I generally have a very long laundry list of things I need to do. Phone meetings, papers to review, proposals to work on — to say nothing of those “other” chores like laundry and paying bills and tidying up the place.
Usually it’s a mad scramble, with various things falling by the wayside, not quite getting done, or getting done just well enough. Sadly, the activities that get shoved off the list are often the really fun ones. After all, the thing about chores that must be done, is that they must be done. Chalk it up to the cruel logic of tautology.
But every once in a while plans get unexpectedly canceled. They may even have been fun plans, something I’d been looking forward to. But now they are canceled, and I have extra time.
Whenever possible I try to spend that extra time on the fun things, the cool little creative projects and ideas I’d been saving for some unknown time in the future when I would miraculously have enough time.
And whenever I have the presence of mind, and the force of will, to push aside the usual chores and use that extra time to make something fun, I always end up feeling happier.
To some extent, you can trade time for money (hiring cleaners, laundry services, or the more esoteric offerings described here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/14/130114fa_fact_marx ).
Slightly off topic: Now that Kahn Academy and other on-line video courses are taking off, people are suggesting the whole format of college education should change. Rather than the traditional 50 minute lecture, you watch the prof’s video at home, and meet on campus in a collaborative workspace, with the professor there as guide and facilitator. Projects & “homework” become the classroom activity instead of the lecture.
I’d be curious to hear your opinion on this.
These are definitely important ideas in education. But to be fair, “flipped learning” is not exactly new. For example, the entire paradigm was laid out in 1993 by Alison King in her article “From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side” (College Teaching, Volume 41, Issue 1, 1993).
Coincidentally, I was TAing in a web design class today for an instructor who makes extensive use of online instructional videos when a student wondered out loud why videos for a given topic were made available only after the class for that topic had been taught. The instructor responded that he worried that if students had access before hand, “they’d just watch the videos and blow off class.” “Maybe I should trust the students more” he eventually concluded.