Scheduling, planning and follow-through. Some questions

Posted by jamesofford
May 27, 2014 at 02:02 PM

Folks:

I knew that I would get some good discussion from the members of this group. Thank you all.

Dr. Andrus: Thanks for the Google Calendar suggestion. We already have several different lab calendars for reserving equipment, collaborating on some projects etc. And I have my own Google Calendar. I tie both of these into Busycal on the Mac and Project Informant on my iPad. I am working on using these better to schedule my own work.

Paul: Indeed, part of the issue is cultural, and learning how to “get” the cues from the lab folks. Part of the problem is that there is a significant “I’ll get this done sometime.” feel in the lab. People do little planning beyond the next experiment. That doesn’t work for me.

Madabout Dana: I like the idea of paper for doing some of this. I am not sure if a Bullet Journal is the approach, but I am trying to not rely entirely on software solutions. Even with the widespread ability to sync to clouds and connect in by Wi-Fi, I like to have a low tech backup. I generally take notes in meetings and discussions by using a paper notebook. For stuff that I need to be able to find again later, I will enter the information in a file. Then I index that file. Right now I use Devonthink Office Pro for this. One of the reasons for my reliance on paper is that I find people bringing computers, tablets and smartphones into meetings disruptive. So I don’t. I bring paper instead.

Chris Murtland: Checklists are a good idea that I haven’t put in place. I do have canned protocols for things, and when I am setting up an assay or experiment I print out the protocol and keep notes on the protocol. I then move all of this to a separate lab notebook. This is kind of like the checklist idea.

Alexander: The idea of time-logging is a good one. One of the problems that I have is that I don’t have a good handle on how long stuff takes me. So it is hard to schedule a day. I am going to be keeping track of my time and then use that to develop standard times for stuff. If I know that one experiment that I want to do will take me 4 hours, and another one will take 6, then I don’t want to schedule them both on the same day. This is partly where my planning falls apart.

I spoke to my boss, and she and I agreed that we would set up a monthly meeting where we will discuss my projects over the previous month, and what progress I made, and we will also discuss plans for the month upcoming. That will help. I used to tell teams that I was leading “Deadlines motivate.” I will be working with the boss to put some deadlines in place for me.

As to tools: I am currently trying out Pagico. I like the ability to put things together as projects, then schedule them. And the Dashboard is a nice visual tool. Daymap also looks good, but I am trying to curb my CRIMPing. I may give Daymap a try if Pagico doesn’t work out. As I said above, I am also using Google Calendar Busycal and Pocket Informant for scheduling. I am also using Omnioutliner for doing some planning. In the next little while I am going to be keeping track of my time and putting together some standard timings for stuff. Kind of like a dentist or a lawyer. This will make planning somewhat easier.

Thanks to everyone for their comments, and I will try to update everyone as I see what works and what doesn’t.

Jim