Be Productive

When the new semester begin, we are very highly motivated to schedule our activities in a semester, start the class, work on our research proposal, write down the papers for publication, start a chapter of our new book, start the research activity or to prepare our slides for some invited seminars to come. 

However, such productivity normally won't last very long time without proper time and energy management. 

I am always interested on how we could increase our productivity as an academic since I've just realized that we always have a huge pile of work and without knowing it, always add things into our plate unconsciously. This is where we need to determine if our plan is aligned with our big focus or not, especially when the academics tend to have different interests. Some of them like research, but most of them loves teaching. Since the performance review is always related to teaching, research and community services, most academics think it is important to stay close to the performance review aspects rather than to develop their skills in other areas. I mean, to spend more time on other interests. 

We still could be success, though, in many areas, but need a courage, determination and huge energy to cope with so many different activities. 

One wise ever advice that I've heard came from, Prof A Pellert, while we took her class in Berlin 2015, about "we couldn't possibly do everything, but we need to manage that doing all activities at different time, at different stages of our life". She mentioned on how difficult to divide our energy in all activities without putting our priorities in certain period of time. 

To be professionally productive, another management guru, a Professor from Harvard Business School, Robert Pozen who works as a consultant, academic and father, mentioned that productivity will be easily achieved when we think carefully about our goals, then apply specific techniques to improve our effectiveness. So, we need to focus and increase the productivity which is worth the time and energy we spent. 

He divided three type of personal skills that need to be mastered for knowledge-based worker in order to have a great productivity:
a) Effective reading- Stay focus on your purpose of reading
His method of reading:
- Grasp the structure of reading
- Read the introduction and conclusion
- Skim the tops of the paragraphs

b) Effective writing- Plan your writing to focus on the final product, make a map and translate the map into actual piece of writing
His method of writing:
- Create outline
- Be persistent to revise it
- Make a routine or break the writing into smaller pieces

c) Effective speaking- Well prepared: structure the speech and keep practice
His method of speaking:
- Prepare a road map of speech
- Keep the speech relevant to the audience background and time
- Engage the audience and highlight the takeaways 

I've seen many professionals in my area (Civil Engineers, researchers, academics) who have those particular skills to enhance their career in the long term. They are very focused and engaged on being productive, and work on their best to achieve many accomplishments in a relatively shorter time than us, the academics. I can't imagine how they could find an energy to get involve in some projects but also could manage to write papers and do regular presentations about their projects! The key, is being effective and productive, of course!

So, now, we're the academics, perhaps we could learn a lot from them and stay productive within the semester, without having trouble in adjusting our focus and interests at work again, to get results with flying colors. 

Pekanbaru, 
Source: Extreme Productivity, Robert C Pozen, HarperCollins