How to master multitasking while working from home
90% of my work is on the computer.
Well, that does not make me a computer expert. In fact, I cannot fix your computers if Word suddenly halts. My one and only piece of advice: restart your computer, which usually fixes things.
My expertise more resides in data, on the computer :) I transform millions of data points to meaningful biological insight, and sometimes, the next effective drug target.
Okay, so what is my daily work looking like on a computer? Here is what I do:
I check my emails 1st thing in the morning. This clears off the next 3-4 hours for me to concentrate on work.
I remote log into my office desktop computer. It is a beast for all sorts of computing tasks - I am proud of it.
From my desktop, I log into Pitt supercomputing clusters or AWS cloud, depending on the project’s needs.
I launch analysis jobs in parallel for projects.
Nowwww, it’s time for breakfast!!! One of the two highlights of my day. I make simple bacon & egg / ham & egg / spinach & egg sandwiches, sometimes omelets, sometimes coffee + 2 toasts, depending on the mood.
I come back to my computer, check my job status.
Usually, I have some critical writings to do that are due the next day or next week or next month, so I start to work on these.
I check emails intermediately - and respond to them immediately when available. Otherwise, I flag or archive them.
I talk with my team members, students, and trainees on slack, to see how the projects go or if any problem arises.
Meetings often kick in after 9 AM. Lots of meetings - project planning, project discussion, progress report, sample collection, seminars, interviews. Mostly concentrating on three questions: who is doing what? what has been done? what are the next steps?
Starting at noontime, last min calls or meetings or deadlines kick in. Yup - those are not that unusual :) I respond, discuss timelines with colleagues, shift priorities, and do it.
I skip lunch.
By this time, some of my small jobs should have completed. I download those data to my beast desktop and start downstream processing. This includes either new data processed on the same day or before that.
Project planning again.
Afternoon meetings kick in - combined with seminars and other online duties.
By this point, you’d be bored of reading my long list here. So pretty much the rest of the day is repeating the tasks above, with the same theme - writing + meeting + analysis + planning.
Remember - I also cook!! :) so that needs to fit into the schedule somehow.
It is impossible to do all those things sequentially. So, this is what I do for multitasking:
Parallel design #1:
I put up 2 computers at home, with 1 big monitor, plus 1 iPad.
I use 1 computer to check emails, 1 computer to do zoom meetings and the big monitor for the real work. All can be done at the same time.
I use iPad to play things interim that I need to pay attention to but not need to respond to (e.g. online conferences, training materials, etc.)
Parallel design #2:
I cook with my wireless headset on and carry my laptop to the kitchen.
I cook with my iPad to learn any new materials/papers for projects.
Parallel design #3:
I do job submission on HPC/cloud, while those are running, I write papers/grants/emails.
Parallel design #4:
I pair different types of projects roughly in the same time period: large-scale computational intensive but production projects + small-scale computational moderate but developmental projects.
The former can be run on HPC/cloud.
The latter, however, requires my close attention in every test and each development in building the new scripts - it is the most time consuming and least parallelable.
Parallel design #5:
I do meetings and conferences in parallel. Yup, they are just on different computers.
Tasks that are not multitaskable:
Mentoring. When I talk to my students and trainees on their projects, I do not do anything else. They have my full attention.
Exercise. This is my time to clear up my head and focus on self-care.
Dining. I watch shows while having dinner. Work can wait.
In the end, I enter the second highlight of my day - sleep! :)
Have a good night my friend.
