Living the Research Lifestyle aka Theres No Escape

1
Living the Research Lifestyle(aka Theres No
Escape)

• Bill Smart
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering
• Washington University in St. Louis
• wds_at_cse.wustl.edu

2
This Talk

• A bunch of stuff about being a researcher
• Time management
• Staying current with the literature
• Going to conferences
• Building a network of peers and mentors
• Getting famous (and why it matters)

3
Time Management

• Every minute spent doing something else is a
  minute later you defend your thesis
• this sounds trite, but its true
• The secret
• spend your time at work actually working
• do things that get you to your goal
• dont work all the time
• Much of this is taken from Randy Pauschs
  excellent time-management slides
• google knows where they are

4
Your Goal

• Why are you here?
• Everything you do should be working towards this
  goal
• yes, everything
• even sleeping is working towards it
• Learning this now will make the rest of your life
  easier
• because it only gets worse

5
Actually Working at Work

• Youre here for 8 hours a day, but much of that
  time do you actually spend working?
• working doing something that gets you towards
  your eventual goal
• One hour per day wasted is
• one tenth of your day
• thats 6 months extra until you graduate

6
Time-Wasters

• Poor filing system
• can find things when you need them
• Unprepared for meetings
• meetings should be short and to the point
• its your responsibility not to waste everyones
  time
• Perfectionism
• most things are pass/fail (even classes for a
  grade)
• learn when good enough is good enough

7
Interruptions

• Each interruption will cost you 5 minutes in
  context switching
• 4 ten-minute interruptions will cost you an hour
• one hour a day equals an extra six months here
• Minimize your interruptions
• turn off email notifications (pull once or twice
  a day)
• turn off your phone and IM client while youre
  working
• close your door (and dont answer it)
• hide

8
Browsing the Web

• Just say no
• only use the web for work stuff during work
  hours
• Tips
• keep your browser closed
• dont have non-work sites in your toolbar
• never ever visit slashdot, fark, and friends
• subscribe to RSS feeds in your mail client
• see previous slide for email tips

9
Touch Once

• Touch your email once
• deal with it
• reply, forward, turn into a task
• file it for reference
• delete it
• Your inbox is not a filing system
• limit yourself to 10 messages
• join the 20th century and get a graphical mail
  client
• Touch it twice a day
• in the morning, for a limited amount of time
• after dinner, until youre down to 10 messages

10
Have a Plan

• Plan out your time in advance
• daily, weekly, monthly
• stick to your plan and meet your deadlines
• be realistic about what you can achieve
• you can change your plan if you need to
• Use a tree to help keep you at the right level of
  detail
• keep the big picture in sight
• (some of) the small stuff doesnt matter

11
Execute Your Plan Ruthlessly

• Keep to-do lists
• and cross things off when you finish them
• keep the tasks small (no more than an hour or
  two)
• dont pick and choose from the list
• start at the top and work down
• do the worst job first
• Keep an electronic calendar
• know what youre doing today, tomorrow, this week
• set alarms and reminders, and pay attention to
  them

12
Know Yourself

• When is your best reading/thinking/coding time?
• thats when you should read/think/code
• set aside time for this in your calendar
• protect it fiercely
• Know your dead time
• schedule mundane tasks here
• I wrote these slides last night after dinner
• but I thought about them all of last week biking
  to work

13
Opportunity Cost

• Choosing to do something means you cant do
  something else
• be aware of these choices
• dont over-schedule yourself
• schedule in your down-time
• no, I have a thesis to write

14
How Do You Really Spend Your Time?

• Try keeping a journal
• 15 minute chunks
• record every hour
• keep it for a week
• be honest
• Use categories
• coding, reading, writing papers, homework, class
• email, talking to people, eating
• web browsing, slashdot, fark, walking to work

15
Being Unproductive

• Keep track of what you do
• with a journal, or annotating your calendar
• Be aware of when youre not productive
• try to figure out why, and fix it
• talk to your adviser about it
• Take a time management class
• try everything, keep whats useful
• really try it for a couple of weeks at least

16
Dont Work All the Time

• Kill your television
• buy a TiVo or subscribe to Netflix
• your schedule, without commercials
• Trade money for time
• not so easy for graduate students
• Eat, sleep, and exercise
• schedule them in
• sleeping on a regular schedule is really, really
  important
• get married, have some kids

17
Work All the Time

• Steal minutes back whenever you can
• an hour a day means 6 months less time here
• Buy a laptop with a decent battery life
• or get your adviser to buy you one
• hibernate it, but dont shut it down
• do small tasks while sitting on the bus, waiting
  for the train, waiting for your adviser, sitting
  on a plane, etc.
• keep papers to read on it (Ive got a tablet PC
  for this)
• An iPhone doesnt count
• unless you turn off the wireless

