The slides are embedded below and available on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/joeyanne/managing-yourself-how-to-be-productive-with-your-time

If you’re interested in learning more about anything in the presentation, please leave a comment if it’s something I might be able to help with, or I would recommend checking out the following resources:

• Allen, D. (2001) Getting Things Done: How to achieve stress-free productivity. Piatkus.
• Hines, S. (2010) Productivity for Librarians: How to get more done in less time. Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
• Houghton-Jan, S. (2008) Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload. Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload. Ariadne [online]. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/houghton-jan/
• Maggio, R. (2009) The Art of Organizing Anything: Simple Principles for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life. New York: McGraw Hill.
• Osman, H. (2011) How to design the ultimate home office (e-book) http://www.thecouchmanager.com/ultimatehomeoffice/
• Lifehacker blog – http://lifehacker.com/

The book was recommended by my manager, as Nikki used to facilitate workshops with Evidence Base (my workplace). I’ve heard tales of some of the interesting things she did in workshops and was really looking forward to reading the book. The book begins with an overview of facilitator style, as well as considering different learning styles and how you can ensure you have variety in your session to accommodate different styles. A main focus of the book is on whole-brain learning and engaging participants throughout. I have to confess, some of the ideas were a bit too extreme for me (particularly BrainGym which is recommended a lot throughout the book but I just can’t see me bringing exercise into my sessions!) but there was a lot I took from it. Some of the most useful tips for me included:

• Give adequate breaks
• Use music (useful for background during exercises and to evoke a certain mood)
• Consider theming the session (utilising metaphors and help bring different parts of the workshop together – Nikki even suggests fancy dress but I think that’s another tip I’ll give a miss)
• Plan the timings and structure for the session before creating materials
• Utilise the space your workshop is in, particularly if it is a full day workshop (participants will appreciate a change in environment)
• Think about zoning different areas of the room for different activities to help get people into the right mindset

Although some of that may sound like common sense, putting it into practice isn’t always straight forward. I have put a lot of thought into the structure and activities in the seminar I’m giving tonight, but as much as I tried I just couldn’t come up with a theme that would work and not be cringeworthy! I also discovered this morning that my requested layout (cabaret) couldn’t be provided so the table activities I had planned will have to be adapted on the fly depending on what the room is like when I get there. I’ve also struggled to get music in time – I do of course own music but not any suitable for playing at public events. The planning did seem to go well though – I spent a long time sketching ideas (I also tried mind mapping as recommended in the book but reverted to lists as that’s how my brain works!) before committing to creating the materials or presentation. This meant the material came together really quickly as I knew exactly what I needed. No more rearranging slides and frantically searching for images the day before the event.

I’d recommend the book to anyone involved in delivering workshops or training (including information literacy), but a lot of the ideas are more suited to a creative mind (which sadly I don’t have). I’m definitely going to try to add more variety into future workshops though and we’ll see how this evening goes to see what worked well and what to ditch (or work on).

I know there are some people on Twitter currently at, or approaching, this stage and for those of us just beginning it will still be useful to start considering how we’re going to turn our evidence into a portfolio with the evaluative statement.

Please join us and if you know anyone who has chartered, please ask them to join us to share any tips and advice too. I’ve even prepared a tweet for you – just copy the message below to let your followers know about the chat this week.

Join us on Twitter to chat about writing your evaluative statement for #chartership this Thursday 29th March at 6.30pm BST.

Studying?! by J.Salmoral

When I should have been writing my dissertation in 2009 I wrote a few articles for publication, but in the last 12-18 months my writing has pretty much stalled apart from blogging which I continue to do on a regular basis, and occasional articles for regional newsletters (because I’m on committees and sometimes get asked to write something up for the newsletter). Most of my publications have been in newsletter and magazines – I’ve only been through the peer-review process once and it was an event report so not as rigorous as a research article.

