Super Mario Brothers or Super Departmental Research Administrator? Super Mario Brothers or Super Departmental Research Administrator? Avoiding pitfalls and accomplishing tasks to win the game NCURA REGION V SPRING MEETING HOUSTON, TEXAS APRIL 19-22, 2015

Presenters ● Kay Gilstrap, CRA Business Manager II – Research Dept. of Educational Psychology, Special Education, & Communication Disorders Georgia State University ● Jennifer Lyon, Ph.D., ELS, CRA Director of Strategic Research Initiatives Office of the Dean, College of Natural Sciences University of Texas, Austin

Today we will: ● Share tips on prioritizing tasks ● Discuss workday structure and how to make progress on tasks and projects ● Share tools to organize tasks, including, the big time pit, ● Have open discussion

Prioritizing Tasks Pre-Award: ●What can you do? ● PI responsibilities ● Central Office ● Proactive Tasks ● Communication with PIs

Prioritizing Tasks – cont. Pre-Award: ●What should you do? ● Boundaries ● Commitments ● Beware of traps!

Prioritizing Tasks – cont. Post-Award: ●Deadlines: How to manage? ● Chairs ● Deans ● Central Office ● Sponsors ● Others

Prioritizing Tasks – cont. Post-Award: ● Relationships ● Learning your faculty ● Others on campus

Prioritizing Tasks – cont. Post-Award: ● Recurring Tasks ● When ● Why ● Examples: subaward processing, payments, reports, effort reporting, _________________ ● Daily activities? Think about it

Prioritizing Tasks – cont. Emergencies ● Is it really an emergency? ● Who is asking? ● When is action required? ● If we’re already late, then what? ● Allow flexibility in your schedule ● Set realistic expectations

Making Progress Tasks vs. Projects ● Tasks: ● Often quick(er) to accomplish, but recurring ● Examples: certify effort; collect biosketches ● Progress is made by completing tasks and checking them off your list

Making Progress – cont. Tasks vs. Projects ● Projects: ● Take longer (days, weeks, months) to accomplish ● Examples: Draft annual expenditure report for chair; create resource webpage for new faculty ● Progress is made by first breaking projects down into tasks, then completing tasks

Making Progress – cont. Tasks vs. Projects Managing multiple projects requires balancing your time spent each day on related tasks

Daily Workday Structure “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you throughout the day.” - Mark Twain

Workday Structure – cont. Daily: ● Jot down two projects to focus on ● Pick one to focus on before lunch, and one after ● Put the “live frog” first ● Don’t cheat! ● Aim to spend 1 to 2 hours on each project

Workday Structure – cont. Daily: ● “Eat your live frog” first ● Then focus on your second project ● The remaining 4 to 6 hours is flex time for: ● Shorter-term and routine tasks ● correspondence ● Interruptions, distractions, emergencies

Workweek Structure Weekly: ● Make a list of as many as 5 live frogs ● One for each day of the week ● Determine priority order ● Some weeks it might be a giant, 5-headed frog ● Remain flexible

Tools to Help You Organize What works for you? ● Are you a note-taker? ● Prefer digital or analog? ● Need visual reminders?

Tools to Help You Organize High-Tech (and free!): ● Todoist ( ● Create to-do lists ● View by project or by due date ● Change due dates quickly and easily ● Share lists with colleagues ● Also available as an app

Tools to Help You Organize High-Tech (and free!): ● Evernote ( ● type notes and organize into “notebooks” ● save URLs, images ● search your notes by keyword ● share notes with colleagues ● Also available as an app

Tools to Help You Organize Low-Tech (and cheap!): ● Daily Planners ● Composition notebook(s) ● Colors!

Tools to Help You Organize The one tool we all have: ● Can function as a note-taker ● BCC yourself on messages and archive or file them ● Can function as a “reminder system” ● Set follow-up reminders on messages ● Can function as a filing system ● Create archived folders with the same names as those on your hard drive

Tools to Help You Organize Organize your ● “Cleaning an inbox is like cleaning your house” ● Employ the 5-minute rule ● Filter listserv items to dedicated folders ● Respond quickly, but act on your schedule ● Make sure you’ve eaten your frog first

Tools to Help You Organize Beware of Pits: ● Inbox as your only organizational tool ● Acting on every the moment it arrives ● Failing to respond until you know everything ● Starting with a negative statement ● Lengthy responses – is a phone call faster? ● Poor archiving today is time wasted tomorrow

Summary ● Only do what you can do and should do ● Develop relationships – it’s worth the time! ● Allow for emergencies ● Allow for flexibility ● Organize – use what works for you!

Questions?

Contact Information: ● Kay Gilstrap: ● Jennifer Lyon:

Thank You!