Interlude: Prioritizing Tasks, Research Assessments, and Conflicts of Interest

Have you ever thought, "If I could just get caught up, then I could do [X thing]."

That thought crossed my mind earlier this week. And then I remembered something I realized while reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. We never really "catch up" and accomplish everything on our to-do list. We will forever be adding things to that list.

So I realized that I need to stop thinking about completing all the tasks on my to-do list and instead think about prioritizing the tasks on my to-do list. And I need to accept that the prioritizing process will be a cycle that gets continually repeated over time.

Suddenly, I felt less overwhelmed and more focused on the actions I could take.

So if you're struggling to "catch up" on your to-do list, take a moment to review your list and prioritize the tasks. You might even try The Time Management Matrix described by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I've found that process helpful for ensuring I prioritize the right tasks.

What is your process for prioritizing tasks? Hit reply and let me know.

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

📆 Upcoming in The Grove

AI Tools and Strategies for Research and Writing – Núria Negrão, PhD
Do you struggle to know what AI tools to use and how to use them for your work? Join us for an interactive webinar with an AI whisperer to discover the best AI tools and strategies to help with your research and writing. You must be enrolled in Scientific Writing Simplified to join.

👓 Reading

Engagement Evolution: How Metrics and Enhanced Publication Content Shape Readership​
"...publication professionals should advocate for a shift towards more innovative, transparent and robust metrics for research assessment, echoing sentiments from the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). The core objective of DORA is to advance a more comprehensive and equitable system for research assessment, shifting emphasis away from traditional metrics like journal impact factors and evaluating research on its merit and significance rather than relying on the journal in which the work is published."

​Are conflicts of interest reported transparently in healthcare guidelines?​
"Clear and complete reporting of COIs [conflicts of interest] and funding is crucial for credibility and is monitored as a key open science indicator. Yet existing checklists, such as Reporting Items for practice Guidelines in HealThcare (RIGHT), often lack detail on how to report COIs and funding. Xun et al. aimed to address this, building on RIGHT to develop a COI- and funding-specific extension. RIGHT-COI&F can be used both while developing healthcare guidelines and to assess completeness of COI and funding reporting."

🖥️ Watching

​Why you’ll never “get on top of everything”​
"If you set out on some big project of scheduling your time very, very, very strictly, not only will you probably fail and get very stressed, but even if you succeed, you'll fail in a way because there'll be some lack of spontaneity to that path, a sense of having to carry out these instructions that you've given yourself that is at odds with what we really value from being alive. And so that's why we need a way of understanding and thinking about work and productivity that does not treat getting on top of everything as the goal, explains Burkeman. Here, he lays out four guiding principles to lead a better, more fulfilling life."

🧰 Tools

Motifolio Biomedical PowerPoint Toolkit​
A colleague recently recommended this toolkit of images for creating slides for PowerPoint presentations. You can access a sample subset of slides for free to help you decide if you want to purchase a field-specific or comprehensive toolkit.

💬 Quote

“Don’t let the things that matter least, get in the way of the things that matter most.” – Roy T. Bennett

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal