The sixth key to successful research career: Learning to prioritize

In past Star Science articles, we have been discussing keys to successful research, which are intended for young faculty members seeking to establish themselves within the unique cultural environment prevalent in Asia. These keys are drawn from our own parallel experiences that led to thriving research careers. An overview article first appeared on May 10, while subsequent installments discussed the first five keys in detail. This week, we shall discuss the sixth key: Learning to prioritize.

No matter how efficient one’s work habits are, there inevitably comes a time in any career when an academic faces more workload than can be reasonably managed at the desired level of quality. Although such situations are often temporary — occurring at rare moments when duties and opportunities converge within a short time frame — they are also stressful and, in some instances, may be career-defining. In some cases, such situations are best handled by simply identifying what tasks are most important and most urgent, and then doing these first. This sort of prioritization applies both in the chronological sense (i.e., finishing the important tasks first before proceeding to those deemed less pressing) as well as the extent of personal energy expended for activities. In general, we can rate our daily works based on urgency (i.e., pressing need vis-à-vis deadlines) and importance (i.e., in relation to long-term career goals); those that rate highly in terms of both urgency and importance, thus have to come first.

Note that for many cases in academic institutions, a task can fall in more than one category. For example, one of us (Foo) recently completed a textbook entitled Process Integration for Resource Conservation. This is a major piece of work with several soft and hard deadlines, e.g. submission of manuscripts, solution manuals, complementary materials, etc. When the book project was at its initial stage, it can be classified as an “important but not urgent” task. However, if we fail to complete a given task by the deadline and asked for extension, we will have to treat the task as “urgent and important,” as the “soft” deadline now become “hard.” If we fail to commit, the publisher may be very unhappy as that affect their publication schedule. This applies to other commonly encountered works such as revising a journal paper sent back by editor (failing deadline means that the paper may be rejected), research proposal preparation, examination paper preparation, writing a conference paper, etc. Note that all these tasks are governed by a deadline.  When there is no exact deadline for a given task, then this task may be easily classified as “important but not urgent,” or even “not important and not urgent.” 

In some cases, dealing with heavy workload is simply a matter of sequencing activities in a systematic manner in view of limited resources (in this case, the number of man-hours one is willing to dedicate to work). Sometimes, simple tools such as Gantt charts and calendars provide vital insights on how to deal with a deluge of work. In other cases, more advanced approaches are called for. For example, in 2010 we wrote an article (with our colleague, Dr. Nick Hallale) that appeared in Chemical Engineering. Our paper showed how a decades-old process engineering tool called “pinch analysis” can be used for planning the deployment of human resources in engineering firms dealing with overlapping contracts and projects. Our work required a substantial leap of imagination, considering that pinch analysis was originally developed in the 1970s for planning energy recovery and conservation in large industrial plants. The key point in our approach is to identify the task “pinch point,” or bottleneck, and then use systematic rules to guide allocation of man-hours. Among the points we dealt with in the article was how to allocate manpower across multiple teams. Of course, it did not take long for us to start applying these principles to our own busy careers as researchers. For example, as long-time collaborators, we regularly co-supervise Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. Whenever a student submits a manuscript (for example, a thesis chapter) for review, we first discuss our anticipated workload and plan the proper sequence for us to read through the draft, in order to minimize the overall waiting time for the student to get feedback. Clearly, when applied habitually, this approach leads to incremental gains in productivity for all parties involved.

In conclusion, learning to prioritize is a skill and habit that is just as useful in an academic career as it is in, say, the corporate world. Both young and established faculty members typically deal with a variety of tasks in a typical workweek — research, teaching, administrative work, meetings, consultancy, travel, etc. So learning to prioritize will certainly help us to get “more breathing space” in the midst of heavy academic workload. In the final installment, we will discuss the seventh and final key and provide a brief recap of the entire series as well.

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Ir. Dr. Dominic C. Y. Foo is a professor of Process Design and Integration at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and is leading the Center of Excellence for Green Technologies. He is a professional engineer registered with the Board of Engineer Malaysia (BEM). He establishes international collaboration with researchers from various countries in the Asia, Europe, American and Africa. He is an active author, with two forthcoming books, more than 75 journal papers and made more than 120 conference presentations. He served as an International Scientific Committee for several important conferences (CHISA/PRES, FOCAPD, ESCAPE, PSE, etc.). He is the winner of the Innovator of the Year Award 2009 of Institution of Chemical Engineers UK (IChemE), 2010 Young Engineer Award of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM), as well as the 2012 Outstanding Young Malaysians Award. He has just been invited to join the editorial board of Process Safety and Environmental Protection (formerly known as Transactions of the IChemE Part B). He also actively conducts professional training for practising engineers. 

Prof. Raymond R. Tan is a university fellow and full professor of Chemical Engineering at De La Salle University. He is also the current director of that institution’s Center for Engineering and Sustainable Development Research (CESDR). He is the author of more than 80 process systems engineering (PSE) articles that have been published in chemical, environmental and energy engineering journals. He is member of the editorial boards of the journals Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, Philippine Science Letters and Sustainable Technologies, Systems & Policies, and is co-editor of the forthcoming book Recent Advances in Sustainable Process Design and Optimization. He is also the recipient of multiple awards from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP). He may be contacted via e-mail ([email protected]).