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.
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.
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!