It’s always confusing to start your work if you’re a researcher in the academia. You have so much that you can do, and nobody would tell you what you should do next. You can get distracted to work on something meaningless easily. How should you choose your tasks everyday?

I started practising SMART in the beginning of my work everyday to know what tasks I should work on. Here is my own evaluation on whether I am doing it right.

What are SMART criteria?

SMART is a list of criteria that help people to set their objectives. They are first suggested by George T. Doran, and each letter represents one criterion:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Assignable
• Realistic
• Time-related

How do I follow the SMART criteria daily?

When I go back to my office, I list my main projects and side-tasks that I need to do. For each project, I list all the tasks that I can do immediately, and divide them until they are small enough to be finished in a day. Then, I prioritize them according to their importance, and do them accordingly.

Do I follow it well?

Being specific? Yes, the tasks are specific. I always know why I am doing them, and the tasks are clear enough for me to do.

Being measurable? Sort of. I know when the tasks are done because the tasks have well defined deliverables, but I have no way to track the progress of the task. Setting milestones for each task are too time-consuming to be done daily.

Being assignable? Yes. I know which tasks must be conducted with collaborators, and they are all prioritized according to the time the collaborators need to spend on the task to accomplish them.

Being realistic? Not so much. I always fail to finish all the tasks before the end of the day. Often two to three tasks are left unfinished. If there are some urgent tasks interrupting in the middle of the day, there are no way to finish the tasks on time.

Being time-related? Barely. I always fail to predict the time needed for each task correctly. Time for subtasks is estimated correctly, but I always need one to two more hours to finish each main task related to research projects. In addition, I always want to challenge myself to work faster, so I always assign less time for each task than what I can actually do. However, they are prioritized in the right way so that the tasks with hard deadlines can be done on time.

Aspects for improvement

• Divide main tasks into subtasks to track the progress;
• Write down the time I need to finish each task after accomplishing them. Use the numbers to track how I am increasing the speed to accomplish them and to estimate the real time I need to plan my day;
• Put fewer tasks in my daily plan;
• Include optional tasks that will only be done if there are no urgent task interrupting my routine.

Conclusion

I get the SMA part, but really need to work on the RT part with better time allocation to be a SMART person.