Enhancing Productivity with Roam Research

Productivity

As a healthcare researcher and academician, my professional life feels like a labyrinth of ideas, data, and endless streams of literature I should be keeping up with. It’s a realm that demands meticulous organization and a strategic approach to information management. If you’re looking for a way to do that, consider Roam Research – a tool that has become my compass in this maze.

Why Roam Research? Imagine having a personal assistant who not only helps you jot down ideas but also intelligently links these ideas across a vast network of information. This is what Roam Research does for me. It’s more than just a note-taking application; it’s a central hub where my thoughts, readings, and research findings coalesce into a meaningful whole.

A Daily Ritual of Notes and Reflections: I begin every day with Roam Research. I capture fleeting thoughts, summarize new findings, and outline out the day’s agenda. It’s a ritual that brings order to the chaos. At the heart of the software is a database of bi-directional links. When you want to convert a word or phrase into a concept that can be linked, you simply put double square brackets around it & voila, it has its own page stored in the database, and every mention of that concept is linked there.

Project Pages: Here’s an example of how this is helpful to those of us in academic research. Each project is a universe of its own – with unique objectives, timelines, and tasks. I use Roam Research by creating a dedicated page for each project. This page becomes the central hub for all project-related notes, from brainstorming sessions to detailed plans, and is tagged with [[Project Todos]]. It’s a dynamic space that grows and evolves with the project, ensuring that all my thoughts and tasks are coherently organized and easily accessible.

But of course, I’m always working on multiple projects. I can go to the [[Project Todos]] page where I get a bird’s-eye view of all my projects and can survey everything at a glance. It aggregates all tasks from each project into one comprehensive list, providing a panoramic snapshot of my entire project landscape. This powerful overview helps me prioritize tasks and manage my time effectively, ensuring that no project is left behind.

Categorizing Tasks: To plan my day/week, I actually have several lists I review at the beginning of the day: [[Paper Todos]], [[Grant Todos]], [[Work Todos]], and [[Personal Todos]]. Each category is like a stream of thought, collected into a reservoir of tasks that I can dive into depending on my focus for the day. This categorization helps me maintain a balance between various responsibilities, ensuring that I devote attention to each aspect of my academic and personal life. I also have a [[WaitingFor]] List, which is a unique system I use to track dependencies – tasks that are on hold because they require input or action from someone else.

If you’re not convinced yet, here are a couple other hacks that make my work a lot easier:

  • Literature Review: Managing my scientific literature in Roam Research is akin to curating a personal library. Each paper, tagged with relevant concepts, becomes part of a searchable, interconnected database. This system has revolutionized how I access information make it readily available through a simple query.
  • Recalling Meeting Discussions & Thoughts: During meetings, when a crucial point about a study is discussed, I tag it with [[Limitations Section]], [[Methods Section]], or even [[Acknowledgements Section]]. This method ensures that when I’m ready to draft a manuscript, a simple query of [[Title of Paper]] and [[Limitations Section]] brings forth all the relevant discussions, neatly linked and ready for review.

Pricing: I wish I could say it’s free, but given all the bells and whistles, including its reliability, I see why they charge for it. Depending on how frequently you want to pay, it costs from $8.33/month (if you purchase the 5-year Believer Plan like I do) to $15/month (if you chose monthly).

Conclusion: Roam Research is more than just a tool for me. With Roam Research, my daily organization transcends mere to-do lists; it becomes a form of art. I have created structured yet flexible spaces for each aspect of my work and life. It’s not just about getting things done; it’s about knowing and navigating the landscape of my commitments. It’s an extension of my thought process, a way to navigate the complexities of academia, research, and even my personal life with greater efficiency. It has redefined how I organize my academic life, turning the potential chaos of information overload into a structured, manageable journey.

If you want to learn more, here are a couple 10-min reads written by others:

READ MORE

Tips for Conquering the Literature

Order from Chaos

How to Do It All by Not Doing It All

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Order from Chaos

Productivity

For the last few years I’ve been juggling more and more balls. I was barely able to keep up with the endless emails and tasks – both at work and at home – and I felt like I was on the verge of losing control. On top of that, my long-term goals remained vague notions and even my short-term goals were stalled. Things came to a head this fall with a series of forgotten meetings, incomplete tasks and a missed major grant deadline that left me in tears. Thanks to a great program in the Department of Medicine at VUMC, I applied for and was provided a career coach. At our first meeting we discussed my struggles at length. She asked something transformative, “Have you heard of Bullet Journaling?”

I hadn’t. If you have, and practice Bullet Journaling (aka Bujo), you are probably jumping up and down right now shouting, “Yes!! Yes!!” If you haven’t, let me tell you a bit about how a single notebook and innovative method developed by Ryder Carroll have changed my life. No exaggeration.

The philosophy of Bullet Journaling is simple – keep everything in one place. Prior to bullet journaling I had a paper to do list (that I often lost), one notebook for meeting/conference notes, one notebook for projects, one notebook for journaling and separate calendars for work and home. Bullet Journaling puts all of that in one place.

The system of Bullet Journaling developed by Ryder Carroll is simple. My favorite aspects are:

  1. The Daily Log. This is the place where you write everything down. Things to do, crazy ideas, notes from meetings, thoughts and feelings about people or events. Literally everything gets written on the daily log. I even take my bullet journal to bed with me to capture those random thoughts that come when I’m trying to fall asleep.
  2. The Monthly Log. This is a combination of a short form of your calendar and a running To Do List that you populate and review daily.
  3. Collections. Each Collection starts as a single page with a heading on a particular topic. For example, I have pages for specific responsibilities (Edge for Scholars), larger tasks (R01 submission), projects (Epithelial Hemoglobin Project), groups (Collaborators), personal items (House Projects) and many more. Any time I have an idea bigger than one task, I make a new collection.
  4. The Index. Pretty self-explanatory. Goes at the beginning.

 The practice of Bullet Journaling includes 5 minutes of review and reflection at the beginning and end of each day during which items from the daily log are migrated to their appropriate locations and a moment is spent thinking about what went well (or not) that day.

I’ve been Bullet Journaling for about two months now and the results are truly remarkable. I have cleared much of my task back log, had time to plan and make progress on both short and long term goals, and I haven’t missed a single meeting or deadline! It has been so beneficial that I am motivated to keep it up and even grow my bullet journaling methods. There’s a lot more to Bujo which you can learn about in an excellent book (The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future: Carroll, Ryder: 9780525533337: Amazon.com: Books, I was able to read it in less than a day), a website (https://bulletjournal.com), and a growing community of bullet journal practitioners.

If you are struggling with organization and productivity like I was, it just might be the solution for you too.

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Tools for Making Progress in Academic Life

Productivity / Trainees

This post is particularly focused for the population I work with – graduate students and postdocs – but can be helpful for any stage of an academic career – whether as the person struggling or someone trying to help them.

Academia attracts bright, ambitious high achievers capable of great work.  But graduate school and postdoc positions can challenge a person in ways to which they are not accustomed.  Large swaths of unstructured time, unending projects with no instruction manual while also learning how best to establish, maintain and grow working relationships with faculty and colleagues.  As Vanderbilt University Graduate School’s Academic Life Coach, I have been working with graduate students and postdocs through a host of concerns for the past three years.  I would like to share some of the things I have learned with you in hopes that you will find it helpful in your own journey.  

“I feel stuck!”

This is a common refrain I hear from graduate students and postdocs alike.  Through our coaching conversations, we usually find that incorrect goal setting, not tracking actual progress and self-criticism are interfering with the ability to establish progress and build momentum. A likely culprit can be found in perfectionism (“fear of failure”), which can contribute to procrastination.  This is such a common issue that it has a name: The Perfectionism-Procrastination Cycle. (Google it… you’ll see!)

You need to find a new way of making progress.  The bad news is that perfectionism, like its relative Imposter Syndrome, never really goes away.  The good news, however, is that once you learn to recognize it, you can start to establish ways of managing it and re-employ those techniques every time it returns to derail your progress.  

