I’m loving this 35 hour academic work week, in theory. The last couple weeks, though, it has been just that — a theory. This week it looks like I’ll be clocking about 45 hours, last week was around the same. Now that does include a couple hours compensation for being “on-call,” but still. I’ve probably got to tone this down if I want to keep up my cheerful sanity.

I’ve never been a big fan of meetings, but I understand why they are necessary and useful. But with the number of things on my plate right now, I’m finding that I feel the need to make up for the time “lost” to meetings. I didn’t *need* to stay late after the meeting on Tuesday messing around some more with Active Directory, I just worry that if I stop working on it, it will fall to the wayside as I focus on more immediate concerns and it will never get done. So I’m trying to be good about task switching between immediate issues and my bigger projects, like doing work on the video conferencing quote, and then taking some time to set up some mailing lists and answer some user questions, and then diving back into the AD server for a little while. It seems to be working, and keeping me from getting too caught up in (or frustrated with) any one thing.

It is important, and difficult, to balance my various priorities effectively and figure out what users “need” and what I can hold off on giving them. These sort of value judgements, I think, can only become more clear with time and experience. I’m definitely finding that some things I feel aren’t top priorities really are, now that I’m the one theoretically responsible for them. On the whole, I’m still really enjoying getting settled into this job and figuring out what my role is, what I’m best at, and where I need improvement. I can just recognize that I need to figure out a way to be productive while also being able to leave enough time that I can set aside Berkman, go home, and have some fun.

Because feeling hyper-attentive about my three “free” hours before bedtime and being upset that I’m not using them productively and feeling like people don’t appreciate that I’m giving them my time…yeah, that’s no good.