Writing is one of my focus areas for my Chartership, and something I’d like to improve, particularly with publishing my research in peer-reviewed journals (or professional journals). There have been some interesting discussions on the value of peer-review recently on Twitter and blogs, and it’s something I am still deciding my view on – I see the value in sharing via a blog (mainly for the currency and immediacy factor), but for research articles the longevity and kudos of a peer-reviewed journal make it far more appealing. I’m keen to support Open Access and would rather publish in an open access publication that I could also link to via my blog, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

In order to try to get back on track with writing, last week I attended the first of a two-part workshop on Writing for Publication. Below are my notes from the day (probably only of use to others who use lists – sorry!):

Twitter Chat (image from Iconfinder)

A little while ago, Rachel mentioned the idea of having a scheduled chat on Twitter for anyone doing CILIP Chartership. I liked the idea and thought it was something I would probably like to do to help me when I’m chartering. It’s something I mentioned when I first starting thinking about Chartership, and was pleased to see others would like to join in too.

Well, I registered for my Chartership in December, and Tina reminded me recently that we haven’t had a Twitter chat on Chartership. I’ve been using the #chartership tag on Twitter to record thoughts and activities relating to Chartership and have it set as a saved search so I can follow conversations on there, but not many people seem to use it at the moment. Since we initially discussed this idea, #uklibchat has been gaining popularity and now runs every other Thursday evening. We decided to make it easy for people to remember by holding a scheduled Chartership chat on Twitter every other Thursday if there is interest (each week between #uklibchat). So…..

CILIP Chartership candidate or mentor? Please join us on Twitter for a #chartership chat on Thursday 16th February 2012 at 6.30-7.30pm GMT.

Hopefully it will help focus some discussions, be an opportunity to share advice, and act as encouragement/motivation. Please join us – all you need to do is start tweeting using the #chartership tag on Thursday 16th Feb any time between 6.30pm and 7.30pm (GMT). If you know anyone else who might be interested, please pass on the information. Hope to chat to some of you next week!

Just a short post today as it’s Friday evening and I have a friend coming to visit. I’ll just give a brief overview of today’s tasks:

• Worked on the Emerging Leaders project (gave feedback on survey and added liaison details into our contacts spreadsheet)
• Updated the contact list of JUSP libraries in Surveymonkey (new libraries are joining all the time and I add them into the contact list monthly) and scheduled a feedback survey to go out to them next month 
• Had a catch up call with my manager (we don’t usually have these daily but have a lot of little bits we’re working together on at the moment and this is the easiest way to update progress)
• Had a Skype call for the m-libraries community support project with the programme manager at JISC – this was really useful and we discussed future activities such as a community event, the community website, and the m-libraries conference in September
• Produced a document outlining our ideas for the m-library community event 
• Updated the Twitter guidelines for JUSP based on feedback from the project team
• Wrote a blog post for the Evidence Base blog reporting on the LIS DREaM event I went to on Monday

Hope you have found this insight into my week interesting. My work varies every single day depending on the projects we’re working on. It’s a nice mix at the moment – two external projects and some internal research for the library. 

Today I was working from home which usually means I can get a lot more done, but today my brain seemed to be on slow mode. I did get things done in the end but I worked into the evening to get everything done, which I’m really trying to get out of the habit of doing. My to-do list also seemed to grow rather than shrink today – I’d get one task done and need to add another two or three! So what did I actually do today?

My day began with some sorting and planning – prepping for a couple of calls, organising my tasks, and keeping project documentation up-to-date. Then I had a call with my manager where we discussed things we’re up to at the moment – project progress for the m-library community support project and JUSP, and some focus groups we’ve been asked to do on e-books for our library (based on the results of a library survey we ran at the end of last year). We started planning these and I suggested using Eventbrite to organise the booking. Last time we did focus groups the administration was a nightmare – we have two part-time support staff but this doesn’t cover the full week so I was also responding to some of the messages. It got very confusing with three of us trying to organise the participants and the sessions they could attend (and especially when we had to cancel one of the sessions), so I’m hoping Eventbrite might make things simpler. 

