Part of becoming a researcher is figuring out how to manage yourself in relation to time.

All research work comes with deadlines to juggle, complex work that feels as long as a piece of string, and the need to plan across various time scales. It’s a tricky business.

Then there’s the fact that we’re all different, and have a variety of different responsibilities. So the key thing to do is to suss out what makes you productive given who you are and your unique context.

Some of us are still figuring things out, and may engage in a bit of magical thinking (a couple of days per chapter sounds about right, right?). Others of us are planning superstars, showing up with a hefty toolkit of diaries, and calendars and apps to help us get on with things. And yet all of us have more to learn about time and productivity when it comes to research.

On Friday the 3rd of July we were lucky enough to have Hugh Kearns from Thinkwell zooming in to give a workshop called “Time for Research”. This workshop is a popular one, and Hugh is a master of making us all wriggle as we see the missteps that many of us make as we go about managing our own productivity. For anyone who missed the workshop but wants access to the resource, you can buy the book here. I’ve also summarised some key takeaways for you in this post.

As I said in a previous post on academic writing, one of the best things about zoom workshops is the chatbox! This workshop was no exception, there was a total treasure trove of advice given by our ECR and graduate researcher community.

In this post I have gathered up that advice, and shaped it into 10 time management strategies offered up by our researchers for our researchers. I’d like to thank our researcher community for being so generous with their suggestions, which I’ll share in no particular order.


1) Plan well. This involves good longer and medium term planning to make sure big goals (e.g. research milestones) are planned for and in the diary/calendar, and that smaller goals are working toward these bigger goals. Daily planning is also important. Some researchers shared that they find planning the day before really helpful. The decision about what to do the next day has been made for you, and you can get on with making the magic happen.


2) Make lists of things to do, and rank them in order of priority. This can help you know what you need to do first, so you don’t have to spend heaps of time thinking about it. Put things on you can cross off easily. This way you get a bit of momentum going! Lots of people said that they really need to schedule in writing time to make sure it doesn’t get lost among all of their other responsibilities.


3) Break bigger tasks into smaller component parts. Work on the smaller parts and build up to the whole. If you are the kind of person who writes on their to-do list “write the paper” you may experiment with something smaller (e.g. write  paragraph two of the methodology section). And make sure you have sufficient time for yourself to do the task you need to do. Don’t make unrealistic goals that set you up to feel disappointed in yourself. Some people said they use the pomodoro technique to keep track of time and to figure out how long a given task tends to take them.


4) Think about when you’ve got the “oomph”. Some of us found that it is a really good idea to do revisions on a paper or on a thesis chapter straight after being given the feedback when we’ve got the ‘oomph’. Other people found that they had ‘golden hours’ where they were more productive in the morning. They key message here was do a bit of reflection and see what works for you. 


5) Start writing. It’s a fine judgement call to make between ‘gathering a bit more information’ and spending too much time in reading-land. Sometimes we need to jump into writing and figure it out on the page.


6) Rest and reward yourself. One of our researchers said that they set a goal for how many words they want to write, and then once they’ve achieved it they will watch an episode of their favourite show on Netflix to reward themselves. Rewards work best when you do them after the thing that you want to do…rather than before (sounds obvious I know…). Walk away. Some of our researchers said a key strategy they use is to walk away from writing for a while. As one of our folk said “When you get to the point you’re making it worse, step away” or pause and get feedback. Other people made sure that their weekends were set aside as “recharge time”. One of our researchers suggested this book Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang as a helpful guide.


7) Time to think. Research work is hard and doesn’t always benefit from being too busy. Sometimes we need to set aside time for stillness, silence and special time to think.

8) For those who are managing teaching and research, several strategies were shared. For example, some researchers do a weekly post to students about what they need to do the following week, or make use of a discussion board and encourage students to use it, or use FAQs. Making sure students have all the information they need can save a lot of time with email queries.


