Editing and Revising Written Work: How Not to Suck in Grad School

Editing and Revising Written Work: How Not to Suck in Grad School

SR Shaw

There are as many different approaches to revising and editing written work as there are writers. Everyone has their own approach. And, quite likely, different styles are more compatible with different fields of study. It does not matter what the approach is, but for maximum productivity and efficiency it is good to have a consistent process that you use for all written work. An organized process tends to lead to more creative outcomes.

Here is the description of my process as an illustration. This is certainly not the best method for everyone and I am always trying to improve it for me, but this is what I have now.

Before any process can take place, developing the goals for the process is important. Here are the primary goals of my writing process:

• To be as efficient and rapid in the production of written material as possible
• To be as clear and transparent as possible. An important part of transparent science is to have clear writing. And I know, but do not care, that jargon heavy articles have a higher probability of getting accepted in journals. I want to be clear always.
• To establish a strong and compelling narrative. Even the most intensely data-driven scientific manuscript must have a well-developed narrative and tell the story completely.

1. Concept Formation: The first phase is to link all the concepts involved in the paper and determine how they are connected. I tend to draw this out on paper and it usually looks like an incoherent mess of lines connecting circles with concepts written in. The purpose here is to identify the major concepts that are being communicated in the paper and determine the relationships among those concepts.
2. Outline: The primary purpose of the outline is to sequence all the components of the concept formation. In Concept formation, many of the concepts have equal weight and are presented simultaneously. Obviously, writing must take place in sequential order. A detailed outline is helpful. I like to try to write the most detailed outline possible. In the best of all worlds, the outline includes all the headings (in APA style) and includes paragraphs. Sometimes it is difficult to include paragraphs in such a detailed outline, but the more detail in the outline the more quickly and efficiently the writing proceeds.
3. Zero Draft: The goal of the zero draft is to have the entire text written out as quickly as possible. I dictate the zero draft using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Although it takes practice to be able to dictate in an efficient style consistent with written language, the speed of writing is a major advantage. I type at a pedestrian 55 words per minute, but can dictate at about 140 words a minute. I find that the speed results in improved quality of expression of the ideas for the zero draft. This draft is where the narrative becomes clearer and easier to evaluate. Anytime you end up deviating from the outline in the zero draft, it is important to check to ensure that you are describing the intended paper accurately. The primary purpose is to write as quickly as possible and put a little bit of muscle on the bones.
   1. Troubleshooting: If you become stuck in developing the zero draft, the first step is to write topic sentences for each paragraph. Usually that begins to make the writing flow. If I am really stuck, then I write the closing sentence for each paragraph as well.
   2. Advanced Troubleshooting: If the writing is still not flowing, then it is time to go back and revisit the concept formation and outline. A paper that is not flowing well typically has symptoms of a paper that is not well thought out.
4. First Draft: This draft results in a fully formed document with all the pieces in place. after you are completed with this draft, it is acceptable to share with co-authors and colleagues without too much embarrassment. Each section should have a coherent beginning, middle, and end, the narrative needs to be well-developed, tables written, and rough figures installed. The first draft is also where I ensure that I am not saying anything outrageous and that all statements are supported by the extant literature or the data from the study. Humble conclusions are preferred to extreme conclusions that are mostly bullshit. This may be the most time-consuming element of the process.
5. Paragraph Draft: Each paragraph is considered to ensure that there is a topic sentence, a closing sentence, and supporting sentences. Any citations that have not been included in previous drafts are installed here.
6. Sentence Draft: This is a close-editing draft that considers grammar, word choice, and clarity of each sentence.
7. Flow Draft: Most of the drafts consider the flow from section to section, paragraph to paragraph, and sentence to sentence. Usually the flow is fairly good by this stage and all of the words contribute to the narrative. But focusing on the support of the narrative by making all the transitions as smooth, clear, and productive as possible is the goal of this draft. This is typically the stage where words are cut. I find that the word count is typically reduced by about 10% during this draft as I remove all sentences and words that do not serve the flow of the narrative.
8. Formatting: Most of the papers that I end up writing are written in APA style. As an editor, I find that about 80% of papers have significant and systematic deviations from APA style. Appropriate formatting is a marker of competence. It sends a message that care and effort were taken into the development of the document. This is where level of heading, tables and figures, title page formatting, and the other meticulous details are covered. It is also worth checking citation and reference format because there are frequent errors in the details of reference formatting in common reference management systems.
9. One of the advantages of using Dragon is that you can have the program read back the document to you. Most translation software, Adobe, and other programs also have this capability. I find that typos, unclear sentences, and grammatical clunkers are more apparent when you listen to the text being read than when you read. It is a nice finishing pass on any project.

The type of writing also influences how much of this process is implemented. Grant proposals and refereed journal submission go through this entire process. Invited papers, book chapters, and books are edited professionally; but not quite as closely. This is because those works are not being evaluated initially and there is typically available copy editing. So the sentence draft and flow draft are usually undertaken very quickly. And products like blog posts usually only get a zero draft and a first draft before they are posted.

For the most part, the process is consistent. There are always challenges because writing is hard. Writing is extremely helpful to overall thinking. I have had a few papers that I thought were describing well-designed studies. However, once I got past the concept formation and outlining stage, I realize that I was fooling myself and the research was poorly designed. The clearest writing does not lie. You do not want to lie to your audience and you do not want to lie to yourself. A strong process with the goal of producing clear and productive scholarly output leads to improved quality and quantity of written documents.

 

 

 

Developing Extra Skills: The Meta-Skills of How Not to Suck in Grad School

SR Shaw

Graduate school is a force that sucks all your time and the very life force from your body. Each discipline has its own demands, whether they are classwork, clinical work, labs, teaching and grading, fieldwork, writing, or some combination thereof; and then there is the reading (oh, good Lord, the reading). I went from nine hours of sleep per night, heavy drinking, much socializing, with a job, and with a lot of hobbies as an undergraduate to a monk-like existence of little more than grad school and four hours of sleep per night. Not particularly healthy, but there it is. These are not even the frustrating and demoralizing parts of graduate school. To me, the worst part is that I was magically expected to have a set of skills that I did not learn as an undergraduate and was never sufficiently taught as a graduate student. As a professor, I see that the difference between okay students and outstanding students is their pursuit of extra skills, the meta-skills of being an effective graduate student. Although the specific skills vary across disciplines, every graduate student has extra skills to be learned. Rather than being accidental and due to some random experiences, the pursuit of extra skills is best met with mindful and strategic effort.

Nearly every graduate student has had the experience of meeting with their supervisor or PI and hearing, “I thought you knew how to do this.” Good supervisors tend to say, “Okay, let me teach you.” Poor supervisors tend to say, “That is disappointing. I need to find someone who knows how to do this.” This missing skill could be anything from a statistical procedure, assessment technique, lab procedure, ethics proposal formatting, giving feedback, writing skills, oral presentation, or some other specific skill. Usually we acquire the skills in such an ad hoc manner that we usually do not appreciate the skill development until we look back and simply label this as “experience.”

The most difficult part of any problem-solving process is identifying the problem. For new graduate students the hard part is that you do not know what you do not know. Rarely will a PI have a task analysis prepared consisting of the skills necessary to be successful in that lab. Although some professional programs have a list of competencies that need to be developed for professional success, those are typically incomplete. It is always worth checking with your PI, postdoc, or senior graduate student as to whether it is worth the effort to learn a specific extra skill; but the initiative will always be on you. That said here is the process and some common extra skills that are worth learning.

