PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Online resources for scientists

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

The past few months, we've been looking at social media and internet-related topics for scientists. I wrote about how to use Twitter as a scientist and about online branding for scientists. These topics dealt with scientists and academics taking on an active conversation among themselves and with the general public to shine some more light in this world (which, by the way, really is not flat - as scientists have convincingly explained).

Today, we are going to talk about the places where you a scientist can find information online that can be helpful. We're talking about a more passive role here: which websites are great sources of information, and which social media accounts are must follows?

I've divided my top-follows into different categories, and in each category I give you my recommendations:

1. Blogs

For those of you reading this post via PhD Talk, you can find some recommendations on the right side of this website, with my blog roll showing up. My favorite picks are the following blogs:

The Thesis Whisperer: I you read only one blog during your PhD, let it be Inger Mewburn's Thesis Whisperer - the home of all excellent advice for PhD candidates.
Zen Habits: If you want to find more peace and quiet in your busy head, this website can become your go-to resource.
The Self Help Hipster: Good advice on life and productivity, served up in a hearty sauce of biting Dutch sarcasm: what's not to love about this blog? Even if you do nothing with the good advice, you can have your lolz when reading the posts.
Get a life, PhD: If you want to know how it is possible to win at academia while working 9 to 5, you need to read Tanya Golash-Boza's blog. Her productivity skills are out of this world.
Noeska Smit - PhD student in Delft, who happens to write really well. She talks about her research and explorations in productivity.
Raul Pacheco-Vega: Professor in Mexico, with a writing work ethic that inspires us all. His writing schedule and weekly template schedule have influenced my planning a lot.
Tenure, She Wrote: A blog where women on and off the tenure track write about their experiences anonymously. Heart-breaking, honest, frustrating, enlightening and encouraging at times, this blog is talking about important topics.
Stylish Academic - Because we want to learn how to look good after living in ripped jeans and hoodies during all our years of grad school...
Matt Might: Blog which combines academic advice and computer science,

2. Twitter

Several categories of interesting tweeps are out there for you to follow and learn from. First of all, there are the university accounts. There are too many to name, but just but the universities you worked for or studied at in the search screen, as well as the university who are doing a lot of progress in your field to catch snippets of their research.

Then, there is the higher education news. My favorite accounts for this topic are:
@GdnHigherEd - news from the Guardian about higher education
@insidehighered - higher education news
@hetlportal - higher education teaching and learning (you might like to check out their LinkedIn group as well)

A third interesting category is people who tweet about academia and research:
@thesiswhisperer
@researchwhisperer
@PhD2Published
@raulpacheco
@Julie_B92
@neiltyson
@CitizenAcademic
... Really, there are too many people who deserve to be on my list. If you want some inspiration, check out the #ScholarSunday hashtag

A fourth category are the Twitter accounts of companies and professional organizations in your field. Think of the societies of which you are a member, and follow them on Twitter for their latest news. You can also follow conference accounts (who typically are only active before, during and after the conference).

3. Facebook

While I use Facebook less for my outreach activities, there are a number of good blogs and star scientists out there that keep you updated on their latest work through Facebook.
Piled Higher and Deeper: one day, during your PhD, you'll read every single comic on this page and full totally not guilty about it.
Dr. Sustainable: A blend of environmental activism and academia - and the former supported by the latter.
Next Scientist: Information on how to transition from a PhD to the industry, as well as on how to use digital resources in research.
Lifehack.org: a wealth of articles about all possible life hacks. Be selective in your reading.
Greatist: on how to become your best self in terms of fitness and health.

4. Online tools

My last category is a modest attempt at pointing scientists to the possibilities out on the internet to make their lives easier:
Conversion tools: If you type into your Google search box "Convert 15kN to kip" it will make the conversion for you. Recently, the conversion possibilities have been extended, so you can now convert even more complex unities in the blink of an eye.
Scopus search: one of the typical resources for finding publications in many fields.
Web of Science: Another online tool for finding articles. The advantage is that here you can download Endnote references of articles, so you don't have to manually add all the information in your Endnote database.
Scimago Journal & Country Rank: Are you doubting where to submit your paper? The metrics of this website might be helpful to make a choice.
Todoist: I use Todoist for all my reminders and for my daily task lists. There are a number of similar websites out there, but I like Todoist's clean interface.
YouTube tutorials: computer problem? software difficult? In most cases, somebody already had this problem in the past and might have made a YouTube tutorial about it.
Coder fora or mailing lists: Are you learning a new programming language, and having a hard time with some of the details? Internet fora and mailing lists of coders can be a good place to ask your questions.
Google Scholar: another search engine, which searches not only for peer-reviewed papers but can also dig up reports and the like. Make sure the curate your profile here.
Academia.edu: A social media platform for scientists and researchers.
ResearchGate: Very similar to Academia.edu, with a bit more interaction between the members.
LinkedIn: I mostly use LinkedIn as a digital box of business cards - whenever I need to contact somebody, I typically have the connection on LinkedIn, independent of possible job changes.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Online branding for scientists

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Today, we continue where we left of last month, when we talked about how to use Twitter as a scientist. Now we are going to look at the entire perspective of using the internet to show to world who you are.

When I mention online branding, often researchers shoo away. Branding is for marketeers, they tell me, and I have no need to brand myself at all. I myself don't like the term "branding" that much (I don't like the associations that branding call for, such as commercialism and consumerism). But let's be scientists and call it branding, because that's the definition somebody gave it some time ago. I could wonder why creep (the fact that concrete, and structures made with concrete, have deformations that increase over time when stresses remain the same) is called creep, and I find it a creepy word, but it is what it is.

So now that we -hopefully- have your fear and repulsion for this marketeer language out of the way, I can introduce you to what we are actually talking about: having an influence on what the internet shows the world about you. If you are not active online, or not conscious about your online activities, you depend on other people. If you do not manage your online profiles, perhaps only irrelevant information about you might be available online, and give people the wrong impression of you.

Let's do an exercise - right now. Go to Google and type your name in the search field. What do you find? What are the 10 first results that show up? Here's what I find - and it is indeed the information in a nutshell that I want to show up when somebody googles me:



If your search returns the fact that you won the lottery of your local baker, some emotional comment you once made on a news article or whatever random stuff you are trying to sell online, it is time to get some grip on your content. If future employers look you up online, you want Google to take them gently by the hand and bring them straight to your important information.

You might say that it is easier for me, since I have the curse and blessing of a unique name. There's only one other Eva Lantsoght active online, and she is a translator in Prague, so it is very clear for whoever looks me up online that we are two different people. If you have a very common name, you might need to repeat the exercise by googling your name together with your current institution, and see what shows up then. For consistency, just as with your journal publications, you might want to add the first letters of your other first names to your online content. Because my name is so uncommon, I use just Eva Lantsoght online, but I do use Eva O.L. Lantsoght for all my publications.

What should I do to get grip on the online content that is available about me, you might ask now. Well, let's break it down into several steps. Remember that once you start to take action here, the irrelevant stuff will start to sink down to the bottom of Google's search results and your important information will be right there at first glance. Here are several actions you can take to curate your online profile:

1. Using Twitter

Here's our favorite blue bird again. If you don't have a Twitter profile yet, check out my post from last month to help you in getting started. You can also find some inspiration on who to follow and who to look for on Twitter in this post that I wrote a while ago. In terms of showing up in your Google search results, Twitter will only provide one entry. However, if you think you are able to post something on Twitter every now and then, keeping in mind that is a very fast media source, then it is certainly worth the time and effort. And with "time and effort" I am expressing myself strongly: I feel that using Twitter is a gentle form of distraction that can lead to interesting professional results.

2. Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is your online resume. If you don't have a profile, you need one (much more than you need a blog or a Twitter account).

If you don't have a LinkedIn account, carve out 2 to 4 hours some day to get this thing up and running. Take the summary from your resume, and add it to your summary. Use a recent photograph. Transport all the categories from your resume into LinkedIn, and make sure your information is up to date. Then, start connecting with people you know. Typically, LinkedIn will suggest people you know to get started.

If you have a profile, give it a serious look, pretending you are an outsider (say, somebody who would be interested in working with you). Do you like what you see? Is your information up to date? If not, it's time to clean ship and give your profile an overhaul.

