Tenure expectations

So far the semester has been hectic. It's clear that getting grants takes priority for faculty. Well at least the word grant was used a lot during my interview. So I have been compiling tips for what I need to achieve to get tenure. The goals seem deliberately vague (have to be really) so setting clear ones for yourself is key.

Tip 1: Start early writing grant proposals.
Tip 2: Write not at work. Coffee shop writing binge to get proposal done.
Tip 3: Use before/after class metric to test for gain. I got this from the AAPT workshop. Otherwise the committee will rely on student evaluations and those are a popularity contest.
Tip 4: Toggl your time to show where your effort went (for yourself and others)
Tip 5: make tenure box with accomplishments and kudos to remember things you did for tenure committee. This was a tip from a UoL beginning tenure workshop.
Tip 6: Done is better than perfect.
Tip 7: Ask for help. Someone already has a decent wheel invented and is willing to share. This goes for young faculty workshops especially. But also your colleagues.
Tip 8: Your department, your University wants you to succeed so listen carefully to what different people are saying.

That's it so far. Hope this will help someone else too.

Focus and number of projects

confession: i have too many projects/ideas. Combined with stuff that needs to happen (paperwork, various logistics) it makes for a bit of a mess if i am not focused and able to switch between projects/ideas.

So my current theory is that my brain inadvertently has generated the number of projects I can handle on a good day (good night's sleep, excellent coffee, after a run) and yet I am dealing with this number on mostly sub-optimal days.

So the trick really is to just focus on one or two, the things that need doing and successfully ignore the rest. Also, to not keep working on an idea that is less-than-productive. Putting projects and ideas in overleaf has helped with that tremendously. And the realization that just because the publication did not happen, the time was not wasted (although I feel there should be a Failed Ideas in Astronomy Journal). The code tricks learned, data downloaded or acquired will be useful elsewhere.

But today I have gone for a run (thank you Matt for activation), sat on the porch for a bit, had my coffee. Here we go...