Time Management from a Professor with Three Months to Live

I've been tremendously inspired recently by a lecture by the
computer science professor Randy Pausch called the Last Lecture - which it
almost literally is, since he is dying of pancreatic cancer. But before
putting up some of his life advice from that, even more core to the
purporse of this blog is a wonderful talk he gave about time
management, also after he was diagnosed (skip the first 8 minutes of
introductions):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758&hl=en

Here are my notes from watching this, mostly to jog my own memory, but if
you don't have time to watch the whole talk you might be able to get some
ideas out of it. But I just wrote down a few of the items of maximum
surprise to me - you will probably pull different things out of it, so its
well worth watching, and fun too. One gratifying aspect is that he's
obviously absorbed Getting Things Done - its telltale signature shows up
in a couple of places.

---

If you're going to have to run with people who are faster than you, you
are going to have to find the right ways to optimize the skills you do
have.

I think it's very dangerous to focus on doing things right. It's more
important to think about doing the right things. If you do the right
things adequately, that's much more important than doing the wrong things
beautifully.

You can always change your plan, but only once you *have one*!

On a to-do list, do the ugliest one first.

Do the important/due soon items first - but then, instead of doing the
unimportant/due soon items next, do the important/not due soon items next.

Touch each piece of paper once.

Have multiple monitors. "I could go from 3 to 2, but I could not go back
to 1." (compares to working on a airplane foldout tray) Left monitor is
todo list, middle is email inbox, right monitor is calendar. Then just one
project on the desk.

Use a speakerphone for when you're placed on hold.

Stand during phone calls (so that they will be brisk). Start by announcing
goals for the call. "I have 3 things I want to talk to you about." Trick
for getting off the phone: "I'd love to keep talking, but I have some
students waiting." Don't call people when you have work you're avoiding;
for the same reason, call people before lunch and at the end of the day so
they have a motivation not to chat for a long time. Headsets are a good
idea too so you can do other things.

Write physical thank-you notes, not just for obvious things like gifts.
Put a stack from the dollar store on your desk.

I can't live without post-it notes.

Don't put comfy chairs in your office, except for yourself. He put folding
chairs in his office against the wall, so conversations would be standing
unless he graciously opened one.

Gentle "no"s: "If nobody else steps forward, I will do this for you"
Moving: "Hmm, that sounds like an 8 person job. If you give me the names
of 7 other people, I'll do this for you."

Find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly. Spend it alone, at home
if you have to. Find your dead time, schedule meetings, exercise, stuff
where you don't need to be at your best.

Find ways to make interruptions shorter and less frequent: emails rather
than phonecalls. His phone routes to a message that says "please send me
email" When someone interrupts you, say first of all "I'm in the middle
of something right now." or "I only have 5 minutes" (followed by "Well I
said at the beginning I only had 5 minutes and I really have to go now")
For people who don't leave, you get up, you walk to the door, you
compliment them, you thank them, and you shake their hand. If they still
don't get the hint, just go through that doorway yourself. Clock on the
wall, so you're not checking your watch.

Time journals. Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments for between 3 days
and two weeks. Update every 1/2 hour, not at end of day. Categories on
graph paper, make ticks. What am I doing that I could delegate, what don't
I need to do, what could I do more efficiently, how am I wasting someone
elses time.

For time that is hard to deal with, like a 1 hour block between classes,
make up a fake class: Go to a specific place in the library with your
books.

The time to aim for is right before the deadline; right at the deadline
has a lot of unnecessary costs (e.g. fedexing it). Make up a fake
deadline. Two reasons for procrastination: I'm afraid I'm going to be
embarassed because I don't do it well, and I'm afraid I'm going to fail at
it.