3. Writing a professional blog

I've blogged extensively about, well, blogging. Blogging in academia and blogging as a scientist is what I particularly have been writing about. If you are not sure on how to start blogging, here is the introduction manual I wrote not so long ago. It is my opinion that blogging is for every academic, but I also understand that time is a valuable resource for all of us. You can learn a lot from it. Even if you don't have time to run your own blog, you can always contribute as a guest author to other blogs. Just make sure your byline gets your name and information correctly, so Google can find you.

4. Finding your brand

If you start to use several social media platforms and other online sources, you might want to start thinking about what is really the main thing about you that you want others to see. I'm not talking about holding up a rosy image of your life (let's leave that to some Instagram accounts, where all food looks perfect and everybody is always in the sun). Authenticity online is something I care deeply about. What you want to share online depends on what you are comfortable with. Nobody is forcing you to post sarcastic tweets, or to retweet political things. I do, because I guess it's a GenY thing, and I've always embraced the internet as a means to communicate with the rest of the world. But nobody is forcing you to do so; it is perfectly fine if you only tweet about your field and your current work.

5. Finding your tribe

Once you start using social media platforms, you can start to form bonds online. Through the blogging and Twitter community, I've been reaching out to fellow academics over the last 6 years, and I have gained a tremendous amount of insights. I learned a lot of tips and tricks from fellow researchers during my PhD, and learned how to manage my time and plan accordingly. My tribe, as such, has been generally academic. Your tribe might be more specific to your field - whatever you are comfortable with, and whatever feels like developing meaningful connections. Make sure you reach out to others by leaving comments on their blogs, replying to tweets and interact in different ways. Once you have found your community, you will hopefully see the benefit of putting some time into your online profiles, and Google will show information that you yourself provided to the internet.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to use Twitter as a scientist

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Those of you who not only read my blog, but follow my through other channels, might know that I'm quite active on Twitter. I joined Twitter in Spring 2010, and I've been enjoying it ever since. Quite some time ago, I wrote a post with my favorite tweeps. I also shared some results of research with marine biologists, that showed the benefit of using Twitter in science.

But if you are a scientist, with "joining Twitter" and then "doing stuff with Twitter" on your To Do list, you might feel a little intimidated by the long list of possible people to follow. Moreover, following @CNN and @BarackObama might be the first thing you do, and might be suggested to you, but these are not your main sources of scientific joy and information.

So let's take this step by step. Let's go from setting up a profile, following people to building an academic network on Twitter. I don't want this to become like a tutorial (there's plenty of videos on YouTube to take you through any step you might have difficulties with), but I want to give you some tips and tricks at every step along the process.

1. Crafting a bio
One of the first things you need to do when you sign up on Twitter, is to put a bio. I recommend that you make your Twitter profile publicly accessible instead of private. If you join Twitter to enter the realm of scientists on Twitter, you'd prefer them to be able to find you and follow you. Make sure your bio mentions your field and institution(s). You can add a warning that Retweets are not Endorsements, but, really, most of the Twitterverse is aware of that.

Keep in mind as well that Twitter is a lighter type of platform. There's no need for you to cite your recent publications in your bio. I like to add a bit of lightness to my bio by adding "Blogs. Pets cats. Drinks tea." I'm assuming that also sets up people for the fact that besides the concrete and the science, I could blurt out the odd complaint, random observation or retweet cute cat pictures if I feel like. Does that make me unprofessional? I'm on the border of Gen Y and I don't think so...

2. Choosing a profile picture
Your standard profile picture is an egg. Whenever I get followed by an egg, I don't even take the effort to read the profile description of this person, because the sole fact that he/she didn't even finish his/her profile, makes me doubt this person has any real interest in interacting on Twitter.

Since Twitter profile pictures show up very small, I recommend you use a headshot. If you put a full body picture of yourself presenting your work somewhere, you'll be reduced to the size of a stickman in people's timelines. Use a clear, recognizable headshot, so that the odd fellow researcher might be able to recognize you at a conference.

3. Following people
So now that we have the basics covered, let's start to move forward into the actual use of Twitter. Your first recommended people to follow will typically be @CNN and @BarackObama. While I like using Twitter as a source for the news, I'm going to assume you came here in the first place for the scientific community. How do you start following people?

