{"id":156,"date":"2018-04-23T09:23:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T08:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/?p=156"},"modified":"2018-04-23T09:23:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T08:23:28","slug":"how-to-be-a-productive-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/2018\/04\/23\/how-to-be-a-productive-researcher\/","title":{"rendered":"How to be a productive researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book review \u2013 The Productive Researcher by Mark Reed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like many scientists I find it a challenge to juggle time and energy so as to be an effective research worker, whilst simultaneously undertaking my responsibilities in teaching and (yawn) administration properly.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read numerous self-help books, of variable quality, many of which could be summed up by claiming that a clever filing system or the correct use of Post-It notes will solve everything.<\/p>\n

Mark Reed’s<\/a>\u00a0new book, The Productive Researcher<\/a>, is in a quite different order from these.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For a start, it is searingly honest.\u00a0 He describes his own experience of panic attacks at public lectures, \u2018impostor syndrome\u2019, last-minute preparation of talks, mistakes made in chairing meetings and episodes of depression.\u00a0 This honesty was deeply reassuring.\u00a0 I can still remember having just become a lecturer when late one day I was suddenly asked if I could cover for another member of staff and teach their ecology lectures the following morning.\u00a0 “Usual Lotka-Volterra competition and predation models” I was told, to which I replied\u00a0 \u201cFine\u201d without having a clue as to what L-V models were.\u00a0 Went home with a couple of theoretical ecology textbooks and some blank acetates (pre-PowerPoint days): for some reason I hadn\u2019t taken a theoretical population dynamics module as an undergraduate and hadn\u2019t done any calculus since school, so spent much of the night getting to grips with both.\u00a0 Bleary-eyed the following morning I gave the first lecture, pretending to be confident at an overhead projector in a big lecture theatre full of students.\u00a0 The students didn\u2019t seem to notice, but it was my first of now numerous episodes of \u201cimpostor syndrome\u201d: on speaking to other academics I\u2019ve realised the syndrome is common.<\/p>\n

Mark Reed\u2019s book is wide-ranging, and includes issues about examining what really motivates us in our research, how to achieve a good work-life balance, cope with rejections of grant applications or papers, avoid wasting time in meetings, and defeat the tyranny of emails (although on emails he omits my whizzo technique \u2013 see later).\u00a0 His comments on work-life balance are pertinent.\u00a0 It seems that the number of hours academics work per week in the UK is steadily increasing, with more than half doing over 50 hours per week.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit that at the end of the day I\u2019ll usually stuff a pile of papers into my bag with the intention to read them that evening \u2018stay on top of the literature\u2019, but somehow most of it doesn\u2019t get read.\u00a0 He provides evidence that longer hours don\u2019t necessarily result in more productive researchers anyway.\u00a0 The book covers \u2018when to stop\u2019<\/strong>: the analyses you\u2019re doing, or paper you\u2019re writing will never<\/strong> be perfect, so you need to know when it is good enough<\/strong> to consider complete and publish.\u00a0 There\u2019s a brilliant chapter on How to write a literature review in a week<\/em>\u00a0which ought to be compulsory reading for everyone.\u00a0 He cheekily re-invents the tired management-speak of SMART objectives (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) that are waffled about by administrators who have nothing better to do with their time, into something more valuable for researchers.\u00a0 In Mark\u2019s case they become goals that are Stretching, Motivational, Authentic, Relational and Tailored.\u00a0 The chapter explaining these was much more valuable to me as a research scientist than the management-speak version.<\/p>\n

Some of the most insightful parts of the book come from interviews Mark Reed has conducted with several of the top-performing most highly-rated university scientists internationally.\u00a0 These scientists came from a wide-range of disciplines, including electronics, epidemiology, mathematics, environmental change, and some had published over 1000 papers, which had been cited hundreds (and even thousands) of times.\u00a0 Clearly they are doing something right, and are worth listening to!\u00a0 Despite the breadth of scientific disciplines encompassed by these highly-productive researchers certain common threads were apparent to both their philosophies and working patterns.\u00a0 Despite their professional success they all came over as lacking in pride, indeed were relatively humble about what they had achieved, but could nevertheless be decisive when necessary.\u00a0 They all emphasised the importance of listening (truly listening!) to others, irrespective of the status of the other scientist.\u00a0 Their two main priorities were generally the supervision of PhD students, and second publishing in top journals.\u00a0 They said it was important to allow other scientists to grow, to be a good collaborator, to not correct colleagues who repeatedly got trivial facts or figures wrong etc.\u00a0 I thought the emphasis on PhD students was a good one, especially given the additional pressures PhD students face with the competition for papers, post-docs etc.\u00a0 Most interviewees only worked during office hours, and not at home, therefore said it was important that every hour counted in the office (e.g. in 2 hour blocks).\u00a0 Another good point was to do the exciting, motivationally interesting research first thing in the morning, and the boring, tedious administration later in the day when you\u2019re tired.\u00a0\u00a0 All of them knew what their top priorities were, and could keep them focused in front of them at all times.<\/p>\n