There is a good rule from Stephen Covey’s popular book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that some time needs to be invested in sharpening the saw. This is a form of professional development, skill acquisition, and self-improvement. Sharpening the saw does not only happen after graduation, but is part of graduate school as well. The general rule is to dedicate 10% of your work time to developing the extra skills that sharpen the saw. Therefore, figure a minimum of four hours per week planned and protected. I am not saying that this is easy — in fact, it is difficult and exhausting. But the ability to protect and use these four hours per week in a strategic approach to developing the meta-skills of graduate school will pay off.

Collective peer improvement sessions are fantastic ways to pool resources and priorities. Many students generate and hold journal club meetings, which are a form of developing extra skills. However, journal club meetings could just as easily be repurposed as coding lessons, organization, writing workshops, lab procedure tutorials, and so on. Working as a team can share the burden and validate the value of the extra skill being learned.

Most extra skill development will be via reading. There is already so much to read that it is overwhelming. Where do you start? I am of the mindset that breadth of skills and knowledge is extraordinarily important, and only a few subsets of knowledge need to be known in depth. For most areas of study, I recommend three domains of extra reading: methods, philosophical underpinnings, and history of your field of study. In nearly every field, a deep dive into the specifics and even minutia of methodology can present golden opportunities. At the least, methods are a tool box; and the more tools that you have the more questions you can answer. Philosophical underpinnings of any field can result in some pretty dry reading. But understanding the philosophy of science for the general context in which your field is situated can help to provide the big picture of your research. Finally, the history of your field is important to provide a temporal context and because many of us experience the ontology recapitulates phylogeny issue. Often, new graduate students think that they have come up with a brilliant novel research question when, in fact, that question was already asked and answered over 30 years ago. You will read the basics in your field through classroom work and suggested papers from your PI. But to be effective, you must go beyond. Focus on methods, philosophical underpinnings, and history are great places to start your literature search and extra readings.

Although the other extra skills vary across disciplines, here are some suggestions that have been helpful for me:

• Finances and Bookkeeping. I am fortunate to have learned these skills as part of a part-time restaurant job I had as an undergraduate and during my first year of graduate school (I also learned to cook at this job). In my career, I have been a lead psychologist in a hospital setting where I was responsible for a budget. The success of grant writing is largely due to the ability to justify budgets. Universities always audit any component of the work that involves money or purchased goods. My elementary bookkeeping skills have served me well.
• Programming and Software Development. Basic coding and programming skills are requirements for many fields of study. These needs will always be changing and evolving. Typically, once you understand the logic of language acquisition, it is easier to learn new skills along the way. I am now in the middle of learning the basics of R for statistical analysis. It reminds me of the old school approaches as we used in the late 1980s era SAS and LISREL, but far more flexible. That I have basic coding skills is quite likely making learning a new method easier than it would otherwise have been.
• Social Media. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and others are second-languages for the current generation of graduate students. However, the ability to use these approaches (and website design and development) for branding, crowd sourcing information, finding and acquiring funding, inter-university collaboration, and international research sharing is a specific and mindful skill that is worth developing.
• Organization and Planning. Carefully organizing limited time is not something that people are born with. It is worth learning the techniques for study skills, time management, self-care, and structured learning. There is no need to waste time reinventing the wheel, there are excellent approaches and techniques available. It is a good investment of time to develop a highly organized and strategic approach to work.
• Teaching and Supervising. Learning how to provide feedback and communicate complex information takes a lot of practice and experience. If you ask most senior professors how they developed the skills (if they have the skills), then they probably do not have a good answer for you. They will likely say that they learned on the streets or through trial and error. This is not necessary. There are many courses, tutorials, podcasts, and readings that support high-quality teaching and supervision. It is worth developing these skills even early in a graduate career.
• Networking. Go meet people, you nerds. It is much easier to be social at conferences and other professional events than purely social events because you all have one thing in common – your field of study. For most senior scholars, at least one-third of their published papers (likely more) are due to a collaboration or inspiration of someone you have met at a conference or interacted with online. I have a colleague whose entire career success is because he is excellent at conferences. Everyone knows this gregarious professional. Any time there is an invited paper for a special issue, need for a chapter in a book, need for collaborator on a grant, or someone needs support for co-authorship on an article; they remember this guy they met at a conference and invite him. Meet people, find common ground, support those people, and follow-up. Overall, it is somewhat surprising that so many experienced researchers have poor networking skills.
• Blogging. This seems simple, but blogging is an opportunity to write in an experimental fashion without judgment. This is an opportunity to communicate personal, professional, or scientific information in a simple manner. Blogging can range from a sophisticated outreach and knowledge translation activity to personal rants. Whatever works for you is fine. This is an opportunity to develop and practice a professional writing style that is clear, accessible, and makes you mindful as to the tone of your writing.

There are certainly extra meta-skills that will further your graduate and professional career (e.g., laboratory techniques, cleaning and sterilizing, electronics, computer design, construction, welding). Quite a few of those skills are discipline specific. Do not wait for random experiences to inform the meta-skills that you develop as a graduate student. Dedicate at least four hours per week, work with your peers, read extra papers strategically, and develop useful skills.

 

 

Getting the Writing Mojo Back: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

SR Shaw

Being an academic or grad student is a good life. We research, teach, mentor, engage the public, edit, promote, organize, administer, discover, counsel, and a host of other roles and functions. Ultimately, academics write. Writing is how our ideas have the furthest possible reach. Writing is how our ideas become fully formed and permanent. Writing is also how we are evaluated and is the currency by which we acquire things (e.g., grants, tenure, promotion, reputation). Moreover, most academics have solid writing habits that work well for them. But there are times…

Non-writing sneaks up on you. I am generally a 1,000 word per day person five days per week. Yet… you do a favor for a colleague, a student is having a personal crisis, you accept a travel commitment, you are on a search committee, the dean asks you to serve on another committee, 212 emails per day (yes, this is my median received email count in the winter and fall semesters), program director reports are due, teaching activities pile up, relationships with clinical supervisors in the community need to be nurtured, accreditation self-studies are due, need to take the dog to the vet, some students bring a complaint to you that requires a complex adjudication, you need to read theses, the dean wants to you to speak to a parent group, editing and review responsibilities pile up, and before you know it you have gone 6 weeks and written 140 words total. And you have fallen into the habit of non-writing. Then there are the consequences for not writing. Co-authors are not happy, deadlines are missed, student co-authors miss opportunities, small grant call for proposals are ignored, and there is a potential ugly hole in your CV. A primal scream ensues — followed closely by frustration and despair. A writer who does not write is courting insanity. A researcher who does not write is a technician and a tinkerer.

I would really like to have a full-on meltdown and declare commitment bankruptcy. Then start from scratch, only better. But overwhelming frustration is simply the nature of the job. Even the best planner gets overwhelmed. So, time to re-build the writing habit.

Stop digging. No matter how awesome a new opportunity might be, say no. Or better yet, say I cannot start on this project until X date. No more new crap. Delegate. Disappoint your boss. Frustrate your students. Say no to an editor. You cannot add to the mess.

What can be put off or cancelled? Professionals keep their commitments. But if any deadline can be extended or projects delegated, then do it. You are trying to make writing time now.

