Inbox 0 and letting it go

Just before the start of my faculty job I implemented inbox 0. Yep. Archived everything older than *three weeks* and divided the remainder into five categories. These are called “today”, “this week”, “this month”, “someday”, and “waiting”.

The idea is to sort emails in these categories if they take less than 2 minutes to deal with. “Waiting” means I have done my part and I am waiting for a response. Go through this list occasionnally to remind someone. See the potjies project entry last week... The labels are to be taken with a healthy helping of salt. And it is critical to remember that there are two ways for emails to retire out of their categories: they are done and dealt with OR they age out. Comments on a paper from 6 months ago? Too late. Better luck next time. Deadline passed? Ok fine. That is not great and feels worse but it an integral part of it.

So deal immediately, sort, deal with in order of urgency and then -critically- let it go. Sing the song if that makes it easier.

Potjie Projects

Academia works on short, high intensity burns: hack day, proposal deadline all-nighter etc. And while it can be tremendously rewarding seeing something coming to fruition, that is rarely how it really works. The hack day project’s logistics and elements were gathered beforehand. The idea has been ruminated over for quite some time. And so I have an alternate to the afterburner-on project: the potjie project.

Potjie is a way of cooking in South Africa. Start with a witch’s cast iron kettle on a tripod, add veggies & meat, stew over a small coal file, and cook for ages.
And meanwhile, drink wine. The trick to a good Potjie is to keep a slow-buring coal fire going. So check in occasionally and lump a coal on.

That is a potjie project. Low rpm, long-term, check occasionally (email) and do some edfort. It is very possible that it will end with a Sprint but not how it is set up.

First day back

First day back at the office. The wxpected chaos of sorting paperwork/passwords/homework/syllabi/student projects etc etc.

The kids had another snow day. Envious.

But Postdoc and me managed to get some productive work done. Contributed slightly to a paper. And student back on the rails. The paperwork hydra is one head down. And it looks like we are heading for Hawaii in March for observing. Kewl. I mean right before mr M’s birthday but kewl.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes. My first class of 2018.

So prioritizing and knocking down a long and very mixed list of todo items is the trickier things I need to do as a professor. And it feels like there is only just enough time to do each item. In such an environment procastination abounds (“oh not right now”) and there is little or no return for planning or working ahead. Except lower anxiety. That’d be great.

Off to AAS

Thisnis my first AAS in 5.5 years. That was a bit of a shocker. As a grad student I would go regularly. Winter meetings were de rigeur as that where much of the new results and job interviews were at.

So I am plunging in. As opposed to most other meetings, my goals are nebulous for this meeting. So here goes clarifying them a bit:

- meet people I have met on Twitterz in real life.
- meet with a potential graduate student
- present poster (eh)
- get a feel for US astronomy again.
- gently point out that I am back in the US now again.
- see old friends and go yay at their accomplishments
- see how Renske’s press release is going to go Wednesday. Cheer on.
- collect as much stickers etc as anyone will let me for outreach purposes. Great for school visits.
- look at STArtorialist’s booth for presents for the three birthdays happeing soon.
- see what LUVOIR is all about.
- work out some JWST proposal ideas.

Part of the anxiety for this AAS is that this same week the sester starts here at UoL. Why you ask? Because Derby. Our entire spring semester is structured around the Derby. So this week will pretty much never be part of the winter break. And I plan to go to these winter meetings more often.

Brewing Thoughts

So while I am waiting for the water to warm up for the third (!) batch of brewing here are some thoughts on the first year of teaching, winter break and more.

First off the winter break was awesome. I did very close to nothing. Close because I did go to a JWST workshop on proposal preparation and that was awesome. Brain fizzing (or should I say brewing) with ideas right after that. So much so that I hammered together the bulk of the first proposal in the plane home.

And then rest. Glorious nothing. Lazy parenting. No email. Sleep in (thank you kids!), 41st birthday and christmas. Yay.

Day after christmas I got a baffling referee rapport. I guess some issues are to be expected when venturing from one subfield into an adjacent one. It is sort of amazing to read what some people comsider important or what they have never heard of. Time to edit and send to another journal. Eh

Sent the first STARSMOG paper round to the collaboration. Curious to hear what everyone’s thoughts are there.

And I got my monthly/weekly/today emails down to below 20 each! For the first time...eh since starting inbox 0! Last year!

So now the kids are back in school and I am nominally back at work. But not really because the heat is out in my building and it is -13C outside. So still working from home.

This semester is going to be the one of proposals. JWST! ALMA! ESO and NASA Keck time. I have some ideas for SWIFT as well! Too many really.

But I need to be careful with the amount of energy I realistically have to spend on everything. Teaching eats up a lot of mental cpu and I was so tired at the end of last semester I put down some paperwork and now I cannot find it again for the life of me. There were many indications that I had redlined myself and so I want to make sure I do less of that this coming year.

Funny enough I have only one resolution for the coming year that is work related: write every day. That should ensure some progress on grant proposals, papers and telescope time proposals without the late night stress fueled error fest.

And as far as writing goes...
This blog counts right?