Early on in graduate school I had the pleasure of meeting John Thompson. After meeting him, and snooping his webpage, I stumbled on to his Treatise on being successful in Academia. If you are considering a career in academic it is 100% worth a read – there are some major gems of wisdom, as well as plenty of general non-academic advice.

A word of caution. The treatise contains some hard to swallow positions on time in the lab, work/life balance, and it is important to keep in mind that those suggestions are for people interested in a path to tenure track at an R1 (and I’m sure there are exceptional people that put in far less time and are successful).

While it’s worth reading all the through, I’ll share my two favorite parts below:

Goals

Set long-term goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. If you do not, then time will just slip away. Each month evaluate your progress toward the goals you have set. If you are falling behind in reaching those goals, ask yourself why, then do something about it.

I make serious use of the calendar in my computer for short term goals. I take 15 minutes at the end of each day to fill up the free spots on the next day’s calendar. I don’t worry about exact times, instead I treat these calendar entries as an ordered checklist of things to focus my time on. For mid- and long-term goals, I use the sticky note app that comes with OSX, one sticky for mid and one for long. Pin it to the corner of one of your monitors (you have many monitors right?), and let it just loom in peripheral until you complete it.

Do not, however, just ‘put in hours’. Work hard and concentrate hard, and enjoy the work and concentration. Then set aside time to exercise, enjoy being with others, and enjoy life beyond your science. If you stay aware of how you spend your moments each day, then you can actively control your time rather have it control you. If people ask you how you are, and your answer is simply “busy”, then it is time to reassess whether you are using your time in the most professionally and personally enjoyable way you can.

As a graduate student, my goal was to try and do at least one thing that moved my project/dissertation one step towards finishing, no matter how minor. Things haven’t changed much, only now my daily goals are related to making progress on course prep, lab setup, etc.

The basic unit of correspondence is three

My absolute favorite part of the whole treatise is below:

When you write to others for advise or ask one or more colleagues to read a manuscript, always thank them after they have responded. The basic unit is three: you write (or ask), they respond, and you write or call back. This is not just part of being a professional. It is part of being a decent person. You may agree or disagree with their comments, or their advice may not have solved your problem, but you have a responsibility to let them know and to thank them for their comments. Imagine how you would feel if someone wrote to you asking you to spend a couple of hours reviewing a manuscript. You devote precious time to this favor, send back your comments, and wonder what the person thinks about what you have written. But, instead, you hear back nothing. You feel used. Would you ever agree to spend your time helping out that person again?

This one hundred times over!!! A simple one line, “thank you so much -your name” is really all it takes.

-Clayton