An important way to stay accountable to your project, and to keep your committee informed of your work, is to keep a weekly log. Every Sunday evening—after we have gotten underway with meetings—I will ask you to email a weekly check-in in which you briefly answer the following questions:
What were your goals/priorities for the week?
How much time* did you spend on WRITING/CREATING/DRAWING this week (Mon-Sun)? (Your answer should be a number)
How much time* did you spend on RESEARCH/PREPARATION/PLANNING tasks this week? (Your answer should be a number)
What went well, what was successful? Could relate to work itself and/or to process.
What challenges/obstacles did you face? Could relate to work itself and/or to process.
How did you treat yourself this week?
How was your sleep this week?
What are your top priorities for next week? Do you need to make any readjustments to your schedule in light of this week’s challenges/successes?
What is the next work-in-progress we will be seeing, and when will it be ready?
Anything else you want us to know?
*The experts tell us that it is good practice to log hours/minutes rather than guesstimate. I know this sounds like too much. BUT: when we have so much unstructured time, it can be hard to use it wisely.
To help you log your work, I have made a Daily and Weekly Log template on Google Sheets; you can find it bookmarked here. Make a copy or download, and save to your own folder. You can modify your sheet to meet your needs.
I encourage you, too, to use the daily log to build momentum from day to day, but you don't need to share it with me. For the weekly log you share with the committee on Sundays, consider copy/pasting just the week's log and putting it in an email to both of us.