Here are a few types of accounts that you can/should start following:
- the accounts of your university and department. These accounts will also retweet tweets from fellow academics at your institute.
- the accounts of universities and research groups worldwide you are interested in.
- the accounts of academic publishers
- the accounts of news websites and blogs related with higher education, such as @insidehighered
- make a search for your field and see what and who shows up
- organizations in your field
- Twitter lists about your field or with people from your institution

Keep in mind that, just like growing followers, growing a list of interesting people to follow is something that happens over time. You might see a retweet of somebody, check out his/her profile and then decide to follow this tweep. If you start aggressively following a lot of people in a short amount of time, Twitter will ban you from following more people anyway.

4. Creating content
Now you can start creating content. You can tweet about your recent publications, retweet information from the accounts you follow and more. If you have a blog, Twitter is an excellent place to share your recent blog posts. You can also tweet series of posts (indicated by (1/3), (2/3) and (3/3) if you distribute it over 3 posts, for example) of the contents that you want to share is too long to squeeze into 150 characters.

Some ideas on what to share with the world:
- tweet about the topic you will discuss in class
- tweet about the conference you are planning to attend
- share your progress in writing
- talk about a recent publication
- join the discussion about higher education policies (I know you have an opinion - we all do)

5. Getting the discussion started
If you see a topic of your interest, you don't need to wait for anyone to invite you to take part in the discussion - you can imply barge right into it. You wouldn't do it in real life, but on Twitter, nobody knows you are reading along. So comment to what fellow researchers are sharing, ask for ideas and opinions and interact.

You can also tag people in a post by adding their @name when you share an article and ask what they think. In this way, you can as well get involved in the academic online discussion.

6. Using hashtags
Hashtags, those #selfie #dinner #random stuff that you see showing up around most social media platforms come from Twitter, where feeds and discussions center around certain hashtags. In the academic world, I recommend you to check out #phdchat, #ecrchat (for early career researchers), #scholarsunday (on Sundays, to learn who to follow), #acwri (for academic writing) and #acwrimo (in November, the month in which academics worldwide pledge to get their manuscript out and post their daily word counts).

Some hashtags have a weekly fixed hour to chat. Other hashtags are continuous streams of information. Figure out what the important hashtags are in your field and in academia in general, listen in and contribute.

7. Saving conversations with Storify
If you had a particularly interesting conversation on Twitter that you would like to save for future reference, you can use Storify. Storify is a website on which you can save stories, by adding social media content. You can, for example, add tweets and replies to tweets in a logical order, to save a discussion you had. Once you finished compiling your story, you can share it again through social media. Stories also remain saved and accessible for the future in Storify.

8. Curating content
Retweeting, sharing articles, hosting people to write on your blog, ... all these activities are related to curating content and broadcasting it to your audience. I enjoy interviewing fellow academics that I meet through Twitter. I post the interview then on my blog, and share that link on Twitter (going full circle). From a number of newsletters that I read, I also share articles and interesting documents. Find out what type of content you and your followers find relevant, and start distributing interesting information.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 10 Reasons why I love Academia

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

If you read some academic blogs and Twitter, you might think that the life of an academic is miserable. Tons of stress, tight competition, never-ending funding cuts - we all know the drill.

But in spite of the difficult moments, I think academics should sometimes complain a little less, and be more aware of their privileged position. Because, at the end of the day, a career in academia is different from a career in the industry. And the advantages of academia are important to recognize as well.

To celebrate the special position academics have in this world, and the benefits this brings to ourselves and our lives, I have compiled a list of ten reasons why I love academia:

1. You work on things you deeply care about
Unless somebody or some strange force pushed you through your PhD, you probably care deeply about your research and your field. While in most other places you might be working on your topic of interest for only a limited amount of time, in academia, you can devote all your research time to fleshing out problems related to your interest.

2. Freedom to set your own schedule
In companies with strict working hours, you need to ask permission to leave and take your cat or child or yourself to the doctor. If you are an academic, you can simply go and do what you need to take care of, and catch up with work on a later moment. If you are lucky, you can also indicate which hours you prefer for teaching. I, for example, prefer to teach in the afternoon, and reserve my mornings for research and writing. At times, I work from home, from my university office or from a café - I don't owe anyone an explanation about where I am and what I am doing, as long as my output remains high.

3. Freedom to determine your own research lines
Only in administrative terms you have a boss to listen to. When it comes to decide how you fill in your time and what you focus on, you are completely to yourself. While that might sounds a bit scary, especially for PhD students transitioning to independent scholars, it is both a blessing and a large responsibility. What I dreaded most about working odd jobs as a student, was having to follow orders of a Boss, and always having to go and ask a superior "what do I need to do now?". Think of the luxury you have in academia where you can set your own lines of research.

