without distractions.

    Lunchtime reset

    Another example from my own experience is a negative pairing: I was good at taking lunch breaks but I was bad at actually resting. Instead, especially on days when I work from home, I started doing chores or life admin or watched things on my phone. I stopped working but I still kept going.

    Over time, I found that really exhausting and I was craving a break that would help me reset. The start of my day may be four hours of stressful meetings, so I wanted to find a way to help me break the negative pairing of lunch with getting things done.

    I identified things I wanted to stop (doing admin, chores, screen time) with things I wanted to do instead (go outside, play with the dogs, close my eyes for a few minutes).

    Initially, I found it hard to change my habits. I caught myself staring at my screen or sorting things out around the house. When I sat down to do something like a breathing exercise or a short meditation, I found myself thinking about work.

    Gradually however, I found ways to stick to and even enjoy my new lunchtime habit. I use a mindfulness app or other videos for 5-10 minutes and the guidance they provide helps me reset more easily. Weather permitting I have lunch outside, and my phone stays inside. I have stopped planning to complete chores during lunchtime instead making time outside of lunch.

    What could work for you?

    What habits are present in your life? Do you have any positive pairings that work for you or negative ones you’d like to change? How could pairing habits work for you?

    If you’d like to try this strategy for yourself, here are some questions to get you started:

    • What habits work well for you (at work, for your wellbeing, or another area of your life?)
    • Why do they work well?
    • Can you identify any pairings that you would like to change?
    • How would you like to change them?
    • What single change would have an immediate positive impact on you?

    Resources

  • Monthly News, August 2022

    Hello there 🙂

    The big news is that I have completed the book and sent it to the publisher. After about 18 months of writing and reviewing, editing and finally formatting all the references I sent all the files off for editing yesterday. 

    It’s been such a joy to work on this book at evenings and weekends, but I am also glad to be free to enjoy the summer weather and focus on my main work during a busy period. 

    What’s next

    There is a preview of the cover below. The book is due to come out in late October, and I am planning to share blog posts and resources for each chapter. The Open Access publication will be available to download for free first, and I also hope to produce a print edition on demand. I am also working on some related projects, more of which I will be sharing soon. 

    For now, I wish you all a good run up to the new academic year.