The prescription for such an ailment includes some of the hardest things for perfectionists:

    • set SMART (read: small!) goals
    • short, focused work sessions (try the Pomodoro technique and turn off all notifications on phone and computer – these distractions are commonly used as procrastination techniques)
    • track progress and celebrate wins – cross off those small goals on your list to show progress and build momentum
    • practice self-compassion – negativity leads to lower productivity!
    • share your work (early and often) and get feedback
    • establish accountability partnerships

I hope to share more tidbits in the coming months on common topics like  the importance of mindset and self-compassion, navigating academic relationships and managing up.  Let me know if you have questions or concerns you think would be good to include.  You can reach me at stacey.satchell@vanderbilt.edu.

More Resources:

The Best of You

Finding Your Science Flow: Yoga Lessons to Increase Productivity!

Professional Success in Social Media

Acting on the Essential

 

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Taking a Break Without Losing Your Momentum (or Your Mind!)

Faculty Life / Productivity

We’ve all heard the adage “Vacation is a state of mind,” but some (or most) of us don’t embrace the core of this idea. In the competitive world of academic medicine, it’s easy to feel like you need to work 24/7/365 – after all, your colleagues, trainees and leaders often send you emails at 4am. It’s difficult to silence that little devil on your shoulder whispering in your ear, “Everyone else is working non-stop; you should, too.” The guilt is terrible. In the past, I would take vacations (they are called “family trips” when you do them with kids!) but I would feel guilty the whole time and try and “catch up” on work even while I was away “relaxing” on vacation.

A few years ago, I did an experiment. I decided to approach things differently. Before leaving, I met with my trainees to help them make plans for when I was away and asked a lab colleague to be available for “emergencies” in my absence. Then, I left and did no work while on vacation. None. Zero. Not even a single email. What happened when I got back to work? Nothing! My office was still there, my team was in the lab, the patients were in the hospital and the world had not collapsed. As a bonus, I had a great time away! Since then, I’ve adopted a “zero work” policy while on vacation.

Here are some “mind tricks” you can use to get into the vacation state of mind:

  1. First and foremost – give yourself permission to go on vacation and NOT WORK. The pressure to work continuously comes from within your own head, not from outside. Let go of the guilt!
  2. Don’t think about coming back to work. Often people are hesitant to be away because they know they will face the Mount Everest of email when they return. Let me ask you this: When is the last time you came into work and did not feel bombarded by email? I don’t know about you, but I can’t think that far back. Before vacation, I am overwhelmed with email. After vacation, I am overwhelmed with email. Being overwhelmed by email is an everyday occurrence. Don’t let that stop you from enjoying time away – the emails will be there when you get back.
  3. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Are you on track? Are projects moving forward? Do you have manuscripts and grants in the pipeline? Are you having productive mentor-mentee relationships? Are you enjoying what you do? Yes? Great! Don’t worry about what others are doing.
  4. And once again because it is so important – let go of the guilt!

Still not convinced? Why not try it once? Next time you are out of town plan ahead, don’t do any work while you’re away and see what happens. You might find that, like me, you return more energized, creative, efficient and content. Rather than slowing your career momentum, time away can give it a turbo boost!

 

More Resources:

How To Be an Academic Leader and Maintain Time For Yourselfhttp://vacation

Build a Great Team: Help Your Staff Help You

Not that Kind of Investment: Tales of Time Commitment

 

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Flight Tracker: Streamlined Career Development Tracking & Analysis

Management & Leadership / Networking & Collaboration / Productivity

Career development programs, no matter what stage of the academic career they cater to, face similar challenges. A wide range of information about scholars is available, from demographics, publications, and grant submissions to pilot funding, composition of mentor panel, training activities, and career milestones. Much of this data needs to be reported to funding agencies at regular intervals, but is scattered across different public and internal sources.

