Photo by Simon Music

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Let’s face it, most research projects don’t work. No matter how hard we try, how many gels we run, how many Western blots we develop, sometimes, the science just isn’t there. This can be very frustrating, especially if you’ve spent years on a project, only to realize later that your hypothesis was wrong. Therefore, to prevent students from remaining on the PI’s payroll for 10 years, most students will work on multiple projects at one time.

Most projects can easily take a year to complete. Of course, each project is composed of multiple experiments. Likewise, each experiment is going to have to be standardized. If you’re one who really doesn’t like to waste time (and you should be), then you’ll probably do multiple experiments per day for different projects. At the end of the week, you would have probably completed about 10-15 different experiments (or several steps of experiments) from 2-3 projects. Come Monday morning, your experiments may be a bit of a blur, and you may not know what you should be doing next. When your next lab experiment comes around, although you’ve been working hard, it may seem as if you’ve done much of nothing if you can’t express your results and current projects in an organized manner.

How do you stay on top of this stuff?

1. Set up your folders
You should keep a folder on your computer for each project that you are undertaking. All the data that you generate for each project should be stored in its particular folder. For example, one of my project folders has Excel file sheets (for number crunching), Word documents or txt files for protocols or experiment details (sometimes this information is included in the Excel files), and graphs of my data. Anything relating to this project should go into the same folder.

2. Keep a list
Furthermore, I keep a running list of my projects in a txt file along with some brief information regarding the status of my projects (how many mice/group, list of experiments in those projects, how many times it was repeated, etc.). This allows me to quickly overview the status of my projects and determine what I should do next.

3. Next Actions
Daily, I write down a list of Next Actions (see GTD by David Allen). This list holds all of the things that I need to do next for all of my projects. When one thing is completed, it is crossed out and another Next Action, from the same project, is placed on the list. This helps me to continuously move all of my projects forward. However, by having this list, this does not mean that I work on all of my projects at the same pace. On the contrary, I tend to focus on one project at a time until it is completed or there is another reason that I cannot move the project forward. At one point, I used to write these actions on index cards and hang them over my bench. I’m not sure exactly why, but I stopped doing that and I am now keeping it attached to my hipster PDA in my pocket.

4. Most Important Tasks (MITs)
Here is a trick I learned over at Zen Habits. Everyday, make a list of no more than three items that you must accomplish. These tasks should be the most important tasks on your Next Actions list and you should begin working on them first thing in the morning. As soon as you get to the lab, just knock out these tasks and spend the rest of the day however you want. By the evening, even if you goof-off all afternoon, you’ll still feel good about yourself knowing that you have accomplished your MITs.

These are tips that I’m currently using to complete my PhD. I’m sure that many others will have different, probably better, ways of managing projects. Please share them in the comments.