time management. some math suppose i live –50 more years, to age 101 –and read a book a week...

Time management

Some math• Suppose I live

– 50 more years, to age 101

– And read a book a week until my death

• Highly unlikely, by the way

• I have another

– 2,500 books to read

• Right now on Amazon

– Thousands of books I’d like to read

Before You, gulp, . . . Die

• What do you want to do– What books to read

– What places to visit

– What career goals to accomplish

– What conversations to have

• Etc etc

Spending time

• Which of these things do you hope to have MORE time for?– Hanging with friends

– Hanging with family

– Listening to music, appreciating art

– Pursuing hobby

– Developing new hobby• Etc etc

Death Bed Regrets

• Fact:– When you die

– There will be things you wish you’d had time to do

• One goal of life:– No regrets on death bed about HOW you spent your

time

• Your life is measured out in units of time!

The beginning of time management

• Explicit recognition and careful thought about – How you spend your time– How you want to spend your time– How to maximize your life through efficiency

Thoughts on becoming a more efficient researcher

My qualifications You thought I’d brag about my research

productivity? Nope, my qualifications are

I’m lazy I’m greedy I have too many outside interestsAnd my wife would kill me if I worked all the time

General topics I will cover

Day-to-day management tricks Research focus: broad or narrow? Reading and writing

but no arithmetic

Day-to-day tricks

Stop looking at your email all the time

Here is a study I will never conduct Association between email response time

and productivity

Productivity

Timeliness of response

Try closing your email program and checking it three times a day

Other things you waste time doing?

• Media– Surfing the web– IM’ing– Tweeting– Facebook– Watching television news– Watching television

anything• Except sports, of course

– Video games• Commuting• Other ideas?

Make lists Daily and/or weekly “to do lists”

I number my to do items in order of their priority

when I have an hour to work, I don’t have to spend any time thinking about what to do.

But I’m not a slave to my to do list sometimes I don’t feel like doing the #1 thing

on my list so I go right to #2 or #3 other times I only have 15 minutes so I look for

the top ranked item that can be done quickly

Find an ap

• Toodle do is what I use– Links to iphone, ipad, computer– Easy to prioritize

• But there are still times– Scratch paper and pen work best for laying out

the day’s activities

Make long-term lists of your goals

Every few months you should sit down and make lists of all the research projects you would like to do

some day with special attention to those you would like to

start relatively soon all the papers you want to write up the grants you want to write etc.

Make separate lists for each of your projects

If you are designing a new study, make a list of everything you need to do to begin collecting data to get the data analyzed to write up the results

Give yourself deadlines When a grant is due February 1st,

everybody manages to find time to write up thirty-five or more pages of verbiage.

Yet that manuscript you’ve been meaning to get to has been languishing on your desk for six months?

Give yourself a firm deadline for finishing the manuscript. work like heck to get it done over time you’ll get better and better at setting

realistic goals

Why do deadlines work?

• Deadlines make people– 1. Work harder– 2. And lower their standards

• These are both good things

• #2 is especially good for perfectionists– More on this later

Procrastination and deadlines: Should you leave anything to the last

minute? • Some tasks should be done as quickly as possible

– and sometimes deadline pressure speeds people up

– But that can be stressful, so find a balance

• Examples:– Term paper for class

– Article review• Especially a bad article

– Others . . . ?

Deadline techniques

• 1. Give yourself an artificial deadline– 1b. Communicate that deadline to mentor/colleague

• 2. Wait until due date is near• 3. Give yourself time limit

– “I’ll spend 2 hours on this article review.”

Just say “no”

Decide how much time you want to spend teaching, seeing patients, doing volunteer work, reviewing manuscripts, etc.

Adjusting over time you may want to adjust how much of your

effort goes into these things Saying NO

then try to say no to everything else other than your research!

Just say “no”, cont’d

How do you say no nicely I’d love to review that paper, but I wouldn’t be

able to do it for three months I wish I could help you, but I’m on sabbatical

Aren’t we all on sabbatical if you look at it the right way?

Get someone to say no for you Mentors can help with this

Managing your schedule

Some tasks require large blocks of time, e.g. 3 hrs writing 1st or 2nd drafts of difficult papers analyzing data devising new questionnaires

You need to schedule these blocks of time for yourself like an appointment

Find a haven for your big blocks of time

Psychologically more productive in certain spaces home coffee shop library conference room

I come to these places for sustained thinking no phones no email connection no one can find me

Find what works and force yourself to do it

I need a whole day to do X? then schedule a whole day

I write better in the morning? block that out on your calendar tell people you can’t meet them until the

afternoon

Delegation

• Eventually you will maximize efficiency– By hiring the right support staff

• What kinds of people?– Admin assistants– Research assistants– Med students– Masters level researchers, proj. mgrs.– Pre- and post-docs

An early key for me: cheap employer

• Hire a 1/3 R.A.– How do you keep him busy?– Maybe he can do more than you thought?