Enter Flight Tracker. This software allows users to track and understand their scholars’ careers longitudinally via automated data collection. Flight Tracker was developed at Vanderbilt and is now used by 55 institutions in a growing consortium. Programs across the breadth of academic career development use the program, from graduate programs and training grants to departments tracking tenure and promotion and research impact. Data lives securely in a FISMA- and FERPA-compliant REDCap database.

Watch the Flight Tracker intro video.

Flight Tracker collects the following:

  • Grants from NIH and Federal RePORTER (and optionally, from the home institution’s own grant management software);
  • Publications from PubMed;
  • Bibliometrics such as the Relative Citation Ratio and Altmetric;
  • Patents from the US Patent Office;
  • Demographics, education, honors and awards, job changes, and more via surveys of scholars;
  • Custom resource use such as attendance at workshops or online courses;
  • Anything else you can dream up.

Flight Tracker uses this data to produce visuals, dashboards, and metrics about your group of scholars. These are just a few of the tools available.

K2R Conversion Calculator

This tool shows the percentage of your scholars who have moved from career development award to research independence. You can slice and dice the group along lines such as gender, degree type, department, or type of career development award, as well as by date ranges. It includes up-to-the-minute data every time you access it.

Social Network Graphs

Visually demonstrate relationships between scholars, mentors, and more with chord diagrams. The example to the right is a graph of co-authorship relationships among a subset of career development awardees at Vanderbilt. Each square on the edge of the circle is a person and each line is a publication the connected people have co-authored. These diagrams can also be used to show connections between mentors and mentees, for example if you’d like to show that the participating faculty for your grant have been publishing or writing grants with the former trainees and the applicant pool. Chord diagrams can also help identify interdisciplinary grant teams.

Success Curves

Kaplan-Meier Success Curves provide a breakdown of programmatic elements contributing to your K-to-R conversion. In this example, the black line is the conversion ratio of Vanderbilt career development awardees since 2000, with about 70% converted by fifteen years after the start of their career development award. The orange and green lines show this conversion for subgroups who used key resources like internal study section. Use of these resources confers a 30% increase in successful conversion to independent funding, providing evidence to invest consistently in these programs and encourage participation.

Staff time for Flight Tracker upkeep is generally light. With a large number of scholars, initial effort may be high, but once over the hump, ongoing effort is minimal. For all career development awardees since 2000 at Vanderbilt, which totals approximately 550 scholars, it takes me:

  • 2-3 hours a month to assure grants are auto-categorized appropriately as Ks, Rs, etc.;
  • 3-4 hours a month to check new publications for problems like another John Smith’s paper being pulled into my John Smith’s profile;
  • 30 minutes a month to add new scholars or make updates to existing scholar profiles;
  • 2-4 hours per year to set up and monitor annual surveys.

Flight Tracker also saved considerable time with our recent CTSA renewal. With data in the system from surveys and external sources, the software can produce Tables 5 and 8 of the standard NIH reporting tables at the touch of a button. We were also able to include some of the visualizations above in our grant text, as well as quickly access metrics like K-to-R conversion, demographics, and more. Retrieving these numbers before took tedious manual calculation.

To get started with Flight Tracker, ask your local REDCap admin to enable the “Flight Tracker for Scholars External Module” on a REDCap project. The same institution can have multiple projects, e.g., each T32 and K12 can have its own Flight Tracker, or each doctoral program.

You’ll be able to put in a list of names, departments, and resources to start tracking data immediately for your project. After setup, Flight Tracker starts collecting data immediately. Once data is in the system, you can wrangle your initial set of grants and publications for accuracy.

Then, join the club. The Flight Tracker Consortium gets members up to speed and keeps everyone on track with two calls per month: A “newbie” call to help new users get started and a full consortium meeting with updates. Email Scott Pearson to receive invitations to these calls. You can also view our video archive for instructions, tips, and tricks for importing and working with scholar data.

We release updates to Flight Tracker regularly, many based on requests from consortium members. Establish a regular upgrade schedule with your REDCap admin.

We hope you’ll join us.

