Transcript Time Management

Time Management
Matt Welsh and Vinny Manoharan
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Time Management 101
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Set goals
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Maintain a research diary
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Get into good habits
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Protect your thinking time
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Manage distractions
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Set limits!
Your time is yours
You have obligations (to the grant
that pays you, to your teaching
duties, to your research group
and studies) and constraints on
how you spend your time
But the way you manage and
schedule your time is up to you
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Set Goals
Unless you have goals, how are you supposed to know whether your
time “management” is effective?
Long-term goals
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Groundwork for your research (background reading, exploring the area)
Building infrastructure, running experiments
Writing up
Becoming an expert in your research area
Medium-term goals
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Publishing a paper at a conference, submitting an article to a journal
Think of Ph.D. thesis as 2-4 “papers worth” of work
Short-term goals
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What you want to get done each week
Results to show to your advisor, outline for a paper or thesis chapter, etc.
Aside: don’t get too caught up with short-term goals. Achieving your long-term
goals takes precedence; sometimes you’ll feel like you’re stuck on the plateau
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Research Diary
This is a great way of brainstorming (with yourself) and tracking
your progress.
A place to dump all of your brilliant but unorganized thoughts.
A way to look back on what you have done and lines of thought you
previously explored.
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Research diary versus lab notebook
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In my group the lab notebook is the central place to write down all ideas and
conversations related to or stemming from work done in the lab
A lab notebook is a legal document (e.g. can be used to file a patent)
A research diary is a place to scribble down ideas that come to you when
you’re not in the lab – have it in your pocket when you’re on the T or at the
cafe
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Good Habits
I find that a rigid daily schedule is
essential to getting things done
I can never follow a rigid daily
schedule, so I don’t try
In the office by 9am every day
In the office by ~1 pm every day
No meetings until after lunch
Yep.
Use afternoon for meetings,
administrative BS
Use afternoon for meetings,
bugging students in the lab
Leave at 5pm sharp
Try to set a deadline when you
have to leave each day;
otherwise “work expands to fill
the time available to do it”
Relax, play with dog, eat dinner,
etc.
Work from 8-10pm
Finally relax: A nice Manhattan
usually does the trick.
Stop working at least an hour
before bed
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Protect your thinking time
Getting serious work done requires at least several hours of
uninterrupted time each day.
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Can't split your research up into little 30-minute chunks in between
classes/meetings
I protect my whole morning (9am-1pm) and all day on Wednesday
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With rare exception no meetings allowed then: This is “research time”
I strongly recommend that you to do this in the morning
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Your mind is clearer, more relaxed, less stressed.
The morning (more accurately “those hours after waking up”) is the best time
for writing – see “Daily Routines: How writers, artists, and other interesting
people organize their days” http://dailyroutines.typepad.com
One full day without any distractions is a real lifesaver
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Can work on research without feeling “guilty” about not doing coursework or
other administrivia
Lets you devote a lot of time to heavy lifting that would not happen otherwise.
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Manage distractions
E-mail and the Web are the number one killers of productivity.
Learn to shut them off.
Leave time (in the afternoon) for catching up on email and
reading Digg
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Then you can do it guilt free. If it's part of your daily plan you know you
will have time to read that compelling New York Times Magazine article
on Obama's underwear later on.
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Manage distractions: Another viewpoint
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concentration is the currency of academic work;
interruptions destroy concentration
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Humans cannot multitask efficiently
“Another experiment, by psychologist David E. Meyer of the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor and his colleagues, quantified just how much time we can lose when we shuttle among
tasks. The researchers asked test participants to write a report and check their e-mail at the
same time. Those individuals who constantly jumped back and forth between the tasks took
about one and a half times as long to finish as those who completed one job before turning to
another.” – The Limits of Multitasking, Scientific American Mind 14:5 (2004)
Turn off your IM and that little bell that rings when an email arrives
Grad school is a time for specialization
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If you find yourself needing GTD, you’re doing too much
Web surfing is a time-waster; web research is a tool most students
don’t make the most of
You have access to more journals and articles and resources than
your advisor ever did; don’t get mad at yourself if you’ve lost a few
hours collecting and reading through a bunch of papers on an
interesting subject
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Set Limits!
There is a fundamental limit to how much anyone can get done
during the day.
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I try to stop working right around the time my efficiency starts to decline.
Again, this is a good time to cue up The Daily Show and crack open a
Corona.
Writing a paper or the thesis: most writers only write for a 2-4 hours per day;
more than that and you will begin to dread writing
Setting limits is really important to maintaining a happy life.
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Made a deal with my wife to not work (at all!) ONE day on the weekend
Stop working each day around 9-10pm.
Once you decide that the only way to get ahead is to work more, you’re
doomed. If you’re spending all your time on research, there is no incentive to
find more clever and efficient ways to do your work
A good workout does wonders for the brain.
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Amazed at how clearly I think after 30 minutes on the treadmill or lifting
weights
Rest of the afternoon/evening usually very lucid as well.
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Longer Term Planning
It is hard to chart your time in terms of months, or semesters.
Better to think in terms of paper deadlines
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Identify deadline targets early
Think about what you need to have done to make the deadline
For a good conference paper, plan on ~3 months minimum to do the work
and write it up.
If you’ve accumulated lots of unfinished projects, and you don’t know how to
finish them, start writing papers – this will clarify what needs to be done (and
usually what you have is good enough)
Writing the thesis
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Realistically it is 2-4 papers worth of work.
Amazing what happens when you glue them together and put them in the
right format
Don’t put off your life until you’re done with grad school – your life is
happening right now; find the balance that makes grad school fun and
rewarding for you, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible
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