University faculty are engaged in multiple tasks. The order of doing each task is the basic tips to effectively finish all tasks.
Look over the whole task you are engaging in, think deeply the most effective order to finish the task, and actually finish each task with the best ordering.
The most important point is to grasp the birdeye-view image of the whole task. The reason why busy professors can handle many tasks is that they first grasp the whole view of all tasks.
Lazy vacant professors are not familiar with doing multiple tasks. Therefore, they will be confused if the whole task is explained at once. Their brain will be exploded unless you explain each step of the task one by one. On the other hand, busy workaholic professor will be worried about if the task is explained little by little. They have to finish their work with effective plan because they are tackling with many task. The important thing to tackle with the task under suitable plan, you have to present the whole view of the whole task at the first stage, and you should not add the task in the middle of the working period. Effectively finishing the tasks cannot be realized unless enough information to make the best efficient plan to carrying out the tasks.
Labeling each task with adequate priority enables to effectively work on many tasks. Importance, amount, deadline, and other factors are considered to label the priority of each task. We would not finish each task one by one with the same order with the request. The priority is not determined solely from the deadline. Easy quick task is not quickly done. Easy quick task is done late. It is apparant. Heavy large task should be started first. "Do this task quickly because it is a small task" is not an adequate request. The people who say such request might do the heavy large task right before the deadline. They lack planning. It is a bad way not only for them but also for other people.
International journal gives 6 weeks until deadline for reviewing process. 6 weeks, although the reviewing job is finished in at least 2 hours and at most 3 days. University teachers have many other tasks, and they cannot be engaged solely in the reviewing job. Lazy vacant teachers rarely do reviewing, and they have much time to engage in reviewing one piece of paper per year, and thus, they think "why 6 weeks needed for 3 days task?". It is not surprising that such question comes up with them. On the other hand, busy teachers engage in multiple review papers and also they have many other tasks to do. The reviewing job is not their sole job. 6 weeks period is set so that the reviewers might have 1 day to review within 6 weeks. The scheduling of international journal can be said as the global standard for world's researchers. It is not sincere to set a tight deadeline.
If you are IT engineers, please imagine multitask OS. Scheduling which CPU runs which thread is important for effective processing. FIFO is not good. There are idle thread and busy thread, so which thread should be run is important. Interrupt processing degrade the effectiveness of the task, both for multitask OS and for real world job.
Work parallel, not sequential. Effectively work under parallel processing. For example, e-mail discussion can be smoothly performed if the multiple different contents are not mixed. If there is the mails discussing about the task A, and the mails discussing about the task B, efficient parallel processing cannot be done if the reply to mail A contains the reply to mail B. In order to effectively engage each task in multitask processing, each task should be done independently.
Ordering the priority of each task is important, and here is an example of cooking. The story below is a metaphorical cooking, so the cooking might lack in reality, but that's not an important point.
20:00. Mr. A is hungry. He did not take a dinner. He was worrying that he is not eager to make a dinner. 20:30. He decided to make a dinner. He want to eat rice. He washed the rice and swithed on the rice cooker. Rice is cooked, and he put a rice on a bowl. Oh, there is no other dishes. He want to eat pacific saury, so he cook it with the grill. He also want to eat a food cooked in seasoned broth. He cut vegetables, put them in a pot, and boiled. He also want to eat stir-fried vegetables. He cut vegetables and saute it. He also want to eat a salad, so he cut vegetables and made a salad. He also want to make a miso soup. He dipped japanese littleneck in salt water for sand spitting. He put those clams and miso into a pot, and boiled it. 23:00. Mr. A ate hot miso soup, salad, and cold stir-fried vegetables, cold food cooked in seasoned broth, and cold pacific saury.
18:00. Ms. B has already prepared some ingredients to eat the dinner in 19:00. The plan for today's dinner is rice, pacific saury, food cooked in seasoned broth, stir-fried vegetables, salad, and miso soup. She washed the rice and switched on the rice cooker. She put japanese littleneck into salt water for sand spitting. She cut vegetables, put them in a point, and boiled. While cutting vegetables for salad, she skims the scum from the soup. While cutting vegetables for fry, she adjust the tastings of the pot. She took off the pot, put the clams in another pot, and boiled. She put the fish on the grill. One of two stoves is used for frying vegetables with a pan. She turn upsidedown the fish, add miso in a pot, add a taste to vegetables, and be careful not to burn the vegetables. 19:00. Ms. B ate hot dinner. Her dinner is, as planned, rice, pacific saury, food cooked in seasoned broth, stir-fried vegetables, salad, and miso soup.