4. Summer holidays
Unless you teach over the summer, the summer semester is all up to yourself to fill it in as you please. In most cases, that does not mean that you are lying by the pool and getting a tan, but you have the possibility to spend time at another lab, to write a book chapter or work on another major project. And since major projects come with major results, you typically will feel major satisfaction as well. Even though I fly out to The Netherlands right after taking final exams to dive into research there, which is rather tiring, I am glad I have this arrangement and can spend my entire summer on research.

5. Conference travel
While most conferences mean you are in a hotel somewhere from 8am in the morning until 10pm at night, you often are able to find a few hours to leave the conference and learn something about the city where your conference is held. And even if your schedule is so packed that you can't see anything of the city (happens to me more and more), you still will enjoy the fact that you are out of your regular environment for a moment and get to talk to people in your field, and listen to their presentations.

6. Mentor your students
Another source of satisfaction in academia, not from research, comes from identifying exceptional students and mentoring them. You can help them in their orientation for graduate school, help them find financial support for their future studies and write their letters of recommendation. If their work is good enough, you can also encourage them to submit and abstract and then write a paper together for a conference. Instigating a bit of the joy and pleasures of academia into my students, and seeing them take off into the world, is something I take deep pride in.

7. Change the world for the better
Unless you are involved with some evil research scheme to destroy the world, we can safely say that your research is likely to change to world for the better - even though the change might be very small. If you see the broader scope of things, the change might be small, but in your field, the change might be significant. And overall, each little push to make this world a better place is worth the effort.

8. You work with special people
Academia brings special people together - and I've often felt very privileged to work under the guidance and supervision of famous professors. Not their fame itself is so special - but usually spending 20 minutes talking with them, will fill your brain with fresh ideas and enthuse you to tackle your research problems with new energy. But not only the senior professors count as the "special people" - some devoted students will pour a lot of their heart and soul into their work, and will make you see certain topics in a new light.

9. Most campuses are pleasant work environments
Labs, restaurants, parks, bars, small shops - most campuses nowadays are self-contained little towns. Working there, and being able to come out during lunchtime and grab some food or sit in the park, is often quite pleasant. Moreover, the energy and vibe of students is mostly positive (only during exams, sometimes you can feel a wave of tension ripple through campus). Often, university campuses are also a center of social movements and action, and a genuinely inspiring environment.

10. You can develop yourself and your interests
A life in academia is the very opposite of a mind-numbing conveyor-belt type of job. You can learn new things whenever you feel like. Sometimes you have to learn something new when you have to teach a course that you took yourself too long ago (or maybe even never). Sometimes you will feel the need to learn a new skill, such as a new programming language. You will also keep learning about your field as you read the recent publications. All in all, you are in for a life of study and enrichment.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to transition from PhD student to independent scholar

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

During your PhD days, you might have the help and protection of your PhD advisor. He can give you ideas to further develop, he can tell you where to publish and which conferences to attend, and he will teach you the ropes of the research trade. But once you graduate with your doctoral diploma, you are on your own. You might benefit from the protection of your alma mater a bit if you decide to stay at the same institution, but for those of us who moved away after getting the PhD, it is time to grow up and become an independent scholar.

As an independent scholar, your peers will not see you as "the PhD student of Prof. Advisor", but they will now see you as Dr. Yourself, with your own field of expertise and your own network.

To reach this position, you will need to establish yourself as a researcher with a clear focus. This clear focus does not mean that you have to focus on a single topic. No, within your area of study, you are encourage to branch out: participate in projects with the industry, carry out desk research on tangentially related fields and broaden your scope.

To develop your own network, you need to attend conferences and industry events. Publishing helps as well, as you will typically be invited as reviewer for the journal in which you published - a way to establish yourself more as an authority in your field as well.

In the following, I've gathered a few tips and things you can think of when it comes to growing roots on your very own plot of the forest and becoming an independent scholar:

1. Collaborate with other institutions

While it is nice to keep working together with the researchers and professors with whom you worked during your PhD, it is time to discover other horizons as well. This certainly does not mean you should burn your bridges with your alma mater behind you, but it is time to broaden your scope. These institutions can be situated somewhere else in the world, could be public research institutes or could be industry partners. To more varied you can develop your collaboration portfolio, the better.

2. Outreach

You could consider outreach as a time-consuming fringe activity, but it certainly can be quite rewarding. Outreach can be blogging and tweeting about your research, it can be volunteering for charities, or it can mean getting involved in student support groups and on-campus networks. Consider outreach as an opportunity to show to world the value of your research and how your work makes this world a better place.

3. Write your own research proposals

It's time to figure out what you would like to work on further, identify the needs in that regard, and turn these needs into research proposals. It can be frightening to start your very own line of research, as you might feel inexperienced, but once you get working on it, you will feel how rewarding it is. And think of it - you can fully choose what you find interesting to work on now, without having to explore ideas that might have been imposed onto you by your advisor.

4. Become active in your research community

Review papers, participate in committees, publish your work, attend conferences - you know the drill, so do your part and volunteer to move your field forward. Showing up and working hard will show your peers that you are serious about your research field and willing to moving things forward.

5. Read a lot

Keep a finger on the pulse of your field by reading recently published papers on a weekly basis. Try to set aside a few hours a week (I know it is hard, but it is necessary) to read recent publications. Follow the important journals in your field, and read them to get an overview of which topics are being explored, and who is working on what. Then identify the papers that are of particular interest for you, and read these in more detail.

6. Pick your fights and carry them out

What makes you really thick? Canalize your energy and devote time to the causes that you think are important. Pick your fights wisely - you can't take all the worries of the world on your shoulders. Do you want to raise your voice in the way women are undervalued in academia? Would you prefer to put energy into the guidance of first-generation students?

7. Develop your own writing voice

Practice makes perfect, a saying that holds particularly true for academic writing. We could also say that practice molds your voice. You will notice that, as you gain more practice writing papers, and will receive less and less feedback from your coauthors, you will start to feel comfortable writing about your research in an authoritative voice that is distinctly yours.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to start blogging as a researcher

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Maybe you heard from a fellow scientist that to be a researcher of the 21st century, you should have an online presence. Maybe you enjoy reading blogs of other academics and would like to share your two cents with the world too. Maybe you have other reasons for being interested in starting a blog, such as wanting to document your research and reflect upon it.

Whatever reason attracts you to blogging, you might feel intimidated by the task at hand. If you want to start writing on the internet, here are some of the steps you could consider taking.

1. Write a guest post

If you are not sure if blogging is for you, or that you would have enough time and material to keep a blog of your own, you can always test the waters by writing a guest post for another blog (feel free to pitch me if you'd like to share your story and experiences on PhD Talk). When you want to write a guest post for another blog, reach out to the editor of the blog, explain what you would like to write about (consider this your short abstract), and how your post could benefit the readers of the blog you are reaching out to. A clear, concise e-mail could secure your little spot on the internet. Typically, the editor will get back to you with some guidelines for posting on the blog, which you can consider similar to the paper formatting guidelines for a publication, and possible thoughts on how you can develop your topic further into a blog post.

2. Start or join a shared blog

If you feel ready to write on a more regular basis, but don't want to commit too much, you can join a shared blog, such as GradHacker, or start a collective blog for your research group or project. Sharing responsibilities can be an excellent way to grow a blog as a project without having to carry all the responsibilities yourself.

3. Select a blogging platform

If you are ready to start a shared blog, or perhaps a blog of your very own, you will need to think about the following:

- Where do I want my blog to go on the internet?
Do you want your blog to be part of a website or do you want it to stand on its own? Do you want your own domain, or are you fine with a blogger or Wordpress account.

- What will the name of my blog be?
Once you know where you want your blog to appear on the internet, you will need to select a name for your blog. Do you want to use your name, or do you want to give the blog a name of its own?

Once you have these questions sorted out, you can sign up and register for your place on the world wide web. From then on, you're all set to start writing or to start tinkering with your layout.

4. Write about your weekly experiences

Now that you have your space on the world wide web, let's discuss some topics you can write about. One way you could be sharing your research experiences is by writing a weekly update about what you are working on, what you have been doing for the past week and what caught your attention on the internet about your research topic or academia in general. While I do not keep logs like this on PhD Talk, I do really enjoy reading these kind of longer status updates from researchers whose blogs I follow.