• Not always time efficient– But also a fun part of the job: to work with

young peeps

Research focus

The benefits of focused research interests

you don’t have to keep reviewing the literature before each study you conduct

you also learn what questions have been answered and unanswered


Writing is easier you develop boiler plate language for certain

topics you’re really quick at coming up with the right

references you’re thinking becomes clearer and words

flow much more quickly


You start seeing connections between your topic and other research that makes it easier for you to jump on hot

topics when they come around


You will become known for your achievements faster this makes it easier to broaden your interests Stephen J. Gould became famous as an

evolutionary theorist then he was able to write essays about Mickey

Mouse and why there are no .400 hitters in baseball any more

Benefit of focusing your research methodology

This has many of same benefits you’ll know the literature you have boiler plate language you become an expert

Sometimes your research focus can be a method instead of a topic

So how many research projects should I do?

Early in your career a few at minimum start with two or three, add projects as you

learn your way brain storm about other projects to start later

and put them on the future “to do list” Then when you have down time, you can

look on your future projects list and start doing more brainstorming

Advantages of multiple projects

All projects have down time IRB data collection waiting for pesky co-authors

You can work on other projects during the down time


Some projects fail You don’t want all your eggs in one proverbial

basket


Don’t forget you can get involved in more projects if you collaborate collaboration is one of the best ways to increase

your research productivity

What is more stultifying than focus?

Do you really want to take your analytic model and the same data set and simply substitute diabetic patients for patients with coronary artery disease and see what happens? How fun is that?

Fact: many successful careers are built out of theme with very few variations you need to decide how interesting that approach is for

you and you may need to compromise between your desire

for variety and the need to crank out enough manuscripts for tenure

Don’t focus too much

Pick two or three areas, but not ten Or pick one main area with two or three

area subfoci Another advantage of having several foci, is

you stay more interested and that itself increases productivity

Reading and Writing

Stop reading so much

Fatal flaw: having to know everything about a topic before writing about it or collecting data

You need to know a lot about the topic and work with people who know something

else But too much reading just slows you down

and it reduces creativity

But I need to know everything possible to improve my research!

Suppose you are studying gender differences in heart transplantation

Wouldn’t you like to know about gender and decision making in other clinical contexts

What about learning more about the sociology of gender or decision psychology or the communication literature and the economics

literature. . . You can always learn more about the world in ways

that will improve your research and that’s what is so darn fun about our jobs

While you stop reading so much, make sure to read widely

I didn’t say to stop reading And I certainly don’t think you should limit

your reading to a narrow area Connections are made by reading broadly

across disciplines even reading things that seem to have nothing

to do with medicine I’m just saying that at some point the

research has to come first and the reading comes second

Some connections between reading and writing

Writing makes me a more efficient reader I write about topic X when I read about topic X, I do it much more

efficiently I remember the reading better and cover ground

faster My style

start writing read in areas I realize I need to read more about

when I critique my own writing then rewrite Rinse and repeat

Write every week

Writing clarifies thinking Writing gets easier the more you do it

What do I write in order to write that often?

Blog posts Outlining thoughts for a new paper IRB application, survey draft, etc. Brainstorming memos to yourself Op-ed pieces

Come on you are arrogant enough to have an opinion Write up the talk that you give

Dealing with writer’s block

Rule #1 Just get it out!!! with first drafts, just let it flow

The key to writing is rewriting go stream of consciousness without looking

back revisit it more than 24 hours later

Rewriting

Read through the entire previous draft without making any edits does it make you depressed?

then come back in 24 hours

When you have had a chance to reflect on your writing, make some general notes about what you want to

accomplish on a rewrite this keeps you focused on the big picture rather than

on the minute details

Rewriting, cont’d.

Then you can start rewriting the entire manuscript attending to big picture and small details at the

same time Even at this point, don’t worry if what you

write is a piece of crap you can always rewrite it later just keep it flowing

The dangers of perfectionism

• Imagine the following:– A fellow writes a paper

• Rewrites it a bunch of times, until she likes where it is going

• Then she starts refining the language, perfecting the syntax, eliminating unnecessary nominalizations

– Then her senior author looks at it and says• That she wants to take the paper in another direction

Don’t perfect the wrong paper!

• When your mentor pushes you in another direction– Won’t it be nice that you haven’t spent time

perfecting each sentence?

• Try starting with an outline– Maybe with a rough stab at the intro or the

opening para of the discussion section– And with 4 versions of figures/tables

The writing ladder

Op-ed Medical article without data Medical articles with data An article pulling together all your previous

data A book chapter A book Start your own publishing house

Remember

• Efficiency and Purpose– The keys to getting more out of life!

time management. some math suppose i live –50 more years, to age 101 –and read a book a week...

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