More Resources

Writing Your K or CDA Progress Report
Beginner’s Eye for the Science Guy (or Gal)
Get Your PMCIDs PDQ

Published by: 1

Choosing What to Do or Not to Do on the Job

Faculty Life / Productivity

Lives with daycare drop-offs, graduate students to monitor and department chairs to please can be hectic. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that we can actually do much more than we think we can – when our priorities are in-line. I am also amazed at how well things work out, despite not doing things that I am told are “essential” or “expected.” What would happen if we stopped doing the things we are told we ought to do but don’t want to do?

Work-related night and weekend social events, happy hours, and parties are all things that I used to attend out of obligation. I would sit there the whole time wishing I was home with my family, waiting for the moment when the first person would leave, so I could closely follow. Now, I never go alone unless I absolutely want to be at the event. If it doesn’t work for my husband to come with me, and I don’t really want to be there, then I say no. It’s not that I don’t love spending time with my co-workers, it’s just that my husband and kids are a higher priority. Now, I am more comfortable being assertive.

Similarly, I felt the same peer pressure to say yes to specific committees, evening teaching-times, and late afternoon meetings. However, because of my personal priorities, I have been able to stop attending these things out of guilt or obligation. I speak up if something doesn’t work due to family obligations and push to reschedule. It’s not that I’m able to go to every school event for my kids, but if I really want to be there, I can usually make it happen. Any times in which no daycare is available (before 7am or after 6pm) are an automatic no. If I don’t have the courage to speak up, who will?

There will likely be times that my career opportunities are affected by these decisions. It is just as likely that you may be more productive in other areas or generate different opportunities by saying no to work activities you do not really want to do.

Shaping a career around priorities allows for new growth.

More Resources

Acting on the Essential

How to REALLY Manage Your Time

Working with the Kids at Home? Tips from an Experienced Parent

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Tune the When, How Much, and What in Your Days

Productivity

You can have balance, productivity, and meaning when you know how to tune the when, how much, and what of your activities. Let me share what I’ve learned to achieve this over the past four years.

WHEN. Converging evidence from psychology, biology, and economics show the natural patterns of alertness and energy that define our “chronotypes” – the personal patterns “of circadian rhythms that influences our psychology and psychology.”[i] Daniel Pink reviews this evidence in part 1 of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Everyone has a peak, trough and a recovery in their alertness – varied by our chronotype.

Visual of peak, trough, recovery

Based on this, he suggests we:

  • Know our chronotype.
    • Larks are most alert in the early morning,
    • Third birds are most alert in the mid-morning, and
    • Owls are most alert in the late afternoon.
  • Align our activities to fit our chronotypes, as shown here[ii]:
  Larks Third Birds Owls
Analytical tasks Early morning Early to midmorning Late afternoon and evening
Insight tasks Late afternoon/early evening Late afternoon/early evening Morning
Administrative tasks Early afternoon Early afternoon Early afternoon
Making an impression Morning Morning Morning (sorry, owls)
Making a decision Early morning Early to midmorning Late afternoon and evening
  • Use breaks to restore energy in the trough of the day. For example, caffeine drinkers may benefit from Pink’s suggestions to down a cappuccino and take a 26-minute nap. You’ll get the double boost of the power nap and the caffeine hitting your bloodstream (which takes ~ 26 minutes).

This set of practices alone created a flow in my day. Avoiding high risk or demanding activities in the trough of my early afternoons is especially helpful. When I cannot avoid them, knowing I’m in a trough helps me better modulate my response to challenging, frustrating, or tense situations.

Cal Newport expands on this notion of when to work in Deep Work. He suggests that “High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)” and suggests we might consider batching work across several days.[iii]

HOW MUCH AND WHAT. My remaining results came from me scrutinizing how much time I spent on each activity. Newport makes the case for a fixed-schedule from his experience at Georgetown and Radhika Nagpal’s experience at Harvard.[iv] In a three-year pre-tenure period on faculty, Newport didn’t work nights and rarely worked weekends while delivering 20 peer-reviewed articles, two competitive grants, one (nonacademic) book, and more.

