After the frustration with the student I wasn't doing a very good job of supervising, Jon asked if I have a list of all of the projects I'm involved in. He suggested that I list everything and regularly review the status of each project. I thought about doing something more complicated than that at the beginning of the summer using some kind of goal tracking software, but I never found the right thing for me. So, now I've got an uncomplicated list of all of my projects and major sub-projects in Google Docs. This includes some outreach and side-projects (things that aren't part of my dissertation). Each week (or so), I look at each project and record the status (e.g. waiting for someone else, what I have to do, etc) and then I color code it based on whether or not it is something I need to be working on this week.
If you include job hunting as a project, I have 13 projects. Thirteen! Thankfully, two of them just finished since I first made the list. That brings it down to 11. Five more are waiting for other things to happen or are otherwise on the back burner. That means there's 6 projects that I need to do at least something for this week, even if it just means emailing someone else to ask what's up on their end.
Three of those 6 projects are dissertation chapters. I have to finish my dissertation.
2 comments:
I'm right there with you...trying to write up my dissertation and get the chapters accepted as publications. All the while, I am applying for jobs and writing grants for my (hopefully) postdoc. It's a lot to balance and I will be glad to get through the next couple of weeks...
You're several big steps ahead of me if you're writing grants for your postdoc, which I definitely have NOT done. I'm feeling a bit panic-y about all of this which I think can be summed up nicely with one word:
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good luck!
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