18
Staying Current with the Literature

• You need to know whats going on in your field
• reading journals
• going to conferences
• knowing what your peers are up to
• you need to be reading new material constantly
• you need to find it, and bring it to your adviser
• Push is easier than pull
• RSS feeds
• abstract email services
• mailing lists

19
Conferences

• After a conference
• take a day, and run through all of the abstracts
• WU has free access to most conference proceedings
• identify the interesting papers
• put them in your reading queue (and to-do list)
• prioritize the list by relevance

20
Journals

• Many journals have notifications of new issues
• abstract services
• RSS feeds
• read the abstract, and queue interesting papers

21
Your Peers

• Ask people you know to send you drafts of their
  papers
• if theyre relevant to your work
• say thank you by giving them comments back
• Send your drafts to your peers
• to get feedback, and to help them know what
  youre up to
• How do you find your peers?

22
Going to Conferences

• Why go to conferences?
• listen to talks
• meet new people
• get out of St. Louis
• earn frequent flyer miles
• Conferences are a vital part of the research life
• this is both good and bad

23
How to Get the Most Out of a Conference

• Go to interesting talks
• dirty secret most talks are terrible
• choose wisely
• Give a great talk
• make sure your talk is better than everyone
  elses
• people will want to talk to you about it
  afterwards
• Talk to people
• about their work
• ask for copies of their unpublished papers
• Take business cards with you
• and hand them out liberally

24
Talking to People at Conferences

• Conferences are where you meet people your area
• famous names (who will give you a job)
• your peers (who will collaborate with you)
• your juniors (who will become your graduate
  students)
• You need to talk to people at conferences
• otherwise, you should stay at home and just read
  the proceedings
• but, talking to strangers is hard

25
Talking to People

• Remember, everyone knows the score
• we got where we are by starting out like you
• its awkward, but most people are sympathetic
• it gets easier with practice

26
Some Tips for Talking to People

• Talks are a great ice-breaker
• I really liked your talk
• Have you seen any good talks?
• Did you see the talk about X?
• Use your adviser
• sidle up to them at the conference, and insert
  yourself into the conversation
• Have something to say
• no hero worship
• no sitting silent beside your adviser
• Know when to butt in, and when to butt out
• look for the Im busy signs
• dont overstay your welcome

27
Some More Tips

• Use groups for cover
• especially groups of your peers
• especially outside of your sessions
• All real work is done in the pub
• never eat alone
• insert yourself into dinner groups of your peers
• tag along with your adviser
• be really aware of the go away signals
• some dinners are for grown-ups only
• for technical and social reasons

28
After the Conference

• Make sure you follow up on conversations
• send copies of your papers
• send I enjoyed meeting you emails
• Build your reading queue
• Turn your notes into to-do items
• Do it promptly (on the flight home?)

29
Building a Network of Peers and Mentors

• Your adviser is great
• but it sometimes helps to have other opinions and
  viewpoints
• Peers
• these people will be your colleagues and
  collaborators
• youll meet them at conferences for the rest of
  your career
• youll use them to sanity-check your ideas
• you might even write grant proposals and papers
  with them
• Mentors
• these people will give you jobs, review your
  proposals, and write your tenure letters
• they can also give you advice about your career

30
Getting Famous (and Why it Matters)

• Being well-known in your field will
• increase your chances of getting a job
• cause more people to talk to you and read your
  papers
• increase your citation counts

31
Build Your Web Presence

• Your web page is your public face
• people will go here first
• if only because of google
• Content, not form
• simple, one level deep
• publications, contact info, research summary
• research details, software, links
• keep personal stuff for your myspace page
• for the most part
• use a simple CMS (Drupal, Wordpress)

32
Build your Web Presence

• Publications
• have all of your publications listed
• have PDFs available (if you have permission)
• these will be indexed by google scholar
• and this will increase your citation count
• because people are lazy
• Research summary
• enough detail to let people in the field know
  what youre working on
• make sure its up-to-date

33
Give Great Talks

• Great talks are built on great work
• Get invited to give talks at other universities
• Im going to be in Austin sometime in October,
  could I stop by, and maybe give a talk?
• great conference talks will make this work
• A great talk is the difference between a job and
  a skinny letter
• part of your job will be giving talks (like this
  one)

34
Be The Guy who Did X

• You should be known for (at least) one
  significant thing
• usually this will be the core of your thesis
• you need to be able to articulate what X is in
  two sentences to people not in your area
• dont spread yourself too thin
• your X should probably involve a sequence of a
  few papers
• This will help you when you go job-hunting
• breadth is good, but you need depth too

35
Final Thoughts

• This talk will not make you a successful
  researcher
• Not everything here will work for everyone
• try everything, and keep the stuff thats useful
• really try it, for a couple of weeks
• Everything in this talk was learned the hard way
• trust us, and save yourself some pain