Inertia is now the enemy. When you are on a typical schedule, writing 1000 words per day is so easy that you cannot imagine that you will ever stop this level of production. But now, opening a word processing file is aversive and you cannot imagine committing any thought to a file. Do not worry too much about word count. It is like a marathon runner recovering from an injury. You do not step back from the injury and expect to be able to prepare for a marathon. Write a few words that can be completed without pain or frustration. Then the next day, write a few more. The goal is to simply improve productivity every single day. Although it will not be easy, you can regain your form quickly.

Examine your schedule for scraps of time. Even in a full schedule there are 15 minutes here and an hour there that can be filled with writing. Keep your writing project open on your desk top. When you have a few minutes, write a few words. Twenty words, 50 words, 100 words. They add up.

For my schedule, from May 1 to August 31 is the productivity zone. Over 80% of my writing productivity takes place over these four months. I really do not want to spend this prime productivity period working on getting my writing Mojo back. I have about two weeks to rebuild the habit and be completely ready to hit the ground running on May 1. The plan is to dig out completely from the massive number of tasks and get the writing momentum moving in a positive direction. As an aside, Mojo is defined as a magic power. When things are going well, it seems like a magic power. Yet, writing Mojo is not magic, but the result of discipline and habit building — those are the magic ingredients.

I need to get back up to speed in not only the volume and speed of productivity, but also in the complexity of the writing. I typically ramp up with increasing complexity of projects. The first stage is to write a blog post, which I try to produce monthly. These blog post are intended to be helpful, but often are self-indulgent and the level of prose is not especially complex. The next level is writing manuscript reviews. These reviews require critical thinking and teaching. However, it is easier to respond to someone else’s ideas then to create one’s own ideas. The third level is for short and important projects that require discipline and will be read by others, but are not especially innovative or groundbreaking. Examples of level three projects are test reviews, book reviews, newsletter articles, website content, and the like. These forms of writing are fine and important, but they are for show. Level four writing is for the dough. These are grant proposals, books, and articles for refereed scholarly journals. This is where it is necessary to integrate scholarship, data and analysis, innovative thinking, and word count into a coherent expression of a contribution to advance your profession. The complexity of thinking and execution of writing are at the absolute highest levels. Getting on that level is challenging to attain and even harder to maintain. I have fallen, but am building my way back up. Here is the blog post. I wrote a manuscript review this morning. Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday I am writing two test reviews; while tapering down the large administrative load. Getting at the highest level of thinking and speed of productivity does not happen by accident or all at once. Have a plan and go to grab your writing Mojo back.

Lessons Learned from Sport: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

Lessons Learned from Sport: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

SR Shaw

The influence of sport is pervasive in society. For example, every news or political chat show is always peppered with sports references. There are always references to a home run, Hail Mary, horse race, prevent defence, red card, or slam dunk. I am a sports fan, but find this use of language tiresome. Beyond the superficial contributions to language and simplistic cultural touchstones, there are some positive and constructive lessons to be learned from sport and applied to the academic world.

Life is not fair. I am always surprised and envious of people who believe that life is or should be fair. In my experience, it is not. Although there are elements of a meritocracy in both sport and academia, true meritocracy is an illusion. I know five athletes who played professional sports: two in the NFL, one in the NBA, one who played AA baseball, and one who played pro hockey in Germany. But the best athlete I ever have been around had his athletic career ended with multiple concussions in high school. Other amazing athletes I know personally had careers ended through injury, sexual abuse by coach, dropped out of sports to work to support his family, automobile accident, drug and alcohol addiction, and a farming accident. They were better athletes than those who had tangible success. No matter how awesome you are and how hard you work, being derailed is common and rarely fair.

Differentiating injury from pain. Every athlete faces physical pain. A successful athlete will power through. But if the problem is an injury, then powering through is dangerous. When there is injury, then healing, rest, and getting professional help are necessary. When an academic is tired and does not feel like working, a successful academic will power through. But successful academics know when there are elements of burnout, exhaustion, physical problems, or mental health issues; then healing, rest, and getting professional help are necessary. Understanding the difference is a challenging and critical skill.

Work does not always lead to success, but not working always leads to failure. Work as hard as you possibly can. Exhaust yourself. Train with discipline and purpose. But do not presume that hard work entitles you to anything. The only thing that hard work entitles you to is more work and the possibility of success. So I hope you enjoy the work.

Every day needs to be a personal best. Comparisons to others often lead to being discouraged and general unhappiness. The person that you were yesterday is the fairest and best competition to consider. My personal goal is to do something better than I have ever done that thing before. I find it highly motivating to be completely driven to be better every single day.

Work when no one else is working. Academia has a competitive component. It can never be assumed that one has more talent than the competition. The only thing that anyone has control over is outworking competition.

Rest is part of the program. Resting is not something one does only when exhaustion has been reached. Rest and recreation are fundamental elements of success. Physical and mental rest are preventative medicine. Rest must be scheduled into the agenda the same as any other high priority activity.

Competition drives improvement. The only way to get better is to face the highest level of competition that you can. Work with the most accomplished partners, apply for the most difficult grants, submit your papers to the highest impact factor journals. Every failure or disappointment will lead to improve skills.

Failure is part of the process. Losing can be discouraging. Most successful athletes hate losing far more than they enjoy winning. Yet, losing is a necessary part of the process to improve skills. Identify the important lessons and areas for improvement in all failures. The old martial arts saying, “either I win or I learn” applies here.

Adapt. There are many approaches to being successful as an academic. Breadth of skills and understanding the context in which you are functioning is necessary for success. It is not necessarily the smartest or most talented who thrive, those who can adapt to new situations and contexts have success.

Sometimes, you are not good enough. This is a hard one to face. Sometimes you do not have the requisite talent or skills or work habits to be at the level you wish or believe you deserve. At this point, it is necessary to either work to improve your skills or to realize that your goals may not be realistic. The biggest mistake that you can make is ignoring this information, blaming other people for your failures, or making excuses.

Some people have advantages. When competition appears to have unfair advantages, frustration can set in. In athletics, it does not seem fair that some people are born exceptionally tall or fast, have access to the best and most expensive coaching, have exceptional family support, can afford the best and most nutritious foods, or have no competing responsibilities that reduce training and practice time. Academia is like that, too. Life is not fair.

Conclusions. The sport-as-life analogy is a bit worn out. Sport is more than a popular culture touchstone for middle-age people who are laying on their couch or the purview former athletes who wax poetic about the glory days. There is a reason why I train judo well into my middle-age years. There are lessons that are still to be learned from sport that can be applied to many walks of life.

In many fields of study, it appears that the likelihood of getting a tenure-track academic position are about the same as making a living in sport. Despite hard lessons, sport and academia both work best when they are pursued with joy.

 

 

Finishing Projects with the Sprint Method: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

Finishing Projects with the Sprint Method: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

SR Shaw

Mini – Meta-Blog

As always, this monthly blog post is a palate cleanser between deadlines and projects. I usually write these monthly missives after I complete a project and need to take a breath before starting the next. I find blogging to be a strong method to keep the writing momentum going, but without having to put too much energy into it.

Main Event

All academic positions have their own challenges to research productivity. My situation is that I am in a professional training program. My primary job is to train practicing psychologists to provide the best possible educational and mental health services to children and their families. Very few of our students plan on a research career and most of them would prefer spending their time as a graduate student advancing clinical skills, rather than doing research. Therefore, the labbies have large numbers of classes to take, extensive fieldwork and clinical experiences, and theses. Working on day-to-day research that is important to me is not high on my students’ agenda.