Lunch next, which I always enjoy at home because I can have something other than a jacket potato (today I had gluten free pasta with tomato and mozzarella sauce) and watch some TV (today I watched a very emotional episode of One Born Every Minute). 

This afternoon started well – one of the senior managers noticed my news in the recent library newsletter about being an ALA Emerging Leader and wants to feature it in the wider University newsletter. Could be useful for the Chartership portfolio!

We’re currently finalising some use cases for the JUSP project to demonstrate how libraries are using the service. We visited a number of libraries last year, and interviewed more over the phone/Skype. After writing up each library’s interview as a case study, we decided that they would best be presented as use cases. They are now written up and we’re getting approval for use of quotes from the libraries involved. I made some amendments based on one library’s feedback today. 

Then it was time to make the edits to the report write up of the m-library support project fact-finding survey. Some grammatical and formatting changes, and some additional quotes added in to demonstrate some of the examples of current m-library initiatives. 

I also tidied up my Chartership evidence submission form. I’m using a Google spreadsheet so that I can add things easily from anywhere with web access (I have a copy of the form starred in my inbox and can also access the form through my browser on iPhone or iPad). I had columns for what area of my PPDP and what marking criteria each piece of evidence supports, but this was a free entry text box. I’ve now added each option as a checkbox so I can just tick the box and easily check what information I have for specific areas. It’s working well for me so far (I’d be happy to share or give more details if anyone is interested). 

Tomorrow I have a couple more calls (are you noticing a theme here?!) and hopefully some work-related blog posts as I’m falling behind (it’s unfortunately something that always slips to the bottom of the to-do list as it’s not as essential as other tasks, but I still need to make time for it).

Day in the office today – which ironically usually means I get much less done (too many interruptions and errands). It took me longer than expected to get in this morning (had forgotten what traffic was like during peak times!) but I travel by public transport and always have my iPad with me so I can work on the way in. I finished drafting comments for the report I’ve been reviewing during the journey, and caught up with news on Twitter.

When I arrived at work I found a lovely surprise parcel of goodies from Lisa Jeskins who is part of the LILAC Conference organising committee. I’d been telling lots of people how much I love the LILAC conference whilst I was at ALA Midwinter last week so had joked that I should be on commission. Lisa clearly thought I should be so sent me these:

I’d also had some new stationery delivered so I had quite an exciting start to the day (I know I’m sad but I love getting new stationery!). After a quick catch up with my colleagues, we decided to bring forward a discussion we were planning for next week (it’s rare that we are all together). We’re getting our communication in order and have devised a new system to help share news from our department with the rest of the library and with those external who are interested in our work (most of our work is external). Internally, we’re using the library newsletter whilst externally we have an Evidence Base blog (and may later set up a MailChimp mailing list once our new website is sorted). My colleagues aren’t very familiar with blogging so I agreed to help them get started and provide some informal training for them. Unfortunately we had many hurdles (it seemed to take ages to get their accounts sorted!) and then we got interrupted by an IT guy so we didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked.

I went out for lunch with Damyanti, but we went slightly later than expected and lost track of time whilst we were there so I returned back to work later than expected. Oops! Time for lots of grovelling to manager and quickly preparing for a project Skype call – I’d done my own preparation but hadn’t had chance to discuss with my manager. The call was for the JISC m-library community support project, and we’re at the point now where we know broadly want people want from an m-library community and we need to make decisions on how we can best deliver that. It was a productive call and I certainly feel a lot clearer about our activities for the short term at least. I’ve been interested in investigating how libraries can utilise mobile technologies for a long time, and I’m really enjoying working on a project I’m so interested in. There’s lots of really innovative work out there and we’re hoping to be able to share this with the wider community to prevent duplication and help drive developments further forward.

