Time management
Probably the number one gripe all of us in science have is how little time we have to pursue our main objectives. What can be done to arm yourself in this struggle?
Effective time management is a skill that can be learned. Here is one approach.
A common complaint in academia is difficulty finding time to write. See here for some tools to help you track your time and avoid distractions.
Some find the "Project Management Triangle" (Time, Scope, Costs) helpful in priority setting.
We once crowd-sourced this topic and put the question to Twitter, "What resources on time management would you recommend to first-year graduate students?" Here is what came in.
From Emily Bernhardt (@DrBioGC), "the short book Eat That Frog! https://goo.gl/x7HqL3 has had an enormous positive impact on my lab group (morale and efficiency). Now we report to each other our success and plans for eating ‘frogs’ (= things you most need and most don’t want to do) every week"
From Ankur Desai (@profdesai), "Here’s a link to a dept seminar I gave a few years ago to our grad students: http://flux.aos.wisc.edu/~adesai/documents/Desai-Timemgmt.pdf"
From AE McDonald (@AEMcDonaldWLU), "The book Getting Things Done by David Allen."
From Daniele Baker (@AquaBaker), "I recommend the book "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less". A big transition in grad school is learning to define and focus on a narrow set of executable research Q's. Which is difficult after 4 yrs where the focus is completing syllabus requirements set by someone else."
From Auriel Fournier (@RallidaeRule), "So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport was a huge help to me early in grad school."
From Mike Kaspari (@MikeKaspari), "I rec grad students get Covey’s “7 Habits of highly successful people” and Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. 1st=strategy 2nd=tactics".
Here is a set of resources that some of us have found helpful. The book, "Time for Research..." (click on the Books link), is very short and to the point and is worth reading.