Planning and visioning

Pinned on the wall next to my desk is a messy, hand-drawn career/life timeline I drew for myself on the back of an airplane ticket from Denver to Atlanta in 2012. It goes back to when I was 21 to allow for some retrospect and is mapped out to when I'm 50 (I'm about in the middle of this right now). It includes career benchmarks and anticipated transitions and even when I anticipated having my second child. It then notes how old both of my children would be at these different transition periods.

My inclusion of my children and their ages in my timeline reminds me of something Dr. Jean Kutner, Professor in the School of Medicine once said: "There's no such thing as a work/life balance, there's just life." At any rate, given that we're nearing the middle of the academic summer break, it seems like a good time to think about and reflect on planning and visioning. Below, I walk you through some approaches to visioning and planning

To start off, consider where you want to be in about five years. As a researcher, what do you want to be known for? What projects do you want to have completed? Based on your five year vision, you want to work backwards to identify benchmarks in three major areas: funding, publications, and data collection.

Based on the goals you've identified in year five, begin by identifying what projects you will need to complete to achieve them. Once you've done this, start to identify when you will need to secure funding for the major projects you've identified. Then take another step back and identify the pilot data and/or the publications you will need to be competitive for the funding you will seek, and that should point to where you should be starting.

Below is a generic five year timeline that asks questions at different points that you can use to fill in the blanks:

As noted in the focus and flexibility video below, your research career needs to be "laser-focused," but should also be flexible. You need to be open to the right opportunities and you need to say no to those opportunities that might take you off your course. Always bear in mind your end goal even as it too may evolve.

Resources
Rethinking Work/Life Balance - ORDE Seminar with Dr. Jean Kutner
Maintaing Focus and Flexibility - ORDE Seminar with Dr. Jean Kutner
Balancing Competing Professional Commitments - SGIM, Dr. Jean Kutner (See page 9)