Blog Articles 41–45

One Tweet Research

I spent the day yesterday at the NSF CISE CAREER workshop. It was excellent, and I strongly encourage any young US CS faculty to go to a future installment or watch the online videos if a CAREER proposal is in their future.

One thing that came up repeatedly is the need to clearly — and concisely — explain your research. Several program directors referenced the Heilmeier Catechism, the first question of which is ā€œWhat are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.ā€ Another brought up that it’s important to be able to explain briefly what you’re doing (or planning to do).

I’ve been adopting something like this in my talks for a few years now. When I’m giving a research seminar, one of my first few slides is ā€˜#1TweetResearch’: how would I convey, in a single tweet, the overall thrust of my work? Here’s the slide from my last seminar:

Coordinating Collaboration

In previous articles, I have written about how I organize my own personal productivity. However, many of my projects are collaborative, and physical paper doesn’t work very well for sharing task lists.


The Notebook — Daily and Weekly Work

Moleskine notebook with pen

My notebook is the center of my day-to-day workflow. In it I track what I need to do, what I am doing, what we’ve discussed in a meeting, and countless other things. It isn’t terribly often that I actually go back more than a week or so to look at things — I tend to transfer long-term notes into digital storage after I’ve processed them — but they’re still there, and I find the very act of writing with pen helpful.