This week I’m celebrating completing my first year on the research tenure-track at Johns Hopkins! I can’t say it has been a walk in the park — many hard lessons learned —, but I can say I love what I get to do everyday and feel incredibly fortunate to work here with such great colleagues and students!
So while reflecting on this past year, I have been thinking about many great blogposts I read containing information about how to enjoy being on the tenure-track and not stress out about it, including one of favorites, The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life. I don’t want reinvent the wheel, but thought I would echo a bit of advice that I’ve learned this year in terms of time management and productivity.
- Learn to polietly say no as much as humanly possible. Honestly, this is the thing I still struggle the most with, but I constantly remind myself everyday. Protect your time. It is much more valuable than you could ever imagine.
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Being productive does not mean needing to spend hours in the office or working on the weekends. Learn to proritize and outsource. You can absolutely have a wonderful work-life balance and crush it as principal investigator (PI) with the right support team.
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If all else fails and you feel like you are wasting time / spinning your wheels on something that’s confusing or unclear (e.g. the grants process, effort reporting, all things related to your home department or institution, or just need to vent), — which happened to me many, many times the past year — follow the flow chart given to me by one of my awesome faculty mentors, Jeff Leek and ask for help:
Hope everyone’s year is off to a great start!