For me, I began forecasting my workload on a quarterly basis in estimations that were good enough to be useful – anywhere from hours to ½-days of effort. The results are displayed in weeks of effort like this example outlined for my staff-administrative job:

Visual of how this chart is displayed

Workload Forecast. (Weissenburger)

In this, I accounted for three (3) givens:

  1. A workday of effort equals 6 hours, rather than 8 hours to accommodate getting organized at the start and end of the day; handling smaller, urgent tasks; and taking a break during the trough of the afternoon.
  2. Potential days off work for vacations, holidays, illnesses, etc.
  3. Activities that are constant for every worker in the profession (Overhead). For my profession, that is a basic set of standing meetings, time for learning and networking, and some others.

This forecasting data drove decisions about what activities I had and how much time I’d devote to them.

In advocating for fixed-schedule productivity, Newport and Nagpal (see her post) make the case that there’s a limit to how much time you can give to your work while maintaining a meaningful, happy life. In response, they scrutinized what they were doing and set quotas on the remainder, each commensurate with the activity’s value return. The results are academic lives that are highly productive with limited time outside classic working hours (e.g. Mon – Fri, 8-5).

Whether you keep to 40-50 hours per week or not, the habits of aligning your work with your daily energy flow and managing your time like a fixed-expense budget fosters better decision making by you and others who control your commitments.

You can read more about all these here:

[i] Pink D. When. New York (NY): Riverhead Books; 2018. 27 p.

[ii] Pink D. When. 40 p. with modification: added row for administrative tasks based on Pink’s findings.

[iii] Newport C. Deep Work. New York (NY): Grand Central Publishing; 2016. 39-40 p.

[iv] Newport C. Deep Work. 236-242 p.

More Resources

How to REALLY Manage Your Time

Finding Your Science Flow: Yoga Lessons to Increase Productivity

Not that Kind of Investment: Tales of Time Commitment

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How to REALLY Manage Your Time

Faculty Life / Productivity

A few years ago, I was sitting in my office with a few first-year graduate students. They had recently attended a session on setting goals that I had given and wanted to set goals that would allow them to maximize their experience in school.

We were in Utah where there were many opportunities to enjoy nature and the outdoors. They were from the East Coast and wanted to make sure they properly “enjoyed Utah.” At the same time, they wanted to excel in their academic and professional work. How could they do both?

I asked them, “What does it mean to each of you to ‘enjoy Utah’? I mean please be specific.”

We discussed this for another 15 minutes. They agreed that to properly ‘enjoy Utah’, they would go on two meaningful outings every three months. That would ‘check the box’ on ‘enjoying Utah’. They were relieved to have set that goal. Would they attain that goal? Chances were good. Could they achieve that goal and still be excellent students? Yes. Would they feel much FOMO when other classmates posted their Instagrams of their latest camping trip? No.

Had they not set the goal, would they have achieved their desires for enjoying Utah? Much less likely. Yet, they would still be just as busy. A noted historian by the name of Cyril Parkinson once observed, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” How long does a 1-hour meeting last? You got it, an hour.  How long does a 30-minute meeting last? Right again, 30 minutes. The work fills the time given to it. How long will it take for you to write that paper? That depends on how long you give yourself to do it, and however long you give yourself, that’s how long it’ll take.

One of the biggest fallacies of managing time is the notion that, “First, I’ll complete the urgent stuff, and then I’ll work on the meaningful, important stuff.” The urgent stuff will expand to take ALL of your time, unless…you define the meaningful, important stuff upfront and put boundaries around the urgent stuff. So, if you haven’t set specific goals for the meaningful and important stuff, there’s very little point to time management. What would you be managing towards anyway?

In an enlightening book called, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, author Laura Vanderkam asserts that within a week (168 hours) there is enough time to get done what you need. If on a weekend, you consider the three or four important things that need to get done in the coming week and intentionally block out the time to do them, chances are you will get those things done. Then if you get those three or four things done, that week is a success.