9) Uninstall distractions, or keep your phone away. These may include email notifications, social media, news media, and other alerts that flash and buzz and beep. Other people made rules not to check email until lunchtime. Our researchers suggested a number of books that have guidance on this topic including How to Break Up With Your Phone  by Catherine Price, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport, and this blog post Why you (probably) can’t multitask. Lots of different applications were shared to block various apps including Appblock or OFFTIME or Freedom or Block Site to help you block distracting applications/websites or Daywise to schedule notifications.


10) Saying no, not right now, maybe later (and all the other variations of ‘no’). This is a big one. Many people were trying to find ways to delay saying ‘yes’ to actually check if they had time. Others suggested sticking a post-it above their desk asking “IS THIS A SHINY BALL?” so they don’t forget to refuse shiny opportunities that aren’t priorities, or they don’t have time for. One of our researchers suggested this book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown, which picks up these themes.

What are your top strategies for managing time? We’d love to hear from you.

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James Burford works in the RED team. He’s always learning about time and how to manage it.

The post 10 time management strategies for researchers (James Burford) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

My favourite poem as a child was Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. My PhD experience could be described as a very tough road that many would not have taken. I know every PhD candidate believes theirs was a tough one, but I’m convinced mine surpasses all!

Luckily, I do not regret it, as I learnt many lessons that I can now share. This post talks about how I travelled the PhD road, and the lessons that can be learnt from it!

Throughout my journey, I revolved my life around the thesis. I dedicated my days and nights to working on it. It meant my only time off was church on Sunday; that at family holidays, on arrival I designated an office area in which to work while my family tried to enjoy the holiday without me. My workday was 5.00 am (at times 4.00 am) to 10.00 pm, with minimal breaks.

Accompanying these long hours, was the guilt! Katherine Firth’s blogpost, The Monkey Demon of PhD Guilt, eloquently summed up my PhD life in that respect! Despite all the hours I put in, the guilt was with me every single day of my candidature, and this wasdespite my supervisors telling me I should be studying less!

The lessons I learnt, in retrospect, are:

A mentor, other than your supervisor, is very important. 

Someone you trust, and someone who is very honest with you in their advice. It was in fact my mentor, through her support, encouragement, and even tough talk (bringing me to tears one day), who was a major contributor to me finally submitting my thesis.

Whether your relationship with your supervisors is great or not, at the end of the day, they are undergoing this experience with you, and can become as overwhelmed. Let’s be honest, at some time in your candidature your relationship with your supervisors may break down or there will be tension. They, too, can get stressed by it. How they react to this tension varies; some continue to support you, some may distance themselves from you (which will mean you feel you are going to have to do this on your own). This is where a mentor’s role becomes important.

Throughout the degree, and especially in the thesis-writing process, join social networks and surround yourself with support groups and cheer squads. 

Join ‘Shut up and write’ (SUAW) sessions, and find PhD support groups (for example, on Twitter, specifically #phdchat or #phdlife). Throughout my candidature, I underestimated the value of doing this, thinking it would be a waste of time.

Post-PhD, when writing my first article, I have now joined these. I cannot describe how they help me, mentally and in practice, to get tasks done, feel supported, and obtain valuable advice. They give you the sense that you are not doing this alone (feeling alone being a common feeling experienced by many PhD candidates, myself included). I attend sessions such as #MelbWriteUp and, more recently, RED’s daily SUAW. These sessions allow a dedicated space to focus on writing and being creative. In fact, this blog was written at a SUAW session!

In undertaking your PhD, believe in yourself and your capabilities – have confidence. Believe you can do it. 

It is the moment you do this, that you will take control of your thesis. A friend of mine, initially not very confident, was given the above advice. She would stand in front of the mirror every morning and tell herself: ‘I can do this’ ten times. She would also listen to motivational videos daily. She is now a senior lecturer in her faculty!

Self-care. 

