NoNameProf

As one becomes more successful, there are more demand on one’s time, and more individuals will want to work with you, study under you, talk to you …

One has to learn to say no.

This is hard. The alternative, however, is nothing important gets done. At one point of career, I simply make an announcement that I will not take on any collaborative work, because I am way behind on my current committments. I said quite a few nos, and people are ok with that as long as they understand it is not personal. 

One thing I learned over time is to divide my time into different blocks, and each block will only do one type of things. For example, I do not work during the evening, as I block that off for family. I also block off a few hours each day to work on big problems.

Without this, our schedule and life are more likely to be dictated by the deadlines other people impose on us — deadline to review a paper, deadline to submit a proposal, coauthors want to finish a paper, requests from others to have meetings and collaborations. At the end of the day, we accomodate others, and lose sight of what we really want to do. Compartmentalization of time will solve this problem.