21 Establishing working conditions
How did/would you establish humane working conditions for yourself?
BF: I took my own advice to my TAs and told the class that I wouldn’t answer emails in the evenings past 5:30 PM or on weekends (emergencies excepted, since I did always get the notifications and often check, like Pavlov’s dogs). Note this also meant I arranged it so nothing was due on Mondays, because that’s a sure way to ruin everyone’s weekend.
I had to be fairly strict about setting certain days for this class work and other days for the dissertation — I tried moving from one to the other on the same day, but that didn’t work for me. For the most part it worked: I set my office hours to the same day as class time, and I knew that day was devoted to doing the readings, creating the next lecture/slides, answering emails, etc. I did my best to do this class work only between the hours of about 9 to 5 on those days, just like a lot of other people’s jobs.