The week is just one period of time. Other periods of time include the day, the month, the year, and even one’s life. All those periods of time are also yours to command if you apply intentionality to them. It is then said that time management is life management. How you approach the use of time parallels the results that you will achieve in life.

—-

I recently recorded a short series of workshops about time management, which offers more tools and methods on managing your time. They can be accessed through my website.

More Resources

Acting on the Essential

Tune Your When, How Much, and What in Your Days

Finding Your Science Flow: Yoga Lessons to Increase Productivity

Choosing What to Do, or Not to Do, on the Job

Published by: 2

Becoming a More Productive Writer

Productivity / Writing & Publishing

#AcademicTwitter:

I used to be a horrible scientific writer. I was paralyzed by writing anxiety & it took me FOREVER to write papers. Last year I published 14 scientific articles (8 first, 2 second, 2 senior-author) & 2 book chapters.

A thread ⬇️  on how I became more productive:

1. Figure out when you write best & block out that time on your calendar.

I write best in the morning. Unless unavoidable, I do not take meetings in the morning. Mornings are my time to read, write, & think. I write every single day, Monday-Friday. Even if just 30 minutes.

Every Friday, I do a brain dump of what tasks I need to complete for the following week. I block off my calendar with writing times & what I will focus on during those times (e.g., 8-10am is specific aims). I try to be realistic about what I can accomplish during a given time.

This helps organize what I need to do for the following week so I start each Monday with a plan in place. Life happens and it doesn’t always work exactly the way I put it in my calendar, but it works a lot better for me than not having a plan at all.

I set my alarm to write for the designated time. Once the alarm goes off (usually a 30 or 60 minute writing block), I get up and go on a 5- or 10-minute walk. Helps me get my steps in, feel refreshed, clears my head, and I’m ready to come back and get my writing done again.

There are days that I am tired & have no motivation to write. On those days, I focus my energies on writing tasks that don’t require intellectual jumping jacks – getting title pages ready, working on tables, inserting citations. But I make progress, however small, most days.

Someone responded and summarized #1 beautifully: Block, protect, and never surrender!

2. Create an outline.

This is fairly controversial but for me, especially when I first started writing, having an outline was key. Once I knew *what* I wanted to write, it was a lot easier to sit down & do it. I use an outlining tool called Inspiration that I like.

3. Turn off your email, your phone, and anything else distracting.

Get away from anything that distracts you. I put my phone on silent, log out of social media and email (those pings really get me), and put on soft music. Gets me in my groove.

4. Ignore your inner perfectionist.

During your writing time, don’t worry about grammar or making it perfect. That is what editing is for. I tell my students to name their 1st drafts (Shitty Draft_version 0) to take the pressure off them that the first draft has to be perfect.

5. Edit, Edit, Edit.

After you have a draft, check your flow & clarity. If you hesitate on a section, revise it. If you can’t understand what you were trying to say, no one else can either. I often revise a manuscript at least 3-5 times before I send to anyone else for review.

6. Get feedback.

I’m a firm believer that papers are improved by critical feedback from collaborators. My collaborators often have different expertise & provide important insights. I have never written a paper by myself and have no plans to (co-authors are common in my field).

7. Consider creating a writing group.

If you don’t feel comfortable sending your paper to your collaborators or mentor(s) without additional feedback, consider creating a writing group with your peers. You can take turns reviewing each other’s work & it is beneficial for all.

8. Read, read, & read.

Read manuscripts in your field which will keep you up to date on literature & help you identify new ways to write. Also read outside of your field – books, magazines, & newspapers. Exposure to new ideas can spark creativity & new insights. I read a LOT!

I am not suggesting that these strategies work for everyone. I recognize we all have competing demands & others may have less resources & protected time. This is not an exhaustive list of what can work. I am sharing what has worked for me, in hopes that it can help someone else.

Importantly, I need to acknowledge that I did not write alone. I have an incredible team in the #CardelLabGroup that work incredibly hard and are very productive writers. I have the best collaborators who provide critical feedback. And I have benefited from exceptional mentoring.

