Del DeVries : Work 2008-08

Talking about work, organization, and what motivates an individual are topics with millions of articles, postings, and discussions. Getting Things Done has evolved into an internet culture over the last 10 years. Reading an article on managing an accounting career led me to an economist's rules of thumb which have important lessons across multiple dimensions.

Learn from the right mentors
Work with good co-authors - a good co-author improves you forever
Have broad interests - broad interests and knowledge are great sources of inspiration for new ideas. The downside is possibly lack of depth. Broad interests can also be described as short attention span!
Allocate Time with Care - choose carefully your projects and where to focus your time and attention. Even after starting down a path remember the irrelevance of sunk costs.
Write Well - Writing in a learned skill that can be improved by ... deciding to do it and then doing it! Writing well is hard work. It requires that you revise, revise, and revise. Then, when you think you are done, you should revise again. Good writing is fun to read, but it is often not fun to do.
Have Fun - find out what you like to do, and then find someone who will pay you to do it. Bottom line is that long term success is based on building a life and a career around what you believe in and where your passion lies.

Mankiw, N Gregory (1996). My rules of thumb. American Economist, 40(1), 14.

As an accounting academic I am constantly balancing my roles of teacher, researcher, and university service in addition to my roles as a husband and father. Integration of these roles and looking for synergy as a means of balancing is a mechanism for making a good fit. All of this must also fit within the culture of your institution.

I find that finding alone time every day is good for thinking deeply and consistently about these issues and for accomplishing my work. Stephen Covey calls this the balance between production and production capacity (P vs PC). Another aspect of staying organized is the "Weekly Review" defined by David Allen in Getting Things Done. The purpose of the weekly review is to do a clean sweep of outstanding projects, commitments, and ideas in order to compile a list of everything on your mind. Merging the approaches of Stephen Covey and David Allen provides a somewhat compatible approach of life, goal, and role management in the context of personal organization. And as Zig Ziglar states ... written goals are essential ....

An article specific to accounting professors was published in Issues in Accounting Education in Feb 2008 by Dana Hermanson, What I Have Learned So Far: Observations on Managing an Academic Accounting Career. The article has some good points about integrating research, teaching, and service; fit with university/dept culture; and only say Yes if you really mean it. The missing piece is an assumption of "successful academic career". Too bad the author seems to relate it primarily to making more money. See the quote on rich, famous, or passionate test for determining when to do something for more information!

_2008-08-12

Tags: goals - GtD - work

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Rule #1: Never lose money. Rule #2: Never forget Rule #1.

Warren Buffett

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