As I described earlier, my graduate researcher life revolved around my thesis. Self-care was never a priority. I feared it would consume some of the time that I thought was better spent on my thesis. I thought spending more time on my thesis would accelerate my exit from it. On the contrary! In the final few months of my candidature, giving myself one day rest a week made a difference – I finally submitted!

As part of your self-care program, it could be useful to set a goal such as staying fit with daily exercise, or dropping in regular social time with good friends. This will give you a purpose other than your PhD. Having a purpose in life other than your thesis shifts your mindset. Then, when you return to your thesis, your mind is clear.

Make your study space cheerful. 

A PhD is a major long project that will consume many of your daily hours. You need to love your space. If possible, choose a sunny corner as your office. Invest in colourful stationary, colourful work clothes, and desk plants. Find and designate a secondary outdoor office where you spend an hour of your study day – this could be your garden or a nearby park. I often studied on the balcony, overlooking the reserve, with birds and my elderly neighbour singing away. I looked forward to it.  

Teach during your candidature if you can. 

The semesters when I taught were the most productive of my candidature. Taking too long on a task was not an option – there was simply no time!

Also, being involved with a community of academics as a tutor, and being forced to change my mindset from that of a student to an expert, motivated me to finalise my thesis. I looked forward to the post-PhD academic life – and that became my goal.

Finally, reach out if you need it! 

I have learnt that some colleagues are more than happy to help, even if only by listening, even if they do not previously know you.

You can do it!

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Engi Messih is a PhD candidate, having completed her doctoral thesis in December 2019 (currently under examination). Her dissertation presented a critique of the Australian double jeopardy exceptions. Her research entailed historical analysis, doctrinal research, and qualitative empirical work. It also involved a comparative analysis with the comparable laws in the United Kingdom. As such, her research areas are Criminal Law, Evidence Law, and comparative law. 


Engi is also a sessional academic at the La Trobe Law School. Her teaching commitments in semester 1, 2020 were Introduction to Business Law and Ethics, and Law of Business Association. She was previously a solicitor, practising in Family Law. 


She tweets from @EngiMessih.

The post Hard-learnt lessons on how to do a PhD (Engi Messih) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters | unsplash.com

I’m not really into the New Year’s Resolutions thing, but a few conversations over my final few weeks at work made me realise that there are a few things I do to make my work life a bit easier that other people don’t know about.

Most of it is about filtering out noise. Whether that means you get more done, or just get through a day with less distraction, it just depends on what you want in life.

I thought I’d share some of them here – maybe I’ll need to remind myself when I get back to work in 2020…

You’re the boss of your Inbox

Be ruthless about unsubscribing from lists and events that are no longer relevant. For everything else, set up filters. I have a filter for blog stuff, one for the podcast, another for mailing lists that aren’t so important I need to see them immediately (but I do like to check them). I have a boss who gets CC’d into so many things that he doesn’t necessarily need to act on but should at least see or know about that he filters them off to a separate folder. This way, he doesn’t miss important things that he does have to actually think about.

My other favourite piece of email management is Boomerang. This app can be used with Gmail and Outlook, and lets you (a) send emails out at a later time and (b) have emails return to your Inbox at a scheduled time. It helps me get things out of the way while I’m thinking about them, or keep things out of sight until I need to deal with them. The free version gives you 10 emails a month, but it’s one of the few apps I happily pay for.

Filters and Boomerang mean that I don’t really aim for anything like ‘Inbox zero’ (trying to get all the emails out of your Inbox). The moment of satisfaction isn’t worth the inevitable deluge of replies. I would also love to say that I am organised enough to only look at email once/twice a day, but I have it on my phone and find it just as easy to look and delete/do throughout the day.

You’re the boss of your writing

Even some of the most talented and productive writers I know have routines and tricks to help them stay motivated (in fact, that’s largely what keeps them so productive). A large portion of the task of writing is unglamourous and functional, just making words appear on a page. Everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve set up a Shut Up and Write group, or joined one (La Trobe has a great one, and a blog post explaining the benefits of writing while surrounded by other writers).

