Maybe If I Write About Them, They'll Go Away

Prof. Sven Dickinson (acting chair of Computer Science at the University of Toronto) came in to talk to my undergrad software engineering class last Friday about life as a researcher. He made it sound pretty appealing, but his description of where his time goes made it clearer than ever that one of the reasons I’m not getting much research done is that I’m juggling too many other balls. This week, for example, I am supposed to:

• put together the final pitch to the department for a professional master's in CS
• rearrange three chapters of the "CS-1 in Python" book (which is already up on Amazon, so we'd better get it finished)
• find projects for the 26 students in my consulting course next term
• write a final exam for the students in this term's course (it's due tomorrow, but that ain't gonna happen)
• find money to keep the rewrite of DrProject on Django going next term
• review a chunk of Flash/Flex code to help a colleague decide whether or not to hire its author
• find (or invent) a coding scheme for scientific disciplines for the survey we're running
• finish unpacking all the stuff in our new house (top priority: find the power cable for the TV that I so carefully tucked somewhere really clever)
• prep for a recruiting visit next Monday at the University of Alberta
• attend 11 meetings (so far—the number will undoubtedly grow)

The irony is, some of my colleagues actually think I’m good at time management and prioritzation…