Moreover, our program has changed to increase the amount of clinical activities and increase the clinical requirements for students. These are extraordinarily talented people who would like to be productive researchers, but it is simply unrealistic given the demands on their time. The result is that I have a laundry list of projects that were started with enthusiasm, but got lost in the fog of competing demands for time and energy. Half-completed projects are clear signs of an inefficient research lab. As our training program has become more clinical, my research lab has become less efficient. Finishing projects is hard for everyone and everyone has factors that interfere with productivity. This is why #GetYourManuscriptOut is a useful hashtag on Twitter. In my own head, I identify projects that are “in preparation” as a sign of failure. I have stumbled upon an approach to improving efficiency to improve our finish rate and to make the lab productive despite the clinical demands on the students and the administrative and book writing demands on my time.

We have designated the winter 2018 term to be all about cleaning house. We have been efficient at completing masters and doctoral theses, but it is the other projects that have become low priority. As my time has been spent writing a book and a major book chapter project, my supervision has been lax. Here is how we plan on cleaning house and finishing projects using a sprint method.

The logic of the sprint method is to work intensely on a project over a short period of time until completed. The time periods of the sprinting are negotiated. Accountability for deadlines is clear and strict. Failure to meet exact timelines will result in being dropped as a co-author. In this fashion, students will save a lot of time for clinical, thesis, and classroom responsibilities because they know that they will only need to work intensely for one or two weeks on the specific projects.

Identify the projects. Identify which manuscripts, grant proposals, or other lab task would benefit from an intense sprint in order to bring them to completion. For winter 2018, we have identified six (!) unfinished manuscripts, a website restructuring, and reformatting educational materials as our eight projects that would benefit from a sprint to completion.

Define the team. These unfinished projects tend to have multiple co-authors. Often it is the diffusion of responsibility have led to these papers being not completed. Define exactly who is going to be on this team and earn co-authorship.

Define the project. Most projects are half completed, data are collected and may be analysed, literature reviewed, and project outlined. Some sections may already be completed. Sometimes a project may be unfinished because the original outlined or data analysis may be problematic. Review the current nature of the project, decide what needs to be changed, and what needs to be continued. And develop a plan. Another purpose of defining the project is that sometimes projects that are unfinished are simply not very good. This is the time to be honest and decide that an unfinished projects needs to be deleted from the agenda and move forward with more promising projects.

Hold a team meeting. All responsible parties meet to develop multiple goals. Goal one is to reach consensus on the definition of the project and components that require work to prepare the project for final submission. Goal two is to assign responsibilities to discrete components of the project (e.g., James’s job is to develop figures 1 through 3). Goal three is to negotiate timelines and deadlines. The important part for goal three is to ensure that the sprint period is convenient for each member. Determining that a student has no competing major projects, exams, or clinical responsibilities during that week is an important factor. The sprint timeframes are most typically seven days. Some projects that may require additional time may take two weeks.

Negotiate a submission date. Each co-author will have a deadline for their projects, yet there is always integration of multiple authors and final polishing of the manuscript that needs to take place. So the submission date should be a week or two after the sprint period ends, but still needs to be explicitly defined and set.

Be available. When any member of the team runs into trouble or get stuck, they are responsible for solving the problem as quickly as possible. As such, the PI or other senior member on the project team must be available to address concerns, consult, and problem solve within 24 hours.

Celebrate success. Success is the submission of the project. If a project is eventually a rejected manuscript or unfunded grant proposal, then the revision or improve grant proposal can be recycled and put into another sprint list. Generally, I assume that the project is good — but no idea is truly good until it is finished. Celebrate finishing.

Most of us work from deadline to deadline. Usually these deadline-driven projects do not require the sprint method because completion dates are so firm. But our most important works are most typically those that are submitted without deadlines. Sometimes unfinished projects are relatively small projects, literature reviews, or secondary analyses of data. These are also the projects that are most likely to be put off to some unknown date in the future due to systemic constraints, time, or projects that are simply not well-organized. By focusing on discrete and intense work, we can finish projects that have been languishing.

So now — off to start the next project.

Establishing a lab culture: How not to suck in graduate school

Establishing a lab culture: How not to suck in graduate school

SR Shaw

The fall term brings new graduate students, visiting scholars, post-docs, and undergraduate research volunteers into research labs. Integrating new people into the lab and re-incorporating returning students and collaborators creates new issues. It is important to establish a culture quickly, so that the work can be done efficiently, cooperatively, and even joyfully. Sometimes, as an older scholar I make the mistake of assuming that returning members of lab remember the key features of the lab culture and that new members will somehow magically absorb the values that I wish the lab to possess. My twitter account and this blog are ways for me to put the values of the lab and our work in writing, so that there is an archive of ideas and tone. But in the hustle of day-to-day work, values and culture can be forgotten or lost due to busyness. And some labs find themselves adrift and moving in a direction that the director did not intend.

There is nothing that replaces the modeling of these values by the principal investigator. They must be lived or members of the lab will not buy-in and accept these cultural touchstones. In addition, these values must be emphasized explicitly, evaluated, rewarded, and established. Building a culture is a long-term process. However, a quick overview of the established credo of the lab can be a starting place and set expectations and aspirations for all lab work. Below are the 10 components that are the most heavily valued in my lab. I will be sending these to my students over the next week so we know where to begin our work this fall.

The 10 core values of the Connections Lab at McGill University:

1. Strive to become a professional, but do not forget to be a human

Work every single day to become a useful professional. That is, conscientious, independent, skilled, knowledgeable, ethical, and courageous; but realize that you will fall short some days. Always focus on being better tomorrow than you were today. You will never have a problem with me if you do something every day to improve.

2. You will need to trust that I define my success by your success.

My job is to prepare students as professionals. I know what it takes to be a successful school psychologist and the more successful you are, the more successful I am. I welcome challenges from you. A very reasonable question that you should ask me frequently is, “how will this task help me to achieve my professional goals?”

3. Wellness: yours and your team’s.

Consider your mental and physical well-being a central part of your graduate education and work in this lab. Feel comfortable discussing issues and concerns that you may have. Your long-term development as a person and as a professional require attention to your physical and emotional well-being. At the first sign of any issues, let me know and we will develop a plan. In addition, look after your peers. We are a team and need to take care of each other. Although it may be obvious; harassment, sabotage, creating a hostile environment, or any other behaviours detrimental to the wellness of the team, our clients, or individuals will result in removal from the lab.

4. Write it down or it did not happen.

Writing is an essential component of graduate school. Any thoughts, ideas, findings, notions, and other contributions are only real if they are written. This is the most effective way to communicate and to create a trail of your thinking that will have an important influence on research and clinical practice. Writing is also a mechanism of accountability, minimizing misunderstandings, and improving communication.

5. We all do better when we all do better.

There is inevitable competition for authorship, grants, fellowships, and time and attention of senior members. However, this lab is a team. The success of any one of us reflects on all. Share credit, be generous with authorship, listen to the ideas of others, be genuinely happy for the success of your peers, and assist the work of others. When this becomes a habit, everyone benefits.

