Honing Your Time and Personnel Management Skills to

Successfully Balance Home and Work ”Life"

My history…….

Graduate school after college

Married during graduate school

Had single child midway through 4y postdoc

Academic research -- Asst Prof---? Full Professor (13 years)

Biotech -- Scientific Director -- (5.5 years)

HMS -- ‘97

Acting chair 2003-2004

Chair - July 2004-present

My history……(con’d)

Husband -- key factor

- understood my commitment

- equally committed

- accepted lifestyle

Child --

- good luck (very healthy, even tempered, adjustable)

- superb child care situation

- now 29, married, living in Colorado

Lifestyle: defining ‘balance’

career

‘family’ Personal well-being

More on Balance: Is it overrated?

Will a superficial involvement in many activities achieve --what is advertised as a ‘balanced life’ -- give the same satisfaction as a more intense and strong commitment to a few things?

Who are the best role models?

While the success of senior women is inspiring, their outside responsibilities and the issues that they face are very different than those of junior women

Look for women who are in similar circumstances for more practical models

Tips?

Research --

- strong focus in early career

- requires diligent and persistent evaluation

- need critical mass without overextension

- more data is not always the answer

Focus beats brilliance every time….

• Takes discipline and planning

• Use calendar

• Lay out commitments on many timeframes (year,month, week, day)

• Block off time on calendar for each commitment

• Prioritize responsibilities each day

Handling outside responsibilities

• Take control -- be proactive --

• Chose a few responsibilities that you are committed to

• Use as justification to say NO to others

• Discuss with Chair upfront so that he/she are aware of this and adjust accordingly

• Do a good job on them

Partition Your Time Effectively

•The trick in multi-tasking is to concentrate on one thing at a time and partition each task

• It is a fallacy that doing several things at once ‘saves’ time

• Set aside ‘zone times’ for work requiring freedom frm distraction

Concentration- a largely lost art

Email -- the most dangerous time sink

• Set aside time each day (ONCE or TWICE)

‘Triage or die’

• Use folders to separate things with different priorities

• Use ‘stock message’ for common responses or if returning from out of town and need time

(e.g. I am working on it and will get back to you in ~ ___ days)

Personal Time

• Requires planning

• Don’t leave to chance, spontaeous activities

• Schedule time for interactions

• Take a walk after dinner

• Put creative thought into keeping relationship fresh

• Delegate work at home to the greatest extent possible

Management of Trainees

• Don’t leave to chance encounters

• Schedule time, each person has special unique needs

• Don’t tell people what to do

• Encourage them to think independently

• Remind them of the big picture

• Don’t talk about one person to another

• Try to force early submission of grants, manuscripts, etc so that you can train them HOW to write and not write for them

• Try to organize lab efficiently to maximize productivity