Time Management for New Professors
The first piece of time management advice I got...
• Estimate how long something will take...
• Multiply the number by two
• Increase the time units by one
The first piece of time management advice I got...
• Estimate how long something will take...
• Multiply the number by two
• Increase the time units by one
• Thus a 5 minute job takes 10 hours or a 3 week project takes 6 months.
-my undergraduate advisor
The second piece of time management advice I got
• Never Start Anything Until the Last Minute Possible
The second piece of time management advice I got
• Never Start Anything Until the Last Minute Possible
• Work fills a time vacuum and every project will take exactly as much time as you have
-a contemporary and current chair of a well known chemistry department
A little seasoned advice from me
• There’s a bit of truth to what each of those guys said
• It takes a while to be good at estimating how long stuff takes, and you usually guess too low
• It’s easy to spend longer than you should on something
• Plan your time
• Figure out where your time goes
A little seasoned advice from me
• There’s a bit of truth to what each of those guys said
• It takes a while to be good at estimating how long stuff takes, and you usually guess too low
• It’s easy to spend longer than you should on something
• Plan your time
• Figure out where your time goes
• Do not forget your own life.
Don’t forget your own life
• Get married if that’s your thing
• Have a couple kids if that’s your thing
• Have a hobby
• Work hard, but establish some personal parameters and (mostly) stick to them
Plan your time
• It’s easier to keep commitments that are on your calendar
• At some point, your calendar is going to get more complicated than you can manage in your head.
• With whom do you want to share your calendar?
• Does your calendar break down all activities or just appointments?
Broad Responsibilities
• Committee and other ancillary duties
• Important to do a good job because life is easier if colleagues like you
• Don’t go bananas volunteering for extra duty! It will come to you!
• Extra duties: may want to limit them to things that will have a “product”
• Teaching
• Important to do a good job. Lots of reasons.
• Realize the first time teaching anything is the most time consuming and you will get the worst reviews you ever get.
• Think about how to manage out-of-classroom contacts, depending on class size!
Broad Responsibilities
• Research
• Physical research: you are the best pair of hands in your lab for a while... but this slows down after a couple of years
• Good investment: training of early students - even at the expense of some other activities like proposal writing
• Paper and Proposal writing, especially after first year
• Having a cup of coffee with mentors, colleagues, potential collaborators
• Research is the infinite time suck. There is no end to what you can do...so you must make sure to schedule other things in!
Don’t reinvent the wheel!
• Experiment with available resources
• Campus or personal calendaring systems
• To-do/Project/Reminder systems —
• Among these - Getting Things Done (GTD) David Allen • Omnifocus, Things, Outlook, etc
• Time-logging software to help you see what you ARE doing
• What did you have for lunch last Thursday?
• Paper and pencil, Widget like Klok, Web-based simple calendar, Search “time tracking software” on wikipedia for leading refs for more solutions
Other people have thought about this
• Google “time management for new faculty”
• Talk to your most recently tenured colleagues
• Don’t feel bad about talking to your chair about what’s important
• But don’t get a reputation for being That Guy who goes around asking everybody if s/he has all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed to get tenure...