6. Do more: everything takes three times longer than you expect.

Doing more than the bare minimum is an essential part of professionalism. In addition, it is nearly impossible to plan your time and work accurately. No matter how much time you devote and plan to a specific task, you need to multiply the number of hours by three. Just achieving minimum expectations will require much more time and energy than you expect.

7. Attention to detail.

I completely dismiss the concept that “idea people” are important and effective parts of the lab. Ideas are only important if they are paired with an intense work habit, focus on implementation, and single-minded attention to detail. The focus on detail will certainly annoy most of the lab members at some point. Attention to detail is the difference between a vague idea that is floating in the ether and high-quality research and clinical practice.

8. Ethical behaviour.

Too often, students and professionals gloss over ethical behaviour because they believe that they are a good person who would not ever do anything evil or wrong. Ethical violations are not usually due to bad actors. Ethical violations are usually committed by good people who are tired, emotionally overwhelmed, stressed, overloaded with work, up against timelines, or ignorant of the exact ethical standards and procedures to be followed. Ethical guidelines need to be memorized, automatized, and second nature. They will be challenged when life becomes chaotic.

9. Invest in preparation.

Writing activity is the tip of the iceberg. For every hour of writing there is at least two hours of planning and four hours of reading (not to mention: seemingly endless hours of data collection and analysis). Be prepared for every meeting by having questions or information to present. Investment in preparation allows you to be a better worker, have more clear thinking, reduce stress, and leads to improved overall productivity and success.

10. Develop productive habits.

Inspiration comes and goes, but habit remains. To be an effective worker in this research lab, your aspirational goal should be to read 100 pages per day and write 1000 words per day. This will take time, practice, and training. Whatever habits you develop, focus on being the most productive person you can be. Positive habits create professionalism.

 

Developing a culture is far more than 10 simple and vague ideas. This only becomes a culture when these 10 points are modeled and lived. However, starting by communicating goals and expectations is a good way to begin the term.

 

The Value of Rest: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

Today is a holiday. And I will be working most of the day. Most academics probably are putting in either a full day or taking care of administrative odds and ends (or grading). Despite my apparent inability to use a holiday for its intended purpose, I wanted to write about the value of rest in being a productive academic.

Rest is an essential component of long-term productivity. Rest is considered by many academics to be a luxury. Rest is something that takes place after a deadline is met. But there is always another deadline coming that permanently pushes rest to the back burner. Rest is something that is done intermittently at best and almost always without a planful approach. Rest is too often something that only happens when an academic nearly passes out from physical or emotional exhaustion or illness. Even more problematic is that for highly ambitious academics; rest is considered something for the weak, unambitious, and mediocre. At some level, most academics realize that rest is a good thing in the abstract, but not something that needs to be made a priority. I would argue that rest is not just desirable to grab when you can, but is required for long-term productivity.

There are many forms and definitions of rest. I am making the case for serious downtime, where the world of academic thought (and that includes guilt for not working) is put aside so that the scholar has an opportunity to rest and recharge. Weightlifters have scheduled days off that are part of the program. Gym rats hate days off because of how much they enjoy their workouts. But over-training is a real problem that can lead to injuries, burnout, and long term setbacks. Rest prevents these issues. No offense to my serious weightlifting brothers and sisters, but picking things up and putting them down is not exactly a high cognitively loaded task — yet weightlifters have figured this out long ago and academics have not. If downtime is an important part of long-term productivity, then what does it mean and how can we do it?

The first element of effective rest is sleep. People require 6 ½ to 8 ½ hours of sleep every night. Sleeping less than 6 ½ hours reduces cognitive functioning, attention, physical recovery, weight management, emotional regulation, and a host of other factors critical for health and academic success. There is a minuscule percentage of the population who function effectively on 2 to 4 hours of sleep per night. Almost certainly that is not you. There are many people who believe they are among this small low sleep requirement population, but nearly all of these people are simply used to being constantly sleep deprived and believe that their sleep deprived state is normal (e.g., the current US President). Those people are impaired due to insufficient sleep. Historically, there are many figures who slept poorly or inconsistently, yet one of the few documented low sleep requirement figures was Margaret Thatcher. Low sleep requirement people are extremely rare. Nearly all of us cannot even begin to have a strong approach to rest unless we are getting at least 6 ½ hours of sleep. A good rule of thumb is that if you are in a situation that you can sleep, then you should sleep. Naps can be recharging and count toward for 6 ½ total hours of sleep, especially for those with problems sleeping at night. Sleep is a non-negotiable.

The notion of “work hard, play hard” is as common in academia as it is fatuous. Socializing academics to work ridiculously long hours followed by concentrated and intense travel vacations is common. As if you can make up for a highly intense work life with a highly intense vacation. Travel vacations are often not restful. If your vacation has a formal itinerary of places to see and things to do, then it is not a holiday from work and is not restful. You have simply exchanged one form of intense effort for another. The work hard, play hard mindset also leads to the idea in parenting that “quality time” where parent-child time is small, but focused on highly eventful and memorable activities. For some people this might work; but I am a fan of parenting via big fat massive hunks of quantity time. This works for both parenting and rest. Vacations, quality time, and special events are wonderful; but are a small part of a comprehensive resting program.

Most of us approach rest as an ad hoc period of non-activity that simply appears concurrently with our spare time. The trope of “you should be writing” colours how we think of rest. Many academics define rest as the period of procrastination, wasting time, avoiding work, or what we do when we are distracted from the things that are important (i.e., writing). Given that most academics eschew the idea of spare time because they believe they should be working every day and all day, the assumption is that spare time equals wasted time. This mindset detracts from the importance of an effective rest diet.

Rest is mindfully pursued downtime with the intent of recharging both physically and mentally. Rest means different things to different people. For some people, going to a party is part of the resting program and for others this adds stress. For me, rest does not include much of life outside of academia such as cooking, commuting, cleaning, managing finances, medical treatments, parenting, exercise, shopping, or being in a relationship. Rest is a balanced and organized program that includes sleep, vacations, socializing, and guilt-free laying about. The guilt-free component is most relevant for academics — we love self-flagellation for not working more than most professions. The nature and frequency of rest is determined by the individual and their specific needs.

Schedule your daily program of rest as carefully as you schedule your program of work. Critical elements of rest programs are that time is not used thinking about work, worrying, or experiencing guilt because you are not writing. Although I have a work schedule, if I have trouble thinking because of fatigue, stress, or need for a break; then there is no trouble or guilt in obtaining additional rest. I need it just like I need food. Rest means that you must turn work off for a while and do something that is recharging. I think I am a high-energy person, who genuinely enjoys long work hours. Even as I get older (I am now 54), sometimes I still believe that I do not need to rest or to take breaks. To quote Dilbert, “There is no kill switch on awesome.” Thus, I need to be disciplined in obtaining rest to prevent burn out and exhaustion, to recharge, and to keep my thinking fresh. Or else I tend to work until I drop — not healthy. Rest is engaging in simple preventative maintenance, even when I am not in the mood to rest. Any program of rest that works for you can be helpful for recharging, but be mindful and experimental in exactly what works best to recharge you. Below are the elements of my regular rest program:

• daily
  • in bed between 10 and 11 PM
  • waking between 530 and 6 AM
  • 15 minutes breathing meditation after waking
  • 20 minutes for lunch (when I often play a videogame or work a crossword puzzle)
  • 60 minutes watching television (either sports or something really stupid)
  • 60 minutes reading non-academic books (latest reads, When Buddhists Attack and The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr, Vol 4 Causality and Complementarity)
  • 20 minutes of a meditative stretch (usually with Joyce)
• vacation
  • at least 3 four-day weekend vacations through the summer
  • at least one seven-day vacation that involves some travel (not conference related)

Take care of yourself and get some rest. You and your work will thank you.