Setting up routines is important, this is one of my favourite blog posts from Dr Peta Freestone, one of my favourite writing professionals:

What does my ritual involve? Other than commencing with a cup of something caffeinated, there’s three elements: eliminating temptation, blocking out distraction and pacing myself.

Although I don’t do all these things all the time, things I’ve found helpful include:

• locking 3-4 hours into my schedule in the morning to write and trying to make no appointments in that time, 
• using the pomodoro timing method, 
• using internet blockers to stop distraction (also: my favourite cafe near home has no wifi), 
• tracking and rewarding myself for words/sections written/edited, 
• reporting progress to other people, and
• focusing on one writing project at a time.

You’re the boss of your collaborations

Ok, sometimes, you’re not. Especially if you’re a junior researcher, you may find yourself working with someone else’s preferred tools and routines (they’re the boss of their own writing!). Collaborating with different people people is a great way to learn about different rhythms of collaboration, and different processes. I’ve done everything from sharing paper copies, Dropbox, emails with attached Word Docs, to sitting and dictating draft sections to each other.

By far, the best collaborative tool I’ve found is Google Docs. The ability to work on the same document at the same time (either in person or over a video chat), track changes and see edit histories makes it very low stress. For LaTeX, I’ve found using an online platform like OverLeaf also works quite well (especially for low-skilled LaTeX users like me who guess their way through and hate installing a bunch of stuff on their computer).

You’re the boss of your to-do list 

Most of my advice generally involves embracing apps and programs that make your life easier, but when it comes to schedules and lists, I’m still a big fan of paper. I use an online calendar, but for planning what I want to do each day I still like a paper notebook. I have an A6 notebook that sits in my bag, and I plan out a week on each opening. I like visualising things, and I like physically ticking them off.

I’ve also used Trello, Google Sheets and Google Keep for collaborative task tracking but, for myself, I still prefer paper.

You’re the boss of your social media

Social media isn’t work (unless it’s part of your job!), but it’s easy to feel like you’re being productive if you’re tweeting about academia or reading blog posts about linguistics. Some people feel overwhelmed by the number of platforms out there, and the performativity of being online as a professional.

First thing, pick your platform. You don’t need to be everywhere, stick to a couple of places. I never got around to joining Facebook, and I am 100% a lurker on Instagram. I enjoy linguist Twitter; it’s probably where I spend the most time. The two things I recommend people read when they join Twitter are A crash course in “getting” Twitter, for linguists and other people in specific niches, from Gretchen McCulloch and Rachael Tatman’s Guide to Conference Livetweeting. Being on Twitter means that I often know people before I even get to a new job or a new conference, and I get to stay in touch with friends and colleagues from all around the world.

Second thing, it’s your social media experience. Don’t be afraid to unfollow (or mute, if you’re trying to be polite) people you find stressful. Twitter also allows you to turn off retweets from people, so you can see their tweeting about linguistics and their cute cat, but you don’t have to see their retweets about local politics that aren’t relevant to you. You can also mute words and hashtags. Just like with email, you don’t have to put up with noise. Your social media profile is your space.

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Lauren Gawne is a David Myers Research Fellow in the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University. 

Her research focuses on grammatical evidentiality and the gestures people use when they speak, with a focus on Tibeto-Burman languages. 

Lauren is also interested in research data management, internet English, and public linguistics. Lauren co-hosts the podcast Lingthusiasm with Gretchen McCulloch and run the generalist linguistics website Superlinguo. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo.

The post Academic productivity tips for 2019 (Lauren Gawne) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem – we all have 24-hour days
   – Zig Ziglar

Feeling overwhelmed? Too many deadlines and too little time? Supervisor on your back to submit something? 

While it won’t solve all your woes, perhaps what you need is a little help with time management.

Here are 10 tips to help you manage your time better – use a few strategies, or use ’em all!

I highly recommend you take a breath and reflect on these. They might just help!

1. Focus on what needs to be done

Prioritise! I know it seems like a super-fun idea to check your Facebook, or watch that cat video, but writing your thesis should probably be the first port of call.

‘OMG, my thesis is what’s making me feel overwhelmed!’ I hear you cry. Yes, I understand that.

What I’d suggest is, instead of looking at the thesis as a giant insurmountable task, change your concept of it to be a set of smaller, manageable tasks. How? By, assessing what NEEDS to be done first. Things that don’t need to be done? Don’t do them!

For example, if you don’t need to learn SPSS right now, don’t. This doesn’t mean you’ll never learn it, but that you are prioritising. Is the motivations section of Chapter 1 most important right now? If not, don’t do it. Yes, you will get to these in time but, right now, to manage those feelings of being overwhelmed, focus on what absolutely needs to be done.

2. Quality is more important than quantity

A thesis is a long body of work, with many words. Considering you’ll be examined at the end of it, quality is more important than quantity. If you can produce quality and quantity, that’s great! For most of us, writing is a struggle and meeting both criteria at the same time is a challenge. So, instead of smashing out as much wordage as you can in a 3-hour block of writing, it’s better to do 20 minutes and write 300 words of awesome. In shorter time-frames, you can rack up more quality work, which saves you time later. Focus on quality.

3. Say NO

The number one reason graduate researchers tend to get overwhelmed is that they take too many things on. Stop saying yes to everyone –  you do not exist in the world to make everyone else’s life easier, at your own expense. You don’t need to be a martyr; start a little self-lovin’.

If you are studying, your research needs to be a priority – see Tip #1 – so learn to say ‘No’.

Consider your needs. Consider your inner self: a sense of calm, a sense of peace, a sense of ‘roominess’. To have all these experiences, you need space. This is only achieved by not taking up every opportunity. You can do it. It’s okay to say ‘No’.

4. Write ‘Get-To-Do’ lists

‘To Do’ lists are out. ‘Get To Do’ lists are in! It’s purely a semantic thing, but ‘To Do’ sounds so much like an order and can make completing the task unattractive. A’‘Get To Do’ list, on the other hand, is an empowered list that allows you to take charge.

Create your list, and at the top, title it, ‘Get To Do list’. Whenever you look at that list, your first thought will be: “I GET to do this!”. Changing the title of the list gives you a different view of your work; you have a choice to do the list. It’s not an order. It’s not a list of “must do”; it’s a choice. This may seem odd, but a simple semantic change like this can make a difference.

Take charge, and give it go!

5. Woof. Take a Power nap!

Just 30 minutes will refresh you. Hey, if we do it to break up long driving trips, we can do it when studying hard. A power-nap has been shown to add spring to your step.

6. Make your breaks mini-holidays

Everyone deserves a break from hard work. When you take a break, make sure it is actually a break. No checking emails on break!

Think of your breaks as mini-holidays. Do something really fun and engaging to shift the energy from “study/work” to relaxation. Note: you may need to switch off your devices.

7. Do hard work when you feel good

If you’re feeling buzzy and ready to take on the world, that is the KEY time to do hard work. If you are happy and fresh one morning, write the thesis! Start a chapter. Continue a section. Read a paper. Annotate the transcript.

Do your essential hard work when you feel good.

8. Set deadlines before the deadline

Instilling a sense of urgency in your work will trigger a little (good) stress and make you get the job done. Set deadlines for your work at least 2 weeks before it’s officially due, then work towards that new deadline. If you don’t have a deadline in mind, ask your supervisor or colleagues when they expect to see drafts or completed sections of research, then set your personal deadline 2 weeks earlier. If you keep this practice up over several months, it will become second nature, and you’ll hand over better material!

Also, having the space between your personal deadline and the actual deadline accounts for any nasties. What’s a nasty? It could be a flash-flood in your laundry; getting a viral flu infection; your best friend crashes at your place for a week; you realise you haven’t been paid but rent is due; your mother comes to visit unexpectedly; or your internet connection dying…EEK! Those all sound intense! However, with 2 weeks to spare, if you haven’t already finished your work, you still have time to finish it.

9. Get up early

Up earlier = more time in the day.
Yes. It really is that simple.

10. Be boring in structure

There is something quite beautiful about a routine. Being awake at the same time, eating the same thing, having ‘sameness’ – this is structure.

A routine allows the mind to focus on more important tasks. Why? Because, with routine, actions become automated. Instead of consciously thinking about the order of steps involved to achieve a task, your brain power can now be focused on saving the world (or writing up your research).

So, start small here: keep the same routine every day, even on weekends (if you can). Do you get up at 7am on weekdays? Do the same on Saturday and Sunday. Getting up at 7am on Monday morning will be so much easier! Plus you’ll be brimming with creative ideas.

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Autumn O’Connor is a Master’s-qualified practicing psychotherapist, writing her interdisciplinary thesis on ‘computational autism’ (that is, how autistic learning systems can enhance cognitive computing models). 


She has worked as a private tutor to undergraduate students for over six years and is deeply inspired by the power of the written word! 


A rebel and a pioneer for change, Autumn will work hard and take on challenges. Her research interests include ethics, self-awareness, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, and relational dynamics.


Autumn’s website is: https://autumnheart81.wixsite.com/seemework

The post 10 tips for the overwhelmed researcher (Autumn O’Connor) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Every academic I know loathes meetings. Loathes them.

They view meetings as obstacles to (rather than elements of) work, wasted time, forced upon them, and – even worse – as forums for awful colleagues to showcase their awfulness.

Having attended many meetings in my academic and other professional lives, I can’t rally much of a defence for meetings. They are the bane of many working lives, academic or not.

Now, I’m not talking in this post about getting together with collaborators, new colleagues, or catching up with buddies under the guise of ‘meetings’. These could turn out badly, but they’re more likely to be energising and fun events. And they’re often by choice.

However, no-one’s ever said that of the majority of work meetings, particularly those regular committee and staff ones.

Despite initial appearances, this post isn’t just another long whinge about meetings!

This post is about how to try to fix the main things that are wrong with meetings. I want to help you help others make meetings useful. Yes, useful. As a baseline, you should be observing meeting etiquette no matter how cheesed off you are that you have to attend.
Did you know that academics spend an average of 17% of their time in meetings? That’s what John Ziker’s US-based study on faculty time allocations reported in The Blue Review in 2014. To some, this may sound appalling; to others, this may sound appalling and still low compared to their experiences.

My RMIT friend and colleague Jason Downs (Twitter: @jasondowns) is a mad keen tracker of his work practices, and shared with me that his time in meetings for May 2015 was about 28 hours. That was 17.5% of his work time for that month, one where he logged a lot of extra work hours overall.

My average meeting hours per month (averaged over the past 3 months) are about 12. Less than half Jason’s meeting hours, probably because I don’t have to convene or sit through curriculum/marking/ subject meetings.

I figure that if you’re going to spend that much time in meetings, why not push and shove for less time in – and more value out of – them?

I crowdsourced some meeting effectiveness strategies, and Julie Preston (Twitter: @julzpreston) delivered with a listing of good meeting habits in general. @julzpreston says she:

• prepares her report beforehand so she can be brief while covering all the key points,
• reviews her actions from last meeting, and have list of done or not and progress/barriers,
• knows what questions she wants answers to and, if possible, gets them onto the agenda,
• knows what can wait for another time,
• stops ramblers by putting on her coach hat and summarises what she’s heard using their words (“That way they know they’ve been heard.”), and
• sets aside time at the start of meetings for non-work catch-up (works well for her team as they work across two campuses and rarely meet face-to-face).