This is a short (176 pages), easy-to-read book that I would recommend to any scientist.\u00a0 It is so full of nuggets of truth as to how to increase your productivity as a research scientist that it is difficult to take fully on-board in one reading (I\u2019m in the process of re-reading it!).<\/p>\n

Addendum \u2013 My Email Trick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Reed discusses \u201cThe Tyranny of Email\u201d, and although the book has lots of excellent suggestions on the subject, he doesn\u2019t mention the little tricks I\u2019ve stumbled across.\u00a0 Until a few years ago I suffered under its tyranny, in that like most colleagues my Inbox contained between one to two thousand emails, in a confused muddled state, some read, some unread, some irrelevant, some urgent.\u00a0 Now my Inbox usually contains only 10 to 20 emails, and most of the time it contains no emails whatsoever<\/strong>.\u00a0 What\u2019s the trick? (this is for Microsoft Outlook 2016):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In the morning fire up Outlook: I let it load the 20 or so emails that have accumulated overnight into the Inbox. All my mailboxes are arranged so that the most recent emails are at the bottom of the list, and only the subject line shows.<\/li>\n
  2. Switch Outlook offline. This is crucial as personally I get really distracted if, whilst replying to an email I constantly see notifications of new ones arriving in my Inbox. Note: you can still send emails whilst offline, by pressing the small \u2018send\u2019 icon at the top left of the screen, without receiving any new ones.<\/li>\n
  3. Scan the emails and delete the junk ones; sometimes these are pretty obvious from the subject matter or sender.<\/li>\n
  4. Check the remaining emails and take the following actions:\n
      \n
    1. If you can reply to it in less than 2 minutes, then do so, and file the email (and reply) appropriately.<\/li>\n
    2. If it\u2019s going to take a little longer to sort out and write a suitable reply, but it\u2019s still going to need attention in the next week, or you\u2019ll need to do a bit of work first, put it into your \u2018Action<\/strong>\u2019 mailbox.<\/li>\n
    3. If you might need to do something later with the email, for example in the next 10 to 14 days, but possibly not that urgent, put it into the \u2018Review<\/strong>\u2019 mailbox.<\/li>\n
    4. If you\u2019ve got to wait for someone else to do something before you can deal with the issue, put it into the \u2018Waiting<\/strong>\u2019 mailbox. (Occasionally I also file emails I\u2019ve sent, where I\u2019m needing a reply from someone else before continuing, into the Waiting mailbox.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    5. A couple of times a day flick Outlook into \u2018Online\u2019 mode to receive a new set of emails \u2013 this means that you only have to look at them when the time suites you.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The big advantage of the approach, only having \u2018Action<\/strong>\u2019, \u2018Review<\/strong>\u2019 and \u2018Waiting<\/strong>\u2019 mailboxes to think about is that it save so much time. Even my Action mailbox rarely has more than 10 to 15 emails in it.\u00a0 When I re-check my Review mailbox about once a week, half the things have been dealt with by someone else already.\u00a0 This seems to apply particularly to tedious administrative emails: academic administrators are very good at generating large numbers of duplicate emails tagged \u2018high priority\u2019 which actually are very low priority!\u00a0 The Waiting mailbox provides a useful check on follow-ups, and if needed I can add a reminder to Outlook Tasks for a specific item.\u00a0 I can still send emails whenever I want, and only receive new ones when I switch Outlook online.<\/p>\n

      I found the hardest part was switching from the old, disorganised system, to my current one.\u00a0 \u201cBut what if someone needs to contact you urgently and you only check your incoming emails 2 or 3 times a day?\u201d I hear you say.\u00a0 Colleagues seem to phone or visit me in person, just as they did in pre-email days…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Book review \u2013 The Productive Researcher by Mark Reed Like many scientists I find it a challenge to juggle time and energy so as to be an effective research worker, whilst simultaneously undertaking my responsibilities in teaching and (yawn) administration … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/mep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}