SRShaw

 

 

 

 

Training for the Productivity Load in Academia: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

Training for the Productivity Load in Academia: How Not to Suck in Graduate School

We usually think of the development of scholars from their undergraduate days to tenured professor as a journey of continuously increasing content specific knowledge, skills, and abilities. We also think of scholars evolving increasing independence from relying on experienced professionals to becoming supervisors and innovators. These are normal processes that are formally or informally supported through mentorship. However, the ability to cope with increasing demands of productivity may be one of the most important skills that scholars develop and is frequently one of the most ignored in supervision and mentorship.

This is not to say that undergraduate or graduate students do not work hard. My experience is that they work incredibly hard and ridiculously long hours to master their craft. Ultimately, undergraduate and graduate students do not produce as much new material as experienced professors. In addition, my experience is that older professors, with sufficient motivation, can produce more high quality new findings than a younger professor. With experience comes practice and expertise. I have concluded that I can produce much more quality writing and thinking with less stress than ever before. I figure that just about the time I have total mastery of the process, it will be time to retire.

As is typical of this blog, I have no data on this process and this is only my experience. But here are some mechanisms that new researchers can use to systematically train themselves for increased quantity, quality, and ease of producing original thinking and written products.

I am sure there are a lot of readers who do not accept my initial assumption that more experienced professors can write more than highly energetic and motivated postdocs or tenure track academics. Certainly, full professors have fewer monetary or career goals for producing a lot of work. As such, many, if not most, full professors begin to slow down in terms of their productivity on their own volition. For me, I have the feeling that I still have a lot to say and study, but not that many years left to produce. So my productivity is increasing each year and I am finding the increased productivity far easier than when I first started in academia. However, this does not happen by accident.

There are two variables that simply are a function of time in the profession. First, you become extremely knowledgeable of all the literature in the field through accumulation of reading. Students need to learn the literature of the field from the ground up, having to grow from seminal articles up to current studies. Advanced professionals have the theories and important research findings as part of their routine vocabulary. This makes identification of important research topics and questions easier. Second, is simply practice. The writing, revising, editing, publishing, and persistence of publishing papers is now second nature. Most of us have found relatively effective habits. Yet, waiting to get old is not a particularly good strategy for advancing quickly.

Training Analogy

The best analogy I can think of concerning gaining the ability to produce a lot are sports requiring long-term intensive training. Teenagers and young adults have incredible physical energy and strength. However, most of the best marathoners are older — in their late 20s up to 40 years of age. Powerlifters are often older than that. Even amateur marathoners and powerlifters find that they achieve their personal best times or weights at an advanced age for an athlete, most often in their late 30s to mid 40s. They have learned to overcome injury, setbacks, life events, and many other disruptions to advance and improve their performance with consistent and disciplined training. A lifetime accumulation of training and advancement is required to get to the highest levels of competition.

Goal setting. I tell my students that the most effective way to be productive is to be consistent and persistent in production. I tell them that their goals are to write 1000 words on research and publishable tasks and read 100 pages five days per week. Most of them cannot do it. There are distractions, class work, other professional responsibilities and tasks, personal life, mental energy, and other factors they keep new students from this reasonable production goal. No one can run a marathon or bench press 300 pounds on their first day of training. You need to set a training schedule that allows you to work toward goals.

Assessment and initial goals. The first challenge is to determine exactly what your levels of productivity are now. Keep track of exactly how many pages you read that advance your knowledge for purposes of research productivity and how many words are written in a week. Assess over a three-week period exactly how many words were written and how many pages read that are directly relevant to research and this serves as the baseline. I would argue in the initial stages that there should be relatively more reading than writing, because students often are at a deficit of knowledge in terms of full understanding of the literature. A reasonable baseline might be writing 100 words and reading 80 pages per day.

Consistency. Inconsistent performance is quite common. I have students who write zero words for two or three consecutive weeks and then write 8000 words over the next week. I would argue that this is an extremely stressful approach and that typically this inconsistent pattern is due to writing only when there are deadlines approaching. Smooth the work periods into short, consistent, and feasible daily work. Being consistent is the first step towards being disciplined and mindful. The best way to train for a marathon or powerlifting is to have a consistent training schedule with appropriate amounts of rest and recovery scheduled.

Discipline. Inspiration is perfectly fine, but the discipline of reading and writing habits is more effective for achieving your long-term objectives. Schedule writing periods and reading periods. I place 30 minute Pomodoro writing segments into my schedule. I check my schedule, see that there is a writing segment on the agenda, set the Pomodoro timer and go. Also, on my schedule is rest time. Turning your brain off, having fun, and spending time with other people is required to have a quality life, rest, and recover. My own experience is that when the non-academic parts of your life are ignored, large disruptions in your home and work life are sure to follow; just like overtraining can lead to injury and burnout in an athlete. Making long-term gains if you only work when there is a deadline or when you are in the mood is not possible. Over the long term, discipline with appropriate rest and recharging is superior to inspiration in terms of quality and quantity of work.

Improvement. To move forward from your baseline, consistency and discipline are necessary but not sufficient. A reasonable approach is to create a writing and reading diary such as that suggested in Paul Silvia’s fine book entitled, “How to Write a Lot.“ Divide the writing diary into one-week segments. The goal is to achieve your quota of words written and pages read for the week. The following week, the goal is simply to write more words and read more pages. Even if it is one more word and one more page, that is successfully advancing your goals. Nearly every week needs to be a personal best until the goals are achieved. Cumulative gains happen faster than you think if gains are pursued with consistency and discipline.

Advanced goals. In any form of training or long-term preparation, there will be setbacks, discipline will fail, and motivation will be hard to find. Falling into a rut is inevitable. The first thing to do is to make sure that you have had enough rest, energy and attention have been given to the non-academic parts of your life, and you have determined that the line of work you are pursuing is rewarding and exactly what you wish to do. Even if these things are addressed, ruts will occur. In the case of athletes, they often change up their training. So a marathon runner may train using swimming, jump rope, cycling, soccer, or spirited games of tag for a change. Powerlifters may engage in gymnastics, strongman activities, or kettle bell work. The purpose is to change things up and to have fun. If you have been disciplined, consistent, and improving for a long period using the same mechanisms, then you will find that any change is rewarding and fun. The key is to keep moving forward in a positive manner. For a scholar working on reading and writing productivity some excellent activities are to form a journal club, create writing circles, or engage in timed writing sprints. I am constantly in search of methods to improve my efficiency and quality of work. Currently, I use voice-to-text recognition and try different patterns of work. The voice-to-text recognition is something I will probably continue. I find that I can write much faster than typing. I also find that my fingers get sore quickly as I age–so there is an accommodation for the physical limitations of aging. I also found that I was in a bit of a rut with some of my thinking. Therefore, I am now in a heavy load period of production: I wanted to try eight weeks of producing 10,000 words per week. This is now week three: 9987 words for week one and 7985 words for week two. My plan is to reduce back down to 5000 words per week at the end of this heavy load period. Change things up and avoid the rut.

