Scientists with active research programs I have a question for you. I am starting sabbatical in February and I’d like to spend some time organizing my research. What are your favorite tricks, large and small, for being effective in research?
@crawfordsm did you do this more at the hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly level? I love being laser focused for a full afternoon, but often am managing a dozen or more research initiatives at once.
@jegpeek It depends! The longer you can go without disruption, the better. But I very much understand the needs in managing a group which are orthogonal to focused work.
If I could get 2-3 days, I found that to be a minimum as it would take me an afternoon to ramp up. Two weeks was usually ideal, but rare. I would set my out of office, let my students know how to handle emergencies, and then disconnect from work. Works really well if your collaborators can do that as well.
@jegpeek
I think I get my best output when I’m able to spend one day on one project/topic. Project hopping is a disaster for me. I really like to use the chalkboard for both keeping a list of all of my projects (both long-term and active back burner) as well as having a large sandbox portion for sketching out ideas
@jradavenport so you track projects/concepts on a dedicated blackboard?
@jegpeek @jradavenport I find Trello to be a pretty good digital tool for this kind of tracking, although it also feels like it's not quiiiite what I want
@pkgw @jradavenport what about Notion?
@jegpeek For large projects with lots of multi-track/multi-reaource engineering I prefer Pert charts. I find tracking progress easier on a wall size printout in that form. Most of the agencies I work with want Gantt charts though. Software that does both well is hard to come by. So I mostly end up using Project with Gantt. For small projects a picture of a list on a white board recreated as necessary often suffices.
@jegpeek I should add that Project is awful and no same person would use it voluntarily.
@jegpeek when I did have an active research, the most effective thing was to focus on One Thing. It especially helped to have the other people working on the project to be focused on it at the same time.
So take some time to organize and prioritize, and then pick one item and work on it either until a goal is reached, a blocker that you need help, or for a set period of time.