If all meetings were composed of @julzpreston-types, I wouldn’t be writing this post! But we know @julzpreston is a rare commodity.

For PhD students, the Thesis Whisperer has this great advice for holding and tracking meetings with your supervisor.

Here are possibly the most common complaints about general academic meetings, and my strategies to fix them and make them bearable, or even worthwhile:

1.  The meetings go on and on and on.

This is the one I hate the most. The worst offenders are often the meetings that have been slopped into your diary as regular, tedious 3-hour timeslots (often committee meetings…).

As we all know, most of the real work with decision-making takes place outside actual meetings. If you’re depending on a meeting to make big decisions, then…you need to get up to speed on workplace savvy. In these meetings, I’ve often scanned the room to jot down mentally how much money was being spent on it by having lashings of professors attend (most of whom are doing non-meeting-related work on their tablets).

To keep meetings to time, or at least keep your involvement in them to time, try some of these moves:

Flag the time, particularly in the last 20 minutes. I’ve found that just saying, “We’ve only got 15 minutes left” can fast-track the remaining agenda items without waffle, showboating, or an annotated history of the issue to date.

• With 5 mins to go, pack all your things. This is most effective if one or two others do the same.
• If the meeting’s still going but it’s meant to end, make gestures about having to go, then leave. Jeremy Boss and Susan Eckert suggest “hav[ing] an exit time planned. When asked to be on a committee or attend a meeting, let the organizer know ahead of time when you need to leave the meeting” (Where’d my day go?, Science Careers).
• If all else fails, you could always try Kat’s (Twitter: @orientalhotel) all natural suggestion: “I thought the other day that everyone should be made to drink a litre of water before a meeting starts.” Report back on this strategy, if you try it…

Better still, start making meetings a default 30 mins, not an hour. You’d be surprised how focused it makes a meeting, and how much time you get back in an average week.

2. The meeting doesn’t achieve anything.

Always, always push for action items from a meeting, and ensure they’re attached to people who will carry them out or report back on the issue/project.

Unless the meeting’s actual point is to meet someone face-to-face for the first time, why are you getting together? More on making sure you even need to meet in Point 3 below.

Don’t let that work imperative disappear under the weight of ‘so, how was your weekend?’ conversations. Those conversations have their place – phatic communication is important, after all – but don’t let it clutter and derail your meetings.

And, managers, if you view staff meetings as time for your team to bond, you need to read some literature on how this kind of bonding happens. Hint: It’s not in work-a-day staff meetings.

Even if I’m not necessarily the meeting facilitator, I think it’s fair enough to cut a waffler short and ask for the point, or – more diplomatically – their specific recommendation. After all, they’re wasting everyone’s time.

3. They keep happening…make them stop!

Ribbon by Will Bryant

Most meetings are unnecessary.

Most meetings are about things that can be taken care of via a phonecall, email, or a few tracked-changes documents. Or the issues may just need you to think some things through before sharing it with others. If the meetings are brainstorming sessions for project ideas or directions, that’s one thing; to use formal meetings regularly as a way to think through decisions or situations is just…lazy. And irritating. And everyone will hate you.**

Committee and staff meetings are often necessary evils but, even then, I think they need to be thought through before sucking up a 3-hour slab of time for about a dozen people for no reason. ‘Status update’ meetings are a waste of time.

What’s to discuss? Does it need face-to-face discussion? Can you come up with a specific agenda?

Before you schedule a meeting, think about whether you really need to hold a meeting. If you don’t, you could save everybody a lot of time.

** Ok, maybe not everyone. But close to everyone.

The original version of this post was published in The Research Whisperer and is shared here under the Creative Commons “Attribution-non commercial-sharealike” license.

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Dr Tseen Khoo is a lecturer in research education and development with the RED team at La Trobe University. Melbourne. She has held research-only fellowships at the University of Queensland and Monash University, and was a research grant developer at RMIT University.

She’s on Twitter at @tseenster.

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