how do you manage your time? - (Dec/24/2008 )

so guys, tell me, how can I write paper(s) if I always spend my days doing endless experiments and I get exhausted at night?
when I have holidays, I just want to rest, sleep, watch TV, chat with friends, anything but lab works.
I barely have time for studying or even reading papers, let alone writing paper which needs the right moment for the mood to come.
that`s why I`m always curious about other people who published sooo many papers and still doing their works at lab too.
how can they, or probably you, possibly do those things at the same time??

Be extremely driven, to the point where even on holiday you do lab work. To the point where the lab is the only reason you are alive in this world. If it is a choice between friend and family, the lab always wins. My boss is like that. Long ago he sacrificed his girlfriend for a Nature paper and is now a confirmed bachelor.

Or

Do less work lab. So make your experiments count and thus give interesting result that you can use for a paper. Conduct experiment that unambiguously give you evidence, you can use. Learn technical tricks, so that you can finish your experiments fast. Never make mistakes, which means you all check your work and don't assume anything. Be technically competent. Have a nose for what works in the lab, thus your PCRs always works on the first attempt, your southerns or westerns are always nice given the first conditions you select. To attain this nose, you either must have natural talent, or have lots of experience.

How far along are you, Nikou? Are you at the point that you have something which could be written up for publication? If so, then I would consider the paper-writing to be a task at least equal in importance to the performance of (endless) experiments, and schedule definite times at which you will work on it. Personally, I find that the muse never strikes; I need to make myself sit down and stare at the computer for about 30min before I can actually write. I also find deadlines a great motivator- tell your boss you will show them a draft on ___.

I make a mental schedule for the day and multitask. I don't know what your experiments are like; mine had a fair bit of "down-time" and a degree of repetitiveness. If you have an hour-long incubation or a 3-hr PCR run, you can be doing something else- maybe part of another experiment, maybe some reading, maybe some of those annoying little tasks that fill up the day.

Turn off your email's automatic notification of new messages and check it only at specified times. It's email, NOT a pager, and you don't have to read and reply to every email the second it arrives!

Unlike perneseblue, I have neither talent nor experience, so take my advice with a healthy pinch of salt!