If you’re leading a research program, you’ve likely mastered a complex calendar. You block time for meetings with team members, protect hours for writing, and manage lots of day-to-day admin. But what happens when you sit down during that writing block and find you simply can’t focus? Or when a day packed with back-to-back meetings leaves you feeling drained, even … Read More
Setting Boundaries for Effective Rest and Recovery
Ok, we need to talk about rest. In a recent conversation, an amazing, brilliant, hard-working academic researcher lamented to me that their time off over a long holiday weekend didn’t restore them as hoped. As we chatted through why that might be, several things came to light: 1) They still checked email and other notifications over this “time off”—just like … Read More
Averting an Energy Crisis
The laws of thermodynamics describe the behaviors of energy in systems. Famously, the 1st law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; energy can only change forms. This change in form is more specifically captured in the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which in part indicates that every energy transfer will result in some amount of energy becoming less useful … Read More