Keeping track of projects and prioritising work

Tags

project management, time management

One of the perennial discussions that crops up in science circles (both academic and non-academic) is how to keep track of projects and prioritise what to work on in away that doesn’t feel like using a parasol to combat a fire hose at close range.

I know there are bits of project management software, but I have enough Gantt charts in my life, and nearly everyone in science has a spreadsheet program. Plus, it’s the system I’ve used for the last 10 years or so, from near the end of my PhD through two postdocs, and now two research positions.

First, some basics. I keep track of a lot of projects… some are mine, some are my students, some I haven’t heard anything about in more than a year and may be dead in the water. Some of mine may in fact be floundering in the intertidal as we speak. Details have been redacted to protect the procrastinating and overworked.

It’s also not a “set in stone” priority list. In my hierarchy, first come student papers, followed by papers with colleagues who need them for jobs, tenure, promotion, etc. And of course those requiring little input from me at the time quickly rise to the top regardless of where they fall on the spreadsheet.

I’ve set up rules to auto-colour cells based on whether something sits with me (ALB), a coauthor, or a journal, and whether a particular state is done (Yes), in progress (Part), or not yet started (No). I then sort these in descending order across columns to get … the final product. The grey bars are the projects that I really want ot try and focus on, for one reason or another (student, been-around-for-a-long-time, for a coauthor’s job/application/tenure/etc).

Following each line is a note to myself about what the next steps are (e.g., “review draft”, or “re-run stats with 2019 data”), and for those with coauthors, who it’s sitting with (“With JK”). The last column is the planned journal, or where it’s been submitted. I don’t keep track of unsuccessful submissions here (I do that in both the project’s folder and in email correspondence). I also don’t keep track of dates because I’ve not really had a need or desire to.

And lastly, there are two tabs, with identical headings: one for, well, current projects, and another for what I’ve affectionately called “dormant projects” – those where I’m not sure if they’ll ever amount to anything, or are shelved, on hiatus, or otherwise inactive. They’re not yet binned totally, and some do come back to being active (if an interested student comes along, for example).

So I hope this might be helpful, and I’m sure there are ways I can make it better, but it’s a system that seems to work for me.

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A 3-click solution to improving the work/life balance of others

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email, time management, work-life balance

I think it’s safe to say a good number of us struggle with the large amount considerable volume overwhelming flood of email.

And many of us have implemented solutions, and there’s been lots of discussion about how to stem the tide that washes over us almost daily (see this post & the comments over on Dynamic Ecology). But ultimately, the problem starts with each of us as individuals, and the volume of email we send, and when we send it. For those of us who have staff, students, or other trainees, the latter can often send a not-so-subtle message.

With near-constant connectivity comes an expectation of immediate responses. Many of us have email on our phones, or spend most of our working day sitting at a computer with our email client/web page open, where it bings and chimes with each incoming message. Two years ago, I started tracking the outgoing volume of email I generated, and it’s somewhere between 6500-7500 messages a year. And I don’t teach or have student queries.

I’ve also worked in places where I’ve received emails from managers (from my own boss right up to their boss’s boss’s boss) not just outside work hours, but at 10pm, or on weekends. In a sense, this is understandable: it’s quiet time when there are no expectations on them, so they catch up on email. I’ve done it, as I suspect most researchers and managers have. But the not-so-subtle implication is “I’m working this extra time, and so you should be, too”, or at least that work outside the paid contracted hours is necessary to do one’s job.

So to try and combat this, I’ve implemented two strategies, one for me, and one for the people I work with.

1. I don’t respond to work email outside typical work hours

Because I supervise students in different time zones, have managed field staff, and do have some other on-call responsibilities that require me to be contactable, I do have email on my phone, and do check it outside work hours, but unless it’s something that absolutely can’t wait until the next day (or Monday if on a weekend), I read it and deal with it later. Over time, this ingrains the expectation that I’m not instantly contactable outside work hours for work things.

2. I use the “Delay Delivery” function outside work hours

Like I said above, sometimes I do sit down on the weekend with my pot of tea and bash through a bunch of emails that have backed up over the last <period of time>. But there’s a fancy (and easy) tool in Outlook called Delay Delivery that makes sure I’m not creating unsustainable and unrealistic expectations on those I’m emailing.

This is the 3-click solution I mentioned in the title.

This is a feature of Microsoft Outlook, and so far I haven’t seen an equivalent solution for Apple’s Mail, or email sent from a phone. There is a Gmail extension called Boomerang, though. Here’s how it works.

First, write your email/response as usual:

Second, click on the Options tab (click #1), and near the right, click on “Delay Delivery” (click #2).

And lastly, in the Delivery Options section, you can set the time when Outlook delivers the email in the “Do not deliver before” field, by setting the date & time. Click Close (click #3) and you’re done.

The only downside I’ve found is that your computer has to be connected and Outlook open in order to send messages at the defined time, and as I said above, I’m not sure this functionality transfers to other email clients.

It might seem like a small thing, or maybe a giant pain, but it’s a simple solution to help us all walk the walk of improving work-life balance, particularly of those we supervise or manage.

 

UPDATE! Ben Britton pointed me to this VBA code & post of his that will automatically delay delivery!

Reading 365 (or, rather, 230) papers a year

Tags

#230papers, papers, reading, time management

A couple of years ago, a number of scientists on Twitter decided to try and read 365 scientific papers in a calendar year. Joshua Drew summarized his efforts and results quite well, and Jacquelyn Gill provides a great introduction to the motivation for “365 papers” (among other efforts) on the Contemplative Mammoth. And over the holiday break, as I was sorting out my “To Read” folder, I realized that it was getting rather full, and I needed a strategy to get that number down from about 972 to something more… manageable.

I think this is a neat idea, and by joining together with others completing the same goal can act as encouragement (something we use with Shut Up and Write sessions), but it can also make those not participating feel guilty about not keeping on top of their own “To Read” lists. The Twitter hashtag #365papers also explicitly implies that all 365 days of the year are available for work, which is far from the truth. At my organization, we budget for 230 working days in a year, which accounts for weekends, statutory/bank holidays, annual leave, and other non-work days (e.g., professional development). So I’m going to try for #230papers.

The astute among you will have noticed that 230 < 972, and there’s a very high probability that papers published in 2017 will be of interest to me, so it’s certain that my “To Read” folder won’t shrink by much.

It turns out that 972 is not less than 230.

So in addition, I’m adopting a ruthless culling approach: if I can’t remember why I downloaded the paper after reading the abstract, I’ll delete it (unless it appears to have taken some effort to obtain, or is from an obscure source).

I’m also hoping this will also kick-start my blog posts this year, which have lagged of late. I certainly won’t write about every paper, but I’ll post a list of papers and monthly tallies below for those playing along at home, and I’ll try to tweet links periodically with the #230papers hashtag.

Here’s to a brain-expanding knowledge-assimilating 2017!

See the full list here.