Conclusions

Effective writing cannot be reduced entirely to work count. Obsession with word count could lead to an unfortunate Jack Torrance situation. Writing is a proxy variable for prolific and creative thought. One cannot write a lot without reading a lot of background information, experimenting, collecting and analysing data, outlining and organizing thoughts, and having an approach to contributing to the knowledge base of your field. The written word is solely the visible part of the iceberg. By pushing reading and writing productivity, you are pushing thinking and experimenting.

Relentlessly seeking improved performance is a fundamental trait of high achievers in any field. Nearly everyone I know in academia is a high achiever. And nearly everyone I know gets stuck at one time or another. By keeping the goals of completing a marathon or achieving a personal best lift, training has a reinforcing goal at the end of the journey. Likewise, academics train for managing increasingly heavy productivity loads that will last throughout your career.

SR Shaw

What to Do When You Are Overwhelmed with Work: How Not to Suck in Grad School

Ambitious graduate students and academics inevitably run into a big problem, being overwhelmed with the volume and complexity of work. This happens to nearly everybody. Becoming overwhelmed will happen, even if you are the most disciplined, organized, meticulous, strategic, and well prioritized scholar. Efficiency is a useful characteristic, but it does not make one immune from being overwhelmed. The ability to say no frequently is another useful characteristic, yet becoming overwhelmed is still inevitable. It happens to everybody. The question is, what do we do when the sheer volume of work surrounds and suffocates.

Most academics are wise enough to adhere to the Linus Pauling adage, “the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” That is, important and productive researchers have multiple projects ongoing at all times. There are additional papers and projects that are somewhere in the publication pipeline and require energy and time. All researchers working at universities also have time requirements for teaching, administration, university governance, and other supervisory or training with students. In addition, there are professional responsibilities such as journal editorship, engagement with professional organizations, reviewing papers, and evaluating grant proposals. The projects resemble a Jenga tower of precariously stacked projects that grow taller and taller. At some point the tower becomes too tall and collapses due to its inherent instability or the presentation of some external event (e.g., illness, a surprise or last-minute project, personal problems). The careful balance of multiple ideas and projects then becomes an incoherent mess of pieces that have buried you in a massive disorganized and chaotic jumble. The purpose served by balancing multiple projects and ideas is lost when the tower collapses.

Once your fragile tower of ideas collapses around you, it is time to rebuild. Even the most organized and disciplined scholar finds themselves in a cycle of building careful to-do lists and series of projects, which is followed by a collapse. Symptoms of the collapse include missed deadlines, the feeling of being spread so thin that nothing is done with high quality, there is no time to reflect and think about scholarly products and process, your day has become entirely about work, relationships and health again to suffer, and feelings of hopelessness and high anxiety are the norm. Rebuilding your tower mindlessly will result in repeating the process of building and collapse until there is burnout and intense frustration.

Step Back

The first instinct for most professionals when they become overwhelmed (after panic, tears, and hyperventilation) is to grab the first task available and begin working on it. Working extra hours, reducing sleep, sacrificing friends and family, and giving up exercise are frequent consequences of immediately beginning to work on a task. There are two major problems with this hard-working approach: one is that as you are working on a task, new tasks are accumulating and re-filling the bucket; and two is that there is an increased feeling of hopelessness as you work harder and harder while falling further and further behind.

The better first move (after panic, tears, and hyperventilation) is to step back and take stock of the situation. A mindful and well-organized plan of attack for reorganizing the to-do list and establishing a realistic timeframe for each task is required. Also consider what were the planning errors or events that created the circumstances for the overwhelming breakdown to have occurred in the first place. These are to be addressed if at all possible. Even when it comes to the overwhelming collapse of the to-do list, a thoughtful and mindful approach is more effective than haphazard busyness. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Long Term Planning

Because there is so much to do, most conscientious scientist will begin working on tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is a mistake. This is the ideal moment for long-term planning. Assess exactly what your one-year and five-year personal and professional goals are. Then review all of the pieces of the to-do list in order to determine if all tasks are consistent with professional goals. Items on the to-do list that are not consistent with professional goals need to be eliminated or given low priority.

The purpose of the long-term planning exercise just at the moment that things are most overwhelming is to ensure that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Simply working harder and longer without a goal or purpose can be discouraging, frustrating, and eventually self-defeating. By occasionally reconsidering whether the to-do list matches with long-term goals helps to avoid the cycle of massive to-do lists followed by inability to meet deadlines. The best time to audit your to-do list is when things become the most chaotic and you feel most overwhelmed.

Prioritize

As you survey the rubble of high priority tasks and try to figure out how to reestablish an orderly method of completing your work, you will need to prioritize tasks. The two primary methods of prioritizing tasks are by urgency and by importance. Urgent tasks tend to have rapidly approaching timelines or an expectation of rapid turnaround (e.g., emails, grading). The tendency is to immediately work on urgent tasks first. Timelines are to be respected, but tasks deemed to be most important in your long-term planning exercise must also receive immediate attention. In the most efficient approaches to addressing to-do lists there is always a tension between important task and urgent tasks. No matter how busy, it is always a good investment of time to allocate 20% of your energies towards tasks that are considered important, but not urgent.

Considering your priorities and long-term planning are also essential when it comes to considering which new tasks that you should say yes to and which opportunities need to be politely declined. Declining, then missing out on new opportunities is a common victim of the overwhelmed scholar. There is nothing wrong with taking on new tasks even when overwhelmed, but make sure that these task are consistent with your highest priorities and your long-term planning.

Renegotiate

The overwhelming collapse of the to-do list is something like a financial bankruptcy. In order to get out from under the avalanche of impossible-to-complete tasks some sacrifices may need to be made. Tasks with hard deadlines (e.g., grant proposals and conference deadlines), may need to be sacrificed if they are not of highest importance. Semi-firm deadlines such as manuscript reviews, agreed-upon delivery of work with co-authors, grading, and other tasks can often be renegotiated to a later time. The major mistake is to hide from overdue work. Stand up and address each person you owe work to and negotiate a new deadline. Clearly, this is not an activity that you want to do often and it is not fun at all. Negotiating a new deadline date with a research partner, student, or journal editor is far more professional than being late with no warning. In addition, tasks that do not have a formal deadline are often ignored. These tasks, such as submission of journal manuscripts, can be extraordinarily important. Ignoring this writing because your to-do list is too full will result in minimizing your research productivity and will affect the trajectory of your research program.

What Not to Do

There is nothing wrong with increasing work rate. However, all nighters, skipping meals, avoiding exercise, and working with high levels of anxiety are recipes for burnout. Effective self-care is impossible when extra work replaces normal life and this becomes a permanent state of being. There is nothing wrong with high intensity long and hard work. There is a problem when work is no longer productive for achieving goals and work is a never-ending hamster wheel of busyness.

A Couple of Pointers

Even after stepping back, creating long-term plans, prioritizing, renegotiating, and avoiding maladaptive practices; there is still a lot of work to do. Quite often the avalanche of work is due to a personal problem, illness, or some other event that has made work difficult to complete. Moving from no work to full speed work can be a challenge. An exercise to get back into the habits and rituals that are necessary to be most productive can be valuable. It is not too difficult for frequent readers to determine that this is the purpose of my blog posts. A blog post does not take full and intense concentration like a manuscript for publication in refereed journal, but it requires the discipline and productivity skills necessary to jumpstart efficient work habits. So a brief and manageable task is often enough to get you back on track. The second pointer is to create only a mild increase in time spent working on to-do list tasks. Rarely do you ever want to increase the time spent on your to do tasks by more than 25%. Multiple all nighters and marathon sessions usually result in poor quality work and quality of life problems. The last pointer is to fully complete your first couple of tasks in one sitting. Completing a task and checking it off of the list is reinforcing and launches your reboot of the to-do list in a positive direction.