I also want to add: persistence is key.

Last year, I got a manuscript accepted at a really good journal after EIGHT submissions elsewhere. I also got one paper accepted with no revisions (!!!). Recently, I got 2 manuscript rejections in one day! The rollercoaster of academia Woman shrugging.

Originally featured on my Twitter @MichelleCardel  September 15, 2020.
More academic writing tips:

Recipe for Hosting a Manuscript Sprint: Harness the power of peer accountability and review to get a manuscript out the door in 6-8 weeks.

You Need a Shut Up and Write Group Like You Need to Eat: How to start your own writing group.

Edge Writing Resources Roundup: Popular writing resources and advice to write better.

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Tune Your When, How Much, and What in your Days

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Acting on the Essential

Book Reviews / Productivity

Prioritizing across roles and responsibilities is a daily task for most of us. This is especially amplified at the intersection of research careers, faculty life, and family.

The dogma for scientific careers – especially those driven by extramural funding – is that giving your science priority over all else is a crucial academic survival strategy. Yet now, we are confronted with valid needs for institutional service, challenging new teaching structures, contributions to professional organization and community groups, and special projects. The need to choose wisely is paramount.

Searching online for guidance about establishing one’s “why” and setting and reaching goals retrieves best sellers and webinars pushing productivity methods for filling every waking minute and working ten times harder than others. Alongside is coaching advice to follow your bliss and simplify work and life to achieve flow and balance. Actionable steps framed by research evidence and consideration of personal values rarely coexist in this genre of career self-help.

Bringing both into focus is why we love Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Greg McKeown’s lucid and practical guidance weaves together a balance of encouragement and probing to identify, own, and control your direction with realistic advice about how to implement changes to stay focused on what is essential to your success. He includes just enough requisite case examples and research findings from fields like neuropsychology to be convincing without breaking pace.

His practical lineup, perhaps even more valid now than when published in 2014, asks:

  • What is the core mindset of an Essentialist?
  • How can we discern the trivial from the vital few?
  • How can we cut out the trivial many?
  • How can we make doing the vital few things almost effortless?

His main order of business – bringing focus to the cloud of activities that we feel we have to do, need to do, or just find ourselves doing – is made to order for academic faculty in early career and plays just as well to those in mid and later career seeking new energy by sharpening their focus on what is essential, compelling and generative.

He hits the nail on the head so often you come to love the hammer even as you see that what he’s aiming for is a renovation of how we run our lives. CliffsNotes would include these blows:

Core concepts

  • The way of the Essentialist is the relentless pursuit of less but better.
  • Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
  • We forget our ability to choose and we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices. Regain your choice.

Necessity of un-committing

  • Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.
  • Many capable people don’t reach the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.
  • The reality is that saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others.

Actions to take

  • Be unavailable at times: we need to escape in order to focus.
  • Play: it expands our minds in ways that allow us to explore…makes us more inquisitive, more attuned to novelty, more engaged…helps us to see possibilities we would not otherwise have seen.
  • Recognize that if we under-invest in ourselves – our minds, bodies, and spirits – we damage the very tools we need to make our highest contributions.
  • Learn that if an opportunity isn’t a clear yes, then it is a clear no.
  • Practice until saying “no” gracefully doesn’t have to mean using the word no.

Reflect and refine to shape what is essential to you

  • What do you truly want out of your career in the next five years?
  • If you could be excellent at only one thing, what would it be?

McKeown’s examples build insights and provide coaching on topics like a repertoire for saying no, how to gauge what is essential, and teaching yourself to uncommit. They provide an actual roadmap, unlike so many books that convey only the theory of success or glimpses of the wins of others.

Before you agree to coordinate a new webinar series, or link together the neighbors who are COVID-homeschooling, or to be on the faculty senate ballot, get this book and dig down to what is essential to you. Then choose to do that.

More

McKeown Essentialism Videos

Five Minute Appetizer about Essentialism

Greg McKeown’s Big Idea speech at the 2018 VitalSmarts REACH conference.

 

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