DEWThink!“Man plans, and God Laughs”
Yeah, I planned to do a bunch of stuff, and probably achieved at about a 25% success rate. That is unsatisfactory, and I will definitely do better this year.
Of course, I think I said that last year.
Let’s just say that I will try.
Project management in general refers to the ability to initiate, plan, monitor, execute, and complete a work process or operation that results in a set of deliverables. For academics, this means that we must manage research projects that result in a manuscript or research paper. Typically, we run multiple projects at any given time, which complicates things because it adds to the complexity of managing one’s time with multiple tasks and deliverables due.
I manage multiple projects by using a few of the techniques taught under the rules of PMI’s Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK). Admittedly, I do not use the entire PMBOK techniques. But some of the things are absolutely beneficial for managing academic projects.
The first of these techniques is the project charter. A project charter defines the purpose and initial plans for a project. I have modified the charter to fit research projects, with the caveat that I try to keep it updated when the status or constraints change, as a means of tracking each project and identifying the next steps to take. When I start to feel disorganized or out of sync, it usually means that my project charters need to be updated.
Each project charter contains the following information:
The last two are updated as things change, in an effort to stay informed and current regarding each project individually, and the full set of projects under my watch. Each document may be kept in the subfolder containing each project or in a common folder containing all of the project charters. I tend to keep copies in the subfolders, as they are easiest to track with each project.
In future iterations, I intend to adapt this process to include a project management tool here on this site. No, I don’t intend to publish my charters for everyone to see…only this information.
Hopefully this will be as beneficial to others as it is for me.
It’s the first work week of 2020. As promised, I will share a few of my goals on this site. So, here goes:
Health: cut down to less than three sodas, work out three times, drink approximately 1 liter of water per day.
Relationships: Call parents, kids.
Spirit: Read a book and start daily meditation
Finances: Pay mortgage, car notes, HOA. Work on a budget
Growth: Work on Python certification class.
Significance: Organize current projects, write several blog posts, write at least 5 pages on my most pressing academic project
Career: Start MBAN course, fill out ICIS voucher, discuss paper and 385 course with Hamed, manage reviewers for SE paper.
I am an academic. Although I am likely to write about other topics, most of my success and significance aspirations are based around my career as a professor. As such, the core of my career is research and writing. So I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage a multitude of research and writing projects. At times, I have done extremely well with this. However, I have recently been caught up in approximately one million other important and beneficial tasks and projects (i.e. pedagogical and service work), to the detriment of my writing.
2020 is the year I get back to my core.
Writing, as an academic, requires several distinct but related components:
In future posts, I will elaborate on each of these points. I will also share a few references and ideas I have accumulated for each component, along with (perhaps) a few co-authored posts by colleagues and exemplary academic writers.
This post is derived from two things I skimmed lately, along with the realization that I am getting older. I am not old, but I am maturing with each day. The first was Men’s Health magazine, in which Sterling Brown discussed his intention to live a healthy life, in order to reach age 100, despite the odds we face as black men. The second was a book entitled “The 100 Year Life“, which argues that the old three phase model of life (education, work, retirement) does not work as well today, as we live longer. Instead, we need to plan our finances, careers, and relationships differently.
So these two articles have me thinking about how to handle the rest of my life, at least those things I can manage. (Here, I am reminded of the Yiddish Proverb “Man plans, and God laughs.”) Both have me thinking, and probably influenced me with respect to the goals that I have set for my life. For instance, I have often explained to people that I have no intention of retiring. Instead, I would likely work forever. This is probably not true, as eventually I will hit a period in which I will not be able to maintain the same level of work and functionality. (I imagine that Dame Jane Goodall, among others, would certainly beg to differ.) If such a point arises, whether that is 70 or 80 or 90 years of age, I need to have been prepared for this eventuality.
(This obviously differs from the FIRE movement people that seek to retire very early. I have never had the intention of so doing. Retire and do what? Naah – I like my job enough to keep going.)
