Tips for Academic Success
These time management tips were contributed by many of our faculty mentors: Jim Calcagno, Alanah Fitch, Grayson Holmbeck, Tracey Pintchman and J.D. Trout, and compiled by Maryse Richards.
Computer and E-mail
- Design a computer filing system and stick to it. A good filing system will help you avoid losing files and sorting through redundant files.
- Answer e-mail at a single time during the day instead of continuously throughout the day.
- Copy all of your files to an external drive so you don't lose your work in the case of a hard drive crash.
- Right-click junk mail (spam) messages and choose Junk Mail | Block Sender.
- When writing e-mail, push the most important content to the top. Include it in the subject line if possible. If e-mail recipients have to scroll to reach important content, it’s more likely that they will elect to read it later.
- Break up long e-mails into multiple parts to keep all of the content within the e-mail viewing window.
- Don’t minimize your e-mail window; close it to avoid the temptation of reading e-mail every time you get a new message.
- Clean out your e-mail inbox on a regular basis to avoid becoming overwhelmed by a large number of messages.
Paper Management
- Develop a filing system for projects.
- Carefully consider the amount of material you copy and file. An over-stuffed filing system is a poor repository for the material you really need on hand.
- Reorganize your office once a year and toss unwanted items.
- Clean off your desk each day and prioritize which projects you will handle first.
- Don’t let a piece of paper pass your desk twice. Take action on it the first time to avoid wasting time and feeling guilty for letting it languish.
- When you feel overwhelmed by the chaos of your workspace, take some time to sort your work into piles even if you feel like you have no time. You will feel less stressed, and priorities will become clearer.
- Hire a professional organizer to organize your office. An organizer can create an effective filing system, rearrange furniture to optimize office space, and discuss time management strategies with you.
Time Management
- Do your most cognitively demanding work first thing in the morning or after working-out.
- Plan to complete several items on your to do list every day to give yourself a sense of accomplishment.
- Combine errands for time efficiency. Leave the office when you have three errands to do (e.g., mail, bathroom and fax).
- Open your door only part way to indicate that you are friendly but that you don’t want to be interrupted. Close your door all the way when working on scholarship.
- Learn to say no and do so frequently. If you are not tenured, find out when you must say yes, figure out when you want to say yes, and say no to the rest.
- Make lists, even for seemingly small tasks. Reward yourself when you complete four items on the list.
- Use the Tasks feature in your GroupWise calendar as a to do list. Not only does it serve as a reminder of unfinished tasks, but it leaves a record of when tasks were checked off.
- Upgrade software of buy a new program to speed up your work.
- Transfer all of your lecture material and research talks into PowerPoint presentations so you can travel with a laptop computer and create or tailor talks on the road.
- Learn to speed read.
- When leaving a voice mail, speak your name and phone number at half the normal speed. Leave them at the beginning of the voice mail so the recipient can quickly hear them when listening to the message again.
- Bring your lunch and use the office microwave.
- Get out of the office by creating a standing lunch date with a colleague or colleagues.
- Enjoy your work. Multi-tasking is overrated and not necessarily effective.
- Carve out a chunk of time to complete a task and do not let other tasks distract you.
Scholarship, Research & Writing
- Write down your thoughts instead of mulling them over.
- Protect large blocks of time (several hours) for writing and commit one to two days a week to scholarship. Non-tenured faculty need this time to be successful and tenured faculty need this time to stay engaged and productive.
- Write in a place where you will not be distracted or interrupted.
- Read in a place where you won't be distracted by home or office activities (e.g., a coffee shop).
- Complete one project before beginning another. If you must work on multiple projects simultaneously, associate each one with a location. For example, only do book work at the research carousel at the library desk.
- Exchange paper drafts with a colleague.
- Celebrate your accomplishments.
Teaching
- Create lecture outlines that you can use over and over.
- Write your lecture outlines on a computer so that you can easily edit them.
- When preparing an intro-level course syllabus, prepare an outline of each class period in sequence. Spend just a few minutes per class outline.
- Prepare your class the day or night before, surrounded by your class readings. Keep your preparation time under three hours.
- Only cover the big issues in your class notes, especially if you are writing them for an undergraduate class. Ask yourself: What are the most important issues to discuss? Don't search for anything more subtle.
- Don’t let leisurely class preparation eat into your research time.
- Writing paper topics and exam questions, grading papers and exams, and meeting with students can all be fun. Don’t rush class preparation, but don’t dawdle over it, either.
Tenure
- Indulge in new courses, extra service, new avenues of research, and friendly chit-chat once you have tenure.
- Focus on getting your dissertation turned into a book while the tenure clock ticks.
- Minimize the number of new courses you teach to avoid having lots of new preparations.
- Turn down as many requests for service as you reasonably can.
- Do not agree to write an article or a chapter for an edited book unless it intersects directly with material you are already working on.
For more information, see Bland, Carole J., Anne Marie Weber-Main, Sharon Marie Lund, and Deborah A. Finstad. “Sufficient Time for Research” in The Research-Productive Department: Strategies From Departments that Excel. Bolton, Mass: Anker Publishing Co., 2005.