Clinician-trialist rounds: 3. Priority setting for academic success

Abstract

In the previous two Clinician-Trialist Rounds you encountered some strategies and tactics for how to create protected blocks of your time [1,2]. This Round will present strategies clinician-trialists have found useful for achieving control over what you do in those blocks of time. As usual, Rounders with alternative strategies for achieving this control are encouraged to join this discussion. As many of you have already discovered, if you don’t set the priorities for what you do during those protected blocks of time, somebody else will. After all, your bosses come to work every day to confront desks brimming with problems to be solved and jobs to be done. We can hardly blame them if they strive to offload these problems and jobs onto unwary passers-by – especially among the junior ranks. Some of these jobs present wonderful opportunities for growth and success. Others simply steal time and energy from other, worthier work. The solution proposed in this round is the setting down, monitoring, periodically reviewing and updating of your personal career priority lists. This strategy is trivially simple in format, dreadfully difficult in execution, and vital to both your career success and happiness. This approach to priority-setting generates 4 lists: