Be Productive
Here are some ways you can hold yourself accountable to your personal goals. Remember, no structure or program can make you be productive. True accountability comes from within.
Co-working
Working concurrently with others can be an effective form of accountability if you’re looking for something that has a little interaction, almost no structure, and a low time commitment.
To co-work, meet weekly for an hour or two. Have a timekeeper lead everyone in a check-in at the start. Say what you’ll be working on today. Have the timekeeper alert everyone when it’s 10 minutes until the end of the work session. Check-out by saying whether you were productive.
Co-active Working
Co-active working may be called a goal-setting group, accountability group, or peer coaching group. This group by any other name is an easy way to set personal goals and share wins and setbacks with others who understand your struggle.
To get co-active, meet weekly. Have a group leader help each person take a turn to discuss progress on last week’s goals, set new goals for the coming week, and share weekly wins setbacks. Avoid dumping negativity in this group; keep the bad news brief and make sure to encourage each other to move past struggles rather than dwell on them. This is a semi-structured, high-interaction option that has a low time commitment.
Sharing Work
If you need feedback to make progress, consider sharing work. This can be a higher time commitment than other options. It can also be harder to find your team, because people may need to be doing similar types of work at a similar level to be mutually beneficial. Don’t let that reality discourage you, though, because you can get creative and find ways to make this work for you.
To share work, meet weekly and choose an approach. Either the whole group will review one person’s work each week or each group member will review one other person’s work each week. In the first option, have the work sent out for review before the meeting so that the whole group can work together on providing advice and feedback. In this format, the person in focus can discuss their approach and needs, ask questions, and get personal encouragement for their particular sticking points. In the second option, a small piece of the work is brought by each participant, then traded. Feedback is given on the spot. Discussion can be between two group members or by bringing together a few pairs to share key takeaways.
The only thing more important than time management is time planning. Without planning, you’re just managing someone else’s demands on your time.
If you are completely new to the idea of time planning, I recommend you consider enrolling in a training program. The system that I use takes a little bit of time to learn but, at a high level, it involves organizing my year into quarters with a limited number of key goals and performance metrics, then block planning my time so that I can benchmark how I’ll reach those goals. By the time I get down to planning my week or my day it’s very clear where my priorities need to be.
No matter your previous experience in time management or planning, the most important thing to remember is that you are not only considering the time available in your calendar. You are also planning and managing your mental load, the stress in your life, the balance of time and energy between areas of life, and the fit of tasks to your overall goals. Don’t just say yes to something because there’s an open spot on Thursday at 4:45pm.
Conduct and Publish Research
What are the rules for authorship and credit on publications?
There are no hard and fast rules. Authorship is public acknowledgment of professional contributions made to disseminated research. Here are some general guidelines about assigning authorship:
- Credit (via authorship) should only be given when a person has made substantial contributions to a project.
- An individual should never accept credit for work they did not perform (such as through authorship when authorship was not earned).
- Authorship, as well as authorship order, are an accurate reflection of relative contributions (not of status). Merely serving as a Department Chair, Lab Director, Major Professor, or Supervisor does not justify authorship credit.
- Expectations and norms about authorship can vary among disciplines; clear and detailed discussions of authorship are especially important when working on multidisciplinary projects.
- Where multiple manuscripts will be produced from a multi-author work, changing responsibilities (and author order) with each publication is possible.
- Except under genuinely exceptional circumstances, any work substantially based on a student’s research project (such as a thesis or dissertation, as well as for-credit or extracurricular projects) will list that student as the primary author. Faculty advisors are responsible for discussing publication credit with students as early as possible and throughout the duration of the project.
How is the authorship order be decided?
Authorship should be discussed among all members of a team, as early as possible. The discussion should be thoughtful and sincere – a purposeful examination of the project, potential contributions, and distribution of responsibilities. The results of that discussion should be documented but all team members should recognize that the plan may change as the project evolves.
Not sure how to determine author order? Not sure who should be author? Use this free Authorship Calculator!
Looking for more resources on authorship? Check out the APA website.
This spreadsheet should be completed by your whole team (together) right from the start. It can help you to work through who will be involved in a research project, what activities they will be involved in, and how to attribute their contributions when it comes time to publish.
When should authorship order change?
- The actual contributions of an author differ significantly from what was originally agreed upon
- Additional work is needed, and an author is willing to take on that additional responsibility
- An author wants to delegate a portion of responsibilities to other authors
When should an author be added or removed?
It may be reasonable to add an author if any of the following occurs:
- The concept, purpose, or scope of the project change substantially
- The project requires additional expertise in a specific area in order to complete the work
- A contributor who was not originally planned to be an author became significantly more involved over the course of the project, to a degree warranting authorship
- The author did not contribute to the project as originally agreed and the degree to which the individual contributed no longer warrants authorship
- The author left the team (graduated, changed jobs, etc.) before the project could really begin and could no longer contribute to a degree that would warrant authorship
Writers write.
The only difference between a person who wants to write and someone who is a writer is that only one of them is actually writing. Write. Write regularly. If you only write 3 words today, that’ still three more words than you had yesterday.
Writers don’t just write.
Writers also read a lot, especially things that are similar to what they want to write. Writers can’t just sit down and write a novel from start to finish without some idea of what they are writing and some process of revising the work before print. Thinking about writing, discussing ideas, making notes and spreadsheets, reviewing, and editing your work are all part of the writing process. Progress on any of these things is good.
There are many ways to write.
If some tool, process, or piece of advice isn’t working for you please set it aside and try something else. Once you have the best tools for your needs, and you have a process that works, the next piece of writing will be that much easier.
Read aloud if it helps. Have other people read your work in progress. Write without interruption. Write in tiny slivers of time. Practice and improve your writing. When you get stuck on the computer, write by hand. When you stall out on one part, set it aside and work on another.
Again, writers write.
Accept no substitute. Make no excuses. Simply write.
Develop Your Work Style and Working Style
Inexpensive, professional workwear can be unbelievably hard to find. For those of you who have asked me where to find affordable options, here are some of my favorite combos:
The Blazer & Tee
For the classic blazer and tee look, I choose t-shirts that aren’t explicitly inappropriate and are in some way related to my work/worksona. Then I buy 1 or 2 blazers (choose from solid black, white, forest green, navy blue, or grey) and pair it all with undistressed, darkwash denim.
Simple Work Shirts
For those who prefer something more conservative, try dark grey dress pants paired with a more traditional work shirt. All of these examples below can be found in my closet because they are made of synthetic fibers, and they are mostly black. That means they stand up well to stains and wrinkles. I rarely need to iron them. Specific ideas:
Half-split sleeve: https://amzn.to/3DOwuruBow-neck: https://amzn.to/3R8XSn23/4 sleeve: https://amzn.to/3UzylXfButton-down: https://amzn.to/3fcYzhZ