After the call (and after adding actions to my to-do list and tidying up project documents), I did a bit of work on the Twitter account for another project, the Journal Usage Statistics Project (JUSP). We’ve had a Twitter account (@JUSPSTATS) for a few months now but we haven’t been using it often, partly as it didn’t really have clear ownership or purpose. I’ve worked with some of my colleagues on the project to discuss our intended use and have developed some guidelines. Today I shared them with the rest of the project team, answered some questions about Twitter use to a colleague who is new to it, and set up some saved searches on Twitter to keep an eye on. The Twitter search interface is a lot better than it used to be and seems to work well – I didn’t know it was so easy to set limits such as language and geography in addition to keyword and phrase searches.

That took me to almost the end of the afternoon – there was just time for a few emails and actions to be added to my to-do list regarding the JUSP project, then I visited the library general office to return the travel insurance card (I took it to Dallas for ALA Midwinter) and headed home. Thursday and Friday I’ll be working at home so hopefully able to get some real work done!

Today was another continuing professional development event for me, again in London. This time it was a joint event organised by CILIP in London and Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) on Writing for Publication (which I will share the notes from later). It was only a 3hr workshop but the style of learning really suited me – there was lots of discussion time and it was fairly informal with questions welcomed throughout. I didn’t necessarily learn anything ground breaking (although knowing the publication process from the journal editor perspective was useful), but it reinforced a lot of things I should know but seem to forget when I have a writing task and a barrier stopping me doing it.

The workshop finished at 1pm, so after lunch at my favourite place in London for gluten free food (Planet Organic), I got a train home. During the afternoon I worked on the train – mainly catching up on and organising emails, thinking about my writing homework (there is a follow up session in a couple of weeks), catching up with my boss, and reviewing the m-library report we need to get finalised soon.

I got home at about 5pm and worked a bit more during the evening. Because I’ve been travelling a lot over the last couple of weeks, I’m not as up-to-date as I like to be with responding to emails, reading RSS feeds (I’m way behind and might have to hit mark all as read even for my favourites folder) and managing my to do list. As a mobile worker, I do sometimes find it difficult to switch off from work. I can’t just leave my office/workplace and stop work for the evening, and I like to leave it in as tidy a state as I can before the next day (no half finished tasks). After yet more emails, I spent some time sorting out my mailing lists and filters so that my inbox doesn’t get overloaded (this is a particular pain at the moment as many I subscribe to are US based so they fill up in the evening due to the time difference).

I also did a bit of work on my ALA Emerging Leaders project – my team and I need to finalise the questions for our survey soon and start sending it out to people. We’re using ALA Connect to share documents and hold discussions (including our virtual meetings). This way our project mentor and our ALA staff contact can also see our progress and help us when we need it. This evening I added a couple of new documents onto the wiki style software so that we can all work together on finalising the survey.

Tomorrow I’m actually going into the office at the university. Looking forward to seeing some colleagues

Just a brief post – today I attended the LIS DREaM (Developing Research Excellence and Methods) workshop 2, this time held in London. It was an early start (left home at around 6.40am – too dark!), but it still amazes me that I can be in London by 9.30am and at an event before 10am.

On the train journey I worked on a draft of one of our reports (for the m-libs support project), and sorted through work emails.

The event itself was 10.30am until 4.15pm at the British Library.

I have to be honest; it wasn’t my favourite research event as the topics weren’t very relevant to my interests or current research areas and I struggled to see how some of it could apply in practice in libraries/LIS research. I did find some of it useful – I enjoyed the session on webometrics and might do some further investigation into what can be done with sentiment analysis from online social media (e.g. using tweets), and I enjoyed hearing about other attendee’s research/ideas in the unconference half hour. I’ll write a full review of the workshop later this week.

Having coeliac disease means its always a bit of a gamble with conference food (I have to follow a gluten free diet), and the lunch was, as is often the case, pretty disappointing but in the afternoon I got my own special gluten free cake!

Once the event finished I checked into my hotel (staying over as I’m attending a writing for publication workshop on Tuesday), and after a quick catchup of work stuff via email I headed out to catch up with some lovely librarian friends from London and enjoyed a nice meal followed by some cocktails. Great end to the day!