The right way to delegate: give them authority with responsibility. Give
them everything they're going to need: budget, time, etc, so they don't
have to keep coming back. Always do the ugliest job yourself. SPECIFIC
thing to do, SPECIFIC date *and* time, and a SPECIFIC penalty or reward,
for THEM. Delegate until they complain. Underdelegation is a bigger
problem. Followup meetings with two-line emails restating stuff (like
agreements). Give them objectives, not procedures. Tell people the
relative importance of various tasks. Dodge upward delegation: don't learn
how to do selected things.

Meetings should have an agenda (if there's not an agenda I won't attend),
never more than 1 hour. Someone designated the scribe, in one minute write
down what was decided and delegated, and email it out to everyone ("one
minute minutes")

If the person hasn't responded to email in 48 hours, it's ok to nag them.

When on vacation, have a message that says either "call this guy to get
your problem solved" or "call me back when I get back." It's not a
vacation if you're reading email.

Turn money into time at every opportunity. Hire people to do things.

Never break a promise, but renegotiate if necessary (before the deadline).

Most things are pass/fail. It doesn't have to be that good.

How to Ask for, and Listen to, Feedback

"If you recall, my basic advice on this topic is to listen to notes
without reacting negatively in the moment and to think about the ideas
underlying the notes. When you approach your rewrite, you'll find ways to
supply what the reader found lacking or correct what they found
out-of-tune that you will never find if you bristle and bridle when you
first hear their reaction, or if you react to the 'letter' of what they're
saying without making sure you understand the 'spirit' of it."
- Jane Espenson, screenwriter on Buffy, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, The O.C.,
and Battlestr Galactica

Unaided experience is a poor teacher, I heard that somewhere and it's
true. What is the most important kind of aid I need in shaping myself into
the scientist I want to be? Feedback. If you have any personal ambitions
to get good at something, you have an enormous hunger for feedback. Here
are some tips for obtaining the kind you need, of maximum helpfulness.

* Wording. Here are some ways you could word a request for feedback, in
ascending order of your likelihood of getting it: "Pretty good, huh?" "Did
you like it?" "What did you think of it?" "What were the good and bad
things about it?" "What's something that worked for you, and what's
something that didn't work so well?" "I'm thinking of making some changes.
What are some things I could change to make it better?"

* Facial expression. Keep your face mostly relaxed and intent, maybe
nodding once in a while. Don't smile in response to things you like,
because then it will be obvious when you don't like things by the lack of
smile.

* Make it clear you are looking for *feedback*, not encouragement. Convey
that you're not going to get discouraged, you're going to keep going with
the project, no matter what they say. It can't touch your ego, one way or
another.

* *Under no circumstance* argue or make excuses - people will see that as
a sure sign you're not taking it as feedback but as judgment, since you're
arguing your case. Of course you might be sitting there thinking "this
feedback is idiotic." But don't let on.

* Ask questions (again not looking for reassurance) to clarify and to show
you're taking it seriously. Ask about specific parts you want feedback
for. Ask either/or questions, trying not to bias them towards one side or
the other in your wording: like "Did you want to see more of this
character or less?"

* Teach the difference between feedback and judgment. I
don't care what you thought of it overall, if you thought it was good or
bad: just tell me your reactions to different parts, and any ideas for how
to change it to make it better.

* At the same time, don't necessarily ask them for solutions (definitely
don't complain about how hard those problems will be to solve).
Their thoughtful reactions are what is most useful. In tv writing
terminology, people might say that some aspect of the script "bumps" them
- gives them a bad reaction, even if they can't articulate why. Here's
Alex Epstein, another successful screenwriter whose blog I love:
"All feedback is useful, if you know how to use it. If someone has a
problem, there is probably something wrong with your script, though it's
not always what they think is the problem. But most people's suggestions
on how to fix your script are crap."
The only people who can really help with how to fix it most of the time
are people who are good at the exact task you are toiling at. Those people
are gold.

* Tell them what level of feedback you want. If a friend is kind enough to
read a piece of writing and give notes, I'll be frustrated if they're
proposing sweeping changes to the theme and structure when it's well past
the point where that's possible. Conversely, if they're picking up on
typos when it's an early proof-of-concept type draft, that's also
annoying. So let them know your expectations.

* Finished stuff is more fun to read than something really messy and
preliminary, something to think about.

* Remind them to also mention things they reacted positively to, if
they're the type to zero in on the problems and just jump all over them
the whole time. Hearing what worked is useful, and it definitely helps me
to (secretly) feel better afterwards. (in toastmasters, where I learned
most of this stuff, we sometimes use a formula for feedback called the
"sandwich technique": start with specific positive points, put in a few
(not too many) points of improvement, then finish with some more specific
positive points)

* Coach them to talk in terms of specifics rather than generalities.

* Ultimately the best feedback you will get are from relationships you
will build over a period of years. It takes time to make people believe
that serious feedback of a particular nature is really what you want, that
you're not thin-skinned. And also that it will be worth their while, both
by seeing that they have a tangible effect on the final product (maybe),
and by showing that they are earning the right to your own high quality,
sensitive, kindly, thorough feedback. So it becomes an escalating ladder
of trust, going back and forth between you and these most valued of all
peers. (as a side note, giving unsolicited feedback is usually a bad idea,
risks being rude and condescending. So solicit feedback!)

* Say thanks!

My Citation Management System: To Read Someday/Maybe

(see previous entries for other parts of this system)
This is an endnote database that I throw references into as I hear about
them, that I might want to read (someday, maybe). What's the motivation
for going to the trouble of looking them up and putting them in the
database? Well first of all it's not that much trouble - if you can import
citations off the web it's fast, much faster even if you can import from
ISI Web of Science directly within endnote. Secondly, it means its then
searchable, including metadata like the abstract and keywords. So you're
in a mood for a face perception paper, you can find all the ones you've
been planning to read. Third, you don't have to look it up again when
you've read it, you can just move it over to Read. Finally, you don't have
to actually find the citation if you don't want to: you could just make a
new one and toss in the author and year, and it will still be useful as a
marker that you ran across this paper once.

I don't use this for lit searches, where I'm reading intensely in some
area, but rather for those papers that pop up just outseide of my current
reading area but could be very important later on. What would you read
next if you were suddenly handed a bunch of time that could only be used
for reading?

A couple of refinements: I added a field called "Read For" so that months
down the line I could remember just why the heck I meant to read it in the
first place. I put just a few words in, like "Recent massive review of
visual search" or "Contextual cueing in a nautral context, maybe relevant
to virtual creatures", like a tiny sales pitch to my future self. I
set up the Read Someday/Maybe database to be sorted by record number, that
is the order it was added to the database, so more recently added showed
up on top. This worked well with my realization that this database would
never get emptied out, would only grow and grow as I went on, so best to
keep the focus on the ones I was excited about recently. As another
consequence I have stopped removing citations as I read them (and move
them to Read), but rather leave them there just with their "Order Read"
field filled in (in preparation for copying to Read) so I know I've gotten
to that one.

This system is far from perfect. For one thing papers do get lost down in
there - there's not a huge motivation to go trolling down into it to find
something to print and read, except on certain occasions, like for a plane
ride I might peak into it. But usually not all the way to the bottom,
which has stuff totalyl irrelevant to what I'm doing now. The fact that it
is searchable mitigates this. But to be honest I'm a bit scared of the
hugeness of the list now. Nevertheless it works pretty well for me to
capture the important papers that fly my way that I can't sit down to read
right now.

