If you took out a piece of paper and listed all the tasks you have to complete in a given semester in your current role, I bet it would look daunting. You may feel anxious thinking about how you must finish it all within the three to four month timespan of a semester. A lot of professors feel distressed at some point in their careers (I know; I did several times). For many, it can feel like progress on any given day is minimal.
This article presents tips and tricks to professors for making progress on researching, writing, and teaching.that will have you feeling confident with your growth and accomplishments at the end of the semester.
Let's start with goal setting basics. Then, we will explore examples.
Setting goals provides you with a focus and something on the horizon you can work towards. Without goals, you may do a lot during the day but never get anything done or completed.You could be working on lower-priority tasks while forgoing progress on more important assignments.
Having a few well-crafted goals allows you to rank or prioritize them based on your needs and those of your family, students, and community.
Note that I mention a ‘few' goals, not ‘many' goals. Stretching yourself too thin, especially repeatedly across many semesters, can lead to burnout and exacerbate stress. Set boundaries. now where to put your efforts.
There are many schools of thought on how to set goals. The key is to make them both measurable and meaningful.
One common goal-setting method comes from the management realm–SMART. It was pioneered by Doran in 1981 (1) and popularized by Drucker in 1992 (2). Similar goal-setting methods have been adapted to a variety of business, government, and academic situations.
SMART stands for:
Combining this method with the idea of macro and micro goals, often borrowed from behavioral science for changing habits, can help you focus on goals you want to accomplish within a semester, project, course, or single lesson.
Macro goals are the broader, overarching goals you have set for yourself, such as eating healthier or exercising. Micro goals are the subgoals that will help you reach the macro goal, such as cooking one vegetarian dish a week or fitting in a 10 minute walk over lunch.
There are two more important things to consider when setting goals: finding your motivation and checking on your progress.
Early in the goal-setting process, it is important to think about why you want to set a goal for a particular aspect of your life or career. For example, maybe you want to improve your teaching because you want to see students apply their knowledge to more advanced topics, or you want to see higher final exam scores. The more intrinsic your motivation, the more likely you are to commit to improvement in that area.
Set periodic check-ins throughout the semester—once at midterms and once after finals—to see how you are making progress on your goals. You may find that you have fully met one of your goals by midterms, so you can focus less on improvement there and refocus more effort on other goals. Maybe you have made little progress on a goal and could consider focusing on it further, or maybe that goal needs some adjustment in future semesters as you right-size it for your situation. Overall progress in the long term is especially rewarding, even when one or two goals seem off track.
Let's consider some example goals and ways to meet them.
You likely have less time at the bench or in the field than you did in graduate school or your post-doc. Now, your focus is spread across acquiring funding, setting up or maintaining your lab, presenting research, and recruiting and mentoring graduate and/or undergraduate students.
If you want to increase your lab's funding, a measurable and achievable single-semester goal could be to find two new grants to apply for.This goal does not commit you to the long process of applying for the grants immediately. This will relieve the pressure of preparing those materials on top of your other duties during the semester.
Some tasks or micro goals that can be accomplished on monthly or weekly timescales include:
If you want to increase the number of people in your lab your goal could be to ‘recruit one new graduate student' or ‘hire one new post-doc.'
Micro goals might be:
Writing takes a lot of time and often many iterations before a final paper or grant proposal is created. You likely have collaborators contributing to or reviewing the document. They can lighten the load but will also have their own time constraints.
Although many of us have experienced long days and late nights writing and revising our work, setting attainable goals and consistently working towards them alleviates the time pressure of these important activities.
If you have identified a topic to write about, say the results of a year-long experiment, then a single-semester goal could be to ‘Create one complete draft of a research paper.' Notice this goal does not include formatting that paper or even submitting it to a journal right away. The goal is to have a draft to work from. Next semester's goal could include revising and publishing it.
Some micro goals to get you started could include:
Maybe you would like to do more to keep up with the current literature.
A macro goal could be to ‘form a discussion group to report on interesting findings from a variety of journals.'
Micro goals could be:
You could also consider a goal centered on reading more efficiently.
Subgoals could be:
You may have little control over which courses you teach and the times they are offered, but much of what happens in the classroom is where you can innovate. The time you spend in the classroom is set, but the time spent outside of the classroom on lectures and assignments can vary depending on your approach and goals.
If you want to innovate in the classroom, one goal could be to ‘find one new teaching method or tool to test in class.
Some micro goals could be:
By working slowly and methodically through your options, you do not need to commit a full semester to a tool you or your students may not like.
Maybe you want to improve student performance on your exams.
General goals could be to ‘move away from using the test bank provided with the textbook' or ‘use higher Bloom's taxonomy in your exams'.
Some tasks to help you reach your teaching goal include:
Waiting until the final exam to test new questions may not provide you with the results you are looking for. Students could be confused why those types of questions were not used earlier in the semester.
Goal setting is like a personal roadmap to where you want to be in your career. Even when the semester feels like it is slipping away, coming back to your core goals helps you focus on your next steps.
Give yourself permission to stop when you reach your goal. If you planned to draft the introduction of a paper in a given week and you are done by Thursday, do not feel pressured to move on to your next goal for Friday. Instead, relax a little. Spend time with your family or peers. Rewarding yourself a little now will help with motivation later.
Be forgiving when you do not meet a goal. Maybe that goal was too big and needs to be broken down further. Maybe something changed beyond your control and that goal fits with the direction you want to go. Building buffer time will help you be prepared in case of emergencies or unseen issues.
When setting your goals, be realistic about how much energy you are willing to devote to an activity. Make a list of your current commitments and how long they typically take you. If you teach a three hour lab in the morning, take lunch for an hour, and then teach a one hour lecture, you may have two to four hours in the afternoon to devote to your goals. However, if you factor in standing meetings and office hours, then maybe this available time is closer to one or two hours at most.
The best way to get good at setting goals is to practice. Create just one goal for one of the above categories or another of your choosing. Share that goal with your friends, colleagues, and family for feedback and accountability.
Seek help when needed
Asking for help is not a sign of failure. Know your limits. Seek help when you need it.
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