On March 12-13 the NOCI PhD-students and Postdocs gathered at Hotel Rotterdam to have the third edition of the NOCI retreat. Every six months all PhD-students and postdocs have a meeting to update each other on the status and results of the projects within NOCI, discuss new ideas, get to know new members of NOCI, and to learn new skills. After several presentations and a training on communication and collaboration in academia, the researchers received a time management training from “Het Effectieve Werken”.
Time management training
For science to advance, researchers need to integrate a lot of existing knowledge and novel ideas to be able to design and perform fruitful experiments. This can be overwhelming as there is a vast amount of information to process, tasks that need to be prioritized and uncertainty to be dealt with. It can be hard to assess what exactly is required to achieve a certain goal, how long certain tasks will take and what the chances of successful completion of a task are. Therefore, learning how to prioritize tasks and how to properly manage the available amount of time can be a very useful skill for researchers to achieve their goals and deliverables.
In 3 hours, speaker Maarten Klos provided the essential insights in proper time management and prioritization of tasks, such as:
-How can one keep an overview of what to do?
-How do you keep your goals in focus?
-Finish boring tasks as soon as possible to prevent procrastination!
-What is exactly needed to finish a project?
-How can you efficiently use Outlook?
The researchers enjoyed the training and found it very useful as it provided them with tools to cope with the management of their ongoing projects. “Het Effectieve Werken” provides useful time management strategies not only for business professionals, but also for academics.