Developing Your Own Constructs and Other Advice from Western's Survival Skills for Graduate Students

Western has a site called Survival Skills for Graduate Students, directed
primarily at neuroscience grad students:

http://www.physpharm.fmd.uwo.ca/undergrad/survivalwebv3/frame.htm

Some of the advice is routine and useless, but some is solid and novel,
for instance about how to decide whether you want a particular job, and
how to make slides. There's an interesting discussion of how to make
timelines, which I'm not sure I agree with, and at least one thing that no
one ever told me but I wish they had, about how your real job as a
scientist is developing constructs:

http://www.physpharm.fmd.uwo.ca/undergrad/survivalwebv3/s4_skill/constr.html

"As a scientist you need to develop constructs, in your mind, for how you
think things work. ... Now you have been given your own Lego construction
set and you have to learn how to build something. This requires *reading
less* and *thinking more*." Key ways it helps: To keep from reading too
much, to keep from doing too many experiments.

Yes, this is exactly how I will think of my work from now on.

Some other pieces of advice that struck me as surprising enough to note:

*Go to the graduate club. Being a scientist is being a part of a culture.
You will be surprised what you can learn about the brain, playing pool
with an anthropologist.
* Make sure to leave some unscheduled time in your regular working time.
Sit back and let your mind wander. You will find that this is your most
important time.
* Doing a literature search Do not start with a computer search (eg
Med-Line). Then they say how you should do it:

http://www.physpharm.fmd.uwo.ca/undergrad/survivalwebv3/s4_skill/Search.html

My Citation Management System: Read

(this is part 2 about this) The EndNote database called Read is the heart
of my citation management system. Whenever I write a paper, this is the
database that the citations are drawn out of. Conceptually, it's a list of
all the papers I've read. That keeps me honest a little bit, since I can't
cite a paper I haven't read. By read of course I mean "read": at a bare
minimum,have read the abstract, a few paragraphs of the intro, and at
least skimmed the discussion. But I *must* do this much for papers I cite:
I've discovered all too often that you can't rely on how papers are cited
by others, you have to actually make sure it says what they think it says.
It's not as big a hassle to add every paper you read to the database as
you might think - especially compared to how long it takes to read 'em.
Even if you don't have EndNote and its direct connection to ISI Web of
Science, you can find the citation online somehow, with some combination
of google, google scholar, and your university library's homepage or the
publisher's homepage, within a few mouseclicks and keystrokes. Usually a
search by the first 4 or 5 words of the title is fastest. The advantage of
this is not only the higher likelihood (but far from guarantee) that it
will be entered accurately, but also that it will bring with it metadata
such as keywords and abstract, which are then readable and searchable on
your local machine. And its all ready any time you want to write a paper.
Besides being a huge pool of citations (which is sortable and searchable),
my Read database is also a kind of diary of my reading, that tells me
approximately when I read something. The most straightforward way would be
just using the serial numbers that endnote assigns when you add a record
to a database. But I wanted to do a bit better, for those times when I
want to insert something between previously entered records, since the
record ids are not changeable (this might be where I lose you, but it
works for me anyway). I added a new field to the citation record (more
specifically, redefined Custom 1) called Order Read. Then I made my own
serial numbering. I got this together in about january of 05, so
everything read before then is 1-100. January 05 is 101 and on, February
is 201 and on, etc. That lets me slot in ones I've forgotten where they
belong (I have not yet read 100 articles in a single month). I put a
comment in the Notes field of the first one of the month with the month
and year, so I can remember that eg the 1200s are October 2007. I made
Order Read one of the fields displayed in the box, and sorted by it.
Presto, a chronological list of my reading, and a hugely valuable pool of
citations to instantly draw upon for any future papers.

Next:

My Citation Management System: To Read Someday/Maybe

My Citation Management System: The Basics

If you are an academic, you need citation management software. It's as
essential as a pen and tweedy elbow patches (ok more essential than even
that). If you are in doubt, consider how much of your life you want to
spend typing in citations into a reference list, in the exact right
format. Then how much you want to spend checking that each citation in the
text has a one-to-one correspondence with an item in the reference list.
There are lots of software solutions, and more all the time. The bare
minimum it must have is this:
* Be able to download citations off the internet (either directly or by
importing) - I only have to type in 1 in 20 by hand, and it's a lot easier
to check something than to type it in correctly (but you do have to check
it) Plus a bunch of metadata comes along for free, like keywords and the
abstract.
* Stores them in a pool that is searchable, sortable, etc and can be
reused for multiple projects
* Can generate reference lists and ideally in-text citations in many
predefined formats. Because it's very nice to have the ability both to
have a big assist with matching your target style, such as APA 5th (though
you *always* have to double check it), and to rapidly switch the style if
you decide to submit to another journal (Nature here I come!!)
I use a program called EndNote. It is powerful and well-supported, and
I've found it easy to use. The one drawback is that it is incredibly
expensive. If you can't get it through your academic connections you
probably won't be able to afford it. One alternative that is also well
supported is called RefWorks. At least at Queen's, it comes for *free*,
and seems to be somewhat intergrated with the library system which is a
plus. Another excellent thing about it is that it's on the web, so you can
access your references whereever you go. A disadvantage I can see to that
is the slight clunkiness of web-based applications, and also that it isn't
stored locally, so backing it up might be more of a procedure. But the
biggest disadvantage is that I don't know its disadvantages.
Advanced questions to ask about any such tool:
Does it let you:
* Do literature searches within the application?
* Do searches within your own past reading? (like being able to google
your brain)
* Do an operation on multiple records at once?
* Add additional fields to a citation record, like to make your own
tagging system?
* Allow for multiple databases/directories?
* Do clever search and replace?
EndNote is lightning fast in its operations, even with a list of 10s of
thousands of citations (I've tried it).It's quite customizable, in a
user-friendly way, and it has lots of support for various filters and
templates people have produced. Best of all is that it can hook into
online databases and suck down citations directly - I've found that ISI
Web of Science almost *always* has the journal article I'm looking for,
and any number of university libraries can contribute book citations. I've
been using EndNote all the way along and so far it hasn't done me wrong.
(ok in a couple of niggling ways)
So EndNote lets you make separate databases, as many as you want, and
those are useful for many things, such as doing a specialized lit search.
However my approach is to put all my citations into a couple of big pools,
that are used for all my papers. That's the most flexible way: it means I
can search, sort and edit them all at once. And reuse the same citatioins
in different papers. There are two major databases, which I will talk
about individually in the next couple of posts:

My Citation Management System: Read

My Citation Management System: To Read Someday/Maybe

How to Conduct a Super-search

Last year around this time I was searching very hard for an apartment. I
felt like I'd never been properly taught how to do this kind of a search,
so I wrote up some notes on it. Looking at these, I realized that this is
a more general class of search in life that these might apply to, for
instance the search for a job, for the perfect couch, or an idea for a
thesis. But I will use my apartment search as an example. The core things are
EXPLORE EVERY AVENUE SIMULTANEOUSLY
ORGANIZATION and
PERSISTENCE.

EXPLORE EVERY AVENUE SIMULTANEOUSLY
* This is what you might call a parallel terraced scan (if you're a
Hofstadter fan), or equally nerdy, a breadth first search.
* Spend time assembling lists of places to look, constantly growing that
list. I kept a bookmark folder for the kingston websites that had
apartment listings, and kept finding new websites with listings that
weren't on the others. Ask people where they look.
* Places I looked: the web, riding my bike around neighbourhoods I wanted
to live in looking for "For Rent" signs, the newspaper classifieds (often
overlooked), and especially word of mouth. Of the 3 apartments I made a
bid for, one was from the web, one was from word of mouth, and one was
from the newspaper.
* Very important: TELL EVERY SINGLE PERSON YOU MEET about your search. I
was amazed at the number of leads I got from friends and friends of
friends, as well as advice. I must have looked at at least 5 based on
those tips. Keep your friends updated on your search. Ask them about their
places, what they're happy about and not so happy, and what they pay.
* Whenever you go to see a place, ask the person there if they have any
other properties they are trying to rent.
* Pursue all these avenues simultaneously, don't get stuck on any one.