If I am going to live to 100, it will take not only a healthy lifestyle (which is perhaps a prerequisite), but also financial preparations, an active social life (the toughest part for me, actually), and a desire to keep learning and doing new stuff. I also think it takes a positive attitude. Tal Ben-Shahar, in his thought-provoking book “Happier“, defines happiness as having “pleasure and meaning”, with the former representing positive emotions about the present and the latter defined as something to look forward to doing or experiencing. Living to 100 without being unhappy the whole time, requires navigating the passages of time and the aging process while still having the means to enjoy the present along with the ability to feel like one is able to enjoy whatever the future can be expected to bring.
I plan to live to 100. I know the odds are long, but getting better every day. I suspect that I will eventually have challenges to overcome, and I will do everything I can to do so. I also want to be happy. So my goals must always take into account the corresponding needs for enjoyment and meaning every day from today until I reach the end of my days, over 47 years from now.
I have added a page defining the concepts which I use to manage my goals, and including my 2020 goals. At one point, I was planning to make a book of this system, so the concepts reflect mature thinking on my part. However, there is still much to discuss on each of the seven topics.
In future posts, I will elaborate more on each one. But listing and defining the concepts will do for now.
Let me start by saying that I intend to add posts every day of the year. (Note that I have made similar goals in the past and not made it to the end of the month. Maybe not even the end of the week. But here we go again. This time is different. Really.)
My plan for this website is to document my goals and the progress I am making towards achieving them. In doing things this way, I can be more “public” about them, even if I am not planning to publicize the site’s existence much, at least for now.
(Editor’s Note: The contents of this site will also include a lot of non-goal-related material, such as reading lists and book reviews, current and future research, article summaries and curated lists, photographs, travel notes, and who knows what else. Stay tuned!)
I have a particular viewpoint that I have developed (along with an academic colleague) and espoused for several years now, which I have named “Better Me!”. The tenets of Better Me! (and yes, the exclamation point is important) include seven key areas of life that I believe need to be identified, monitored, and managed if one wants to achieve a fulfilling and enjoyable life. These areas are as follows:
Each of the seven areas are important, but we perhaps could argue that the some of them are more important than others. I presume that there is some order to things, with health being one’s most important or the others are difficult to manage. But I also believe that my ultimate goal is to achieve some sort of significance, success, financial security, etc. In other words, all of them are imporant to me at this point in time. (I suppose Maslow might argue that Finances should be higher on the list and relationships a bit lower, but I am pretty sure he is not reading this post. Mental Note: I need to revisit Maslow’s Hierarchy someday.)
I will post my detailed 2020 goals on a separate page, along with a little explanation for each of them. For now, I want to briefly discuss the process I intend to follow for attaining these goals.
I have been fortunate to have been extremely productive at several key, non-random points in my life. Notably, while I worked on my PhD at the University of Georgia, and the early years while I worked to publish papers toward tenure. There were other periods, such as when I taught myself how to write code or design houses (I wanted to be an architect) in high school, when I first learned how to play chess (although I am still not as good as I wanted to be) or grill meats as a young adult, and other periods. But as an academic, the most success I had was when I followed a simple system: lay out a plan, define weekly and daily targets, move hell and high water to hit each of the targets, and outwork the competition. I still believe in this system.
The system includes identifying the goals to be achieved, which I have started. Next, it means identifying how much progress can be made on these goals in the next 12 weeks. Each week, designate a review and planning day to specify the tasks that can realistically be done in the next seven days. Win each day of the week by finishing a number of the specified tasks and keep it moving. On the designated day, review the accomplishments from the previous week and plan the next. At the end of 12 weeks, revisit the goals altogether and move to the next 12 weeks.
For me, Sunday is the day that I plan each week, beginning with known and scheduled events and proceeding to include at least one task in each of the seven categories. One purpose of this site will be to track progress towards each of my lofty goals. As such, I will promise try real hard to make posts every week…probably every Sunday.
As one could guess, I have a lot of things that I could add with respect to my goals, my process, obstacles towards making progress, and much more. Let’s save them for subsequent posts.
For now, let’s just say “HAPPY 2020 and let’s go!”
“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice – no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.“
(John Burroughs)
At long last, I am rebranding myself, and this site as well. As part of this new branding identity, I will be adding content to this site beginning in January of 2020. Stay tuned!