Conclusions

Far too many academics despair when the to-do list becomes overwhelming and collapses into a disorganized and insurmountable mess. This happens to everyone who is making every effort to take advantage of all the opportunities to become a productive scholar no matter how organized they may be. The mistake happens when becoming overwhelmed leads to panic and mindless busyness. This form of work crisis is an opportunity to reestablish priorities and to work most efficiently on the projects that are of highest importance. Taking the time to step back and be mindful about how you conduct your daily tasks goes a long way towards sustainable productivity.

SR Shaw

How not to Suck at Graduate School: Creating a Productivity Schedule

There are many ways for academics and graduate students to increase their efficiency and productivity. Because individual circumstances, both personally and professionally, change it is necessary to be able to adapt your methods to your current realities. Nearly every semester involves a new strategic plan to increase quality of work. Because no matter what the realities of life are, the goal is continuous improvement.

For me, this should be a high productivity academic year in terms of scholarly papers and ideas. I have a favorable teaching schedule, a research lab of motivated-to-produce graduate students, pent-up ideas that did not get written last year, invited papers and a book contract, and a solid base of data to use. I have also decided not to go after writing major grant proposals this year because these activities require a large amount of work with a low probability of success. The plan is to have a strong publication year now that will increase the probability of grant funding for next year. I also have a lot of motivation to keep up with my younger, smarter, an extremely productive peers; and move to a full professor status. Although this strategy may not work for everyone, even for me in previous terms, this is what I am using for a potentially high productivity year.

The first assumption is that a to-do list is simply fantasy unless time is allocated to complete each item. So at the least your to-do list must sync with your calendar (I use Priority Matrix, but there are many excellent to-do lists available). It also helps that I have enough experience to know how quickly I can work and therefore am a little bit stronger at estimating the time to complete a task than I once was. Here are the steps that I use:

• Fill your schedule with nonnegotiable items. This includes your classroom teaching schedule, scheduled meetings, office hours, classroom planning, and other regular meetings that you cannot escape.
• For every one-hour of meeting time, schedule at least 30 extra minutes to prepare for the meeting or to follow up. Meetings without preparation or follow-up are a complete waste of time.
• Fill your schedule with items that are critical to your life. I know it sounds silly, but schedule time for lunch, time with friends, family time, exercise, sleep, shopping, time with significant other, rest and downtime, hobbies, volunteer work, etc. Your work is a marathon and not a sprint. Take care of yourself and your relationships. It is easy to become obsessed with work at the expense of living a decent life. Once these items are put into your schedule, they are also nonnegotiable.
• Estimate at least two hours per day for flex time. These are for impromptu student meetings, hallway consultations, answering emails, bathroom breaks, taking deep breaths, office naps, and other work (e.g., reviewing manuscripts and reading).
• I tend to keep a seven-day schedule. However, it is extremely rare for me to do more than four hours of work per day on the weekends. Many academics like to keep a five or six-day schedule.
• I do not seem to have the mental stamina that I once did. So I cannot write for hours at a stretch anymore. Therefore, I use the Pomodoro system of 25 minutes of full work with five minutes of rest (this is when I usually send out Tweets of frustration @Shawpsych). Then Pomodoros are added to the calendar. I typically have 20 Pomodoro units (10 hours) scheduled per week.
• From experience, I know that I write approximately 300 to 350 words per Pomodoro. That does not sound like much, but there is much variability. Sometimes I can write 2000 words in one Pomodoro and other times writing comes slowly or the session is spent editing and revising. Nonetheless, the goal for me is to have 6000 to 7000 words written per week. Sometimes Pomodoros are used for data collection, outlining, planning, or data analysis.
• Now go to your projects. A project is any paper, chapter, book, grant proposal, report, or work that requires dedicated time to complete. I have a gross list of all projects that are on my agenda. There are usually 10-12 that are in my brain at any one time. Many of these are co-authored. I keep all of this information on a spreadsheet.
• All projects with firm deadlines such as grant proposals, contracted work, invited papers or reports with deadlines, and the like are scheduled first. If possible, I like to give extra time on projects. For example, if a paper will be approximately 7000 words (or 28 APA-style pages) in length. I schedule one week to write a first draft, one week to revise and edit, and one week to let it rest or for unforeseen problems.
• Well thought-out papers and papers with complete data take about 3 weeks to prepare for submission. Papers that are not fully baked can take forever. Spend Pomodoro time developing your ideas, completing analyses, and making detailed outlines so that writing will go smoothly. I have individual meetings with all of my students. Usually, this meeting time is where our projects are thought out and outlined.
• Projects without firm deadlines are the hardest to complete and probably the most important for your career. See #getyourmanuscriptout for Twitter inspiration on this issue. Most often we work from deadline to deadline and those papers with no firm deadline can be put off for months or years. But typically this is your most creative work that sets the tone for who you are as a scholar. Place these papers into your calendar of Pomodoros. I typically place one project paper without a deadline into my schedule at a time. When that paper is submitted, then I move on to the next paper and schedule that.

All fields are different in relative demands for project completion. In general, 12 projects per year is a reasonable goal with this model of work. As we all know, some projects are massive and some are simple. I am a no-drama advocate. Consistency and scheduling time for high quality work is preferred to a lot of down time followed by high intensity panicky writing.

A critical factor to remember is that Pomodoros are not free time. When someone asks you if you have time available, consider a Pomodoro to be a meeting with yourself that cannot be cancelled. In a pinch, you may be able to move a Pomodoro to a different time, but do this rarely and never cancel.

This also helps you to understand which requests you can say yes to. If there is no time available to complete a task, then the answer is no. It is always easier to say no, if there is a larger yes on your schedule.

The hardest part of this schedule for many is the insta-author aspect of this form of schedule. If I have a random 30-minute period between meetings, then I can instantly get into focus and write for 25 minutes—and then move to the next meeting. I have always been able to do this. Many folks need to get in the mood and do not bother to work unless they can string together 2 or 3 consecutive hours. That’s okay—I just like to pick up the scheduling crumbs of the day and make them useful.

Sometimes, I do extra. We all know that there will be interruptions, disruptions, emergencies, lack of motivation, anxiety, depression, and other things that will interfere with the productivity schedule. It is going to happen. The calendar and productivity schedule is aspirational. If I am writing and on a roll, then I will keep going beyond the scheduled Pomodoro, if possible. I consider extra writing to be productivity insurance for the inevitable disruption of regularly scheduled writing tasks.

I have made the case many times that the best strategic plan is to have a plan. There are so many techniques and strategies available that the above described idea is probably not the best for most readers. Pick and choose the parts that work for you. Or develop a completely different plan. Have a plan. I know that many people fly by the seat of their pants, work all night, sleep for days, every project is completed one minute before the deadline, and move organically (or haphazardly) from project to project—and many of these people are successful. But these folks are often hard to collaborate with, have challenges in their personal lives, do not sleep well, experience burnout, and have a host of other difficulties. Have a plan. Your sustainable productivity and overall quality of life will improve.

SRShaw