Which definitely requires:

ORGANIZATION
* I would harvest addresses from all these different sources every day,
filter some out based on my criteria, and dump into a big file
* Pretty quickly I realized with the volume of listings I was checking
out, I would need to keep detailed notes on my progress with each one. I
actually came very cloee to visitng the same apartment twice when I was
right in the fury of it, and certainly got all excited about a listing
only to realize I'd already ruled it out.
* After a while I had set up 3 different files: one that I would dump all
the listings in that looked promising, with as much info on them as I
could glean but most importantly contact info, one called Apartments SEEN
with notes on my impressions after having visited, and one called RULED
OUT which I moved a listing to when it was no longer in the running for
whatever reason. So each listing only appeared once in the three.
* Record in a format such that you can compare them as much as possible
* The discipline of maintaining these notes became particularly important
when it came to places with just a phone number. If the person wasn't
home, I would write down the date I called, so I could make sure to try
them again.

Which leads me to:

PERSISTENCE
* The places that took the most persistence, for instance in calling back,
were not necessarily the best, but not the worst either. My eventual
apartment could have easily come from one of those places.
* Prepare for it to be a big, long search. Mine took 2 months, and in the
end I had been shown 27 different places. (wow) Go into it with that
mindset, and hey, you might get lucky right away.
* Start NOW. Even if you don't have all the info you need, even if you
don't really know what you want. Use the first ones you see to help figure
out what you want. Be ok with possibly losing one of those early places
because you don't yet know enough to be able to say yes confidently.
* By the same token, it's worth going out to check out places you're
pretty sure you don't want, just to clarify your preferences more. It's ok
to not quite know what you want at first.
* At the same time, always be working on a set of criteria where you know
it would be good enough for you, so you can rent on the spot to grab it,
and end this time-consuming search. This is known as satisficing: this is
so good that it would not be worth the cost of the rest of the search and
its uncertainty to find something better.
* As you can tell from the organization section, you have to get into an
everyday rhythm: checking your traplines for new listings, slotting them
where they belong, and adding info from phonecalls you make, emails you
receive, and visits you make. Each listing is its own mini project, that
you keep moving along.
* Learn to enjoy the process! Be like a machine grinding through this
stuff, not thinking too much about the endpoint. Do it with enthusiasm.
* Don't get fixated on any one as the perfect place. There will be lots
that will work fine for you; don't stop looking. And if you lose a
"perfect place" just yell NEXT!! That happened to me *twice*, that I had
settled on a place, had spent a lot of time picturing myself there, in
fact thought we had agreed that I had it, but was snatched away from me.
Frustrating, but the search goes on, and I ended up with a terrific place.

So that's my advice that should apply to any of these large scale super
searches. I took all that time and effort, maybe more than I really
needed, just to find out what it felt like to do it *right*. I won't
always be able to do that in the future either, but this is what it feels
like.

In addition I include:

ADDITIONAL KINGSTON or APARTMENT-SPECIFIC TIPS

* It ain't over till you sign a lease! Landlords will screw you like that.
To be fair, they probably get screwed on verbal agreements all the time
too.
* Sharing a two-bedroom makes a lot of economic sense.
* Lots of electronic listings you can copy out of your web browser and
paste into Excel, then you can sort by price, location, etc.
* Start before the end of may for sure, probably way earlier. However note
that all the Homestead places start coming up and being snatched up
in late may/early June, as that's the two-month notice deadline.
* You can find out what a place's elecricity bill was over
the last year from the city. Dial 613-546-0000,press 5
* Places to look you might not have thought of:
Kingston Whig-Standard
Craigslist
Facebook
Websites for holding companies: Panadew, Homestead, Keystone, Springer,
Lamb Rentals, Jonallea Housing, anglesey
* Try to ask around about your prospective landlord. I had an experience that left a sour taste in my mouth with one named Harvey Palmer.