5. Share your publications and presentations

Your blog is an excellent place to share your publications and presentations. While a blog solely consisting of entries with abstracts of papers of yours when they are published might be too niche for your (future) readers, you can write short posts in which you bring together some information about the conference you attended, the abstract of the paper you presented, and a SlideShare presentation of your slides. You can see an example of how I share my presentations after conferences here, and how I write about recently published journal papers.

6. Explain your research

Your blog could as well be a great place to write about your science in a more popular way. You can find some of my tips on how to share your research with friends and family in a previous post of mine. You could share videos of your experiments online - something you cannot do in your journal papers. You can make a series of photographs with explanation about steps you go through in the laboratory - again, something we do not have a set medium for in our scientific community.

7. Share what you learned

Once you publish research in a paper, you mostly published the results of the technique that actually worked. I've suggested blogging in the past as a possible means to tackle publication bias - and eradicate the skewed version of reality we sometimes find from research because of publication bias.

If you do not feel like sharing online what did not work for you in the laboratory (although I think you should; we can only disrupt higher education and academia once we truly embrace open science), you can also share stories about little hacks and things that work for you in the laboratory or in your research. Over the years, I've mostly focused on this type of posts, since I like writing these and enjoy reaching out to a broader academic audience. An example of this type of posts is this article in which I share how I write my abstracts.

8. Critique another article

You might read a blog post by another academic, and realize that in your field, reality is different. You can react to the author by writing in the comments section of the original post, but you could take it one step further, and write a full reply on your own blog. Note that with "critique" here I mean a civilized critique and not a complete bashing of someone else's opinions. An example of this type of posts is my (very old) reflection on a list of things to let go of in 2011.

9. Describe how you implemented another article

Did you read about someone's experiences (the type of post from number 7, for example) and decided to try it out? Why not write a post about your experiences after trying a certain technique for some time? Especially when it comes to hacks and productivity tricks, you can try out what other bloggers recommend, and see how it fits your field of work and activities. You might run into problems that are typical for your field - write about how you solved these. You could find that some methods feel too rigid for you, and discuss how you blend these methods into the messy reality of daily life.

10. Link to videos or Storify

Did you film some of your research and experiments? Upload it to Youtube, and write a post about what you were testing and what you found.
Did you have an interesting discussion on Twitter with fellow academics? Make a Storify out of it and share it on your blog.
An example is my post on Gender in Academia.

With these ideas you can get started - blogging as a guest author, blogging on a collective project or blogging on your own blog. Let me know where you will start writing, and what type of post from this list you will try out!

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to outline a planning for a semester

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

If you live on the northern hemisphere, the days are getting shorter again, and summer is ever so slightly coming to an end. The long holidays are over (or the quiet semester with less lectures and responsibilities is over), and the buzzing of Fall semester can be heard in the distance.

And now that the Fall semester is drawing near, it might be a good moment to set goals for this semester, and plan accordingly. In this post, I'll guide you through the steps that will make Fall 2015 your most productive semester ever.

Ready for the challenge? Here we go.

1. Outline your major goals for the semester

Before you go into more details for the semester and how everything will fit in, time-wise and all the nitty-gritty, PAUSE and focus your thoughts:

What are the five most important things that you need to do this semester?

If you don't like lists, you can journal about it - either via 750words.com, a document in Evernote, or by writing long hand. Just find the red thread throughout your semester - this is the clothes hanger on which you will build your semester (don't you think Dutch expression translated can be very informative?).

Once you have outlined these five tasks (or even less, if you are working on a very large project such as your dissertation), try to identify when during the semester you will work on each project/task.

Will you work a few hours a week on each project, to make sure all projects move forward at the same pace?
Will you tackle one project at a time?

Identify how you will work first, and then map these tasks onto a plan for the semester. I like to use a monthly overview in Google Calendar, and select all the days that a project will be running (this is the approach I used in the past), or I put daily/weekly reminders in my ToDoist for the period of time that I plan to work on this task (my current approach).

If I want to study Spanish every 3 days during the semester, I'll put such a reminder in ToDoist. I also put a reminder of when I plan to start drafting a paper, when I plan to have the first version finished and when I plan to submit it.

2. Make a weekly planning

Now that you have the big rocks of your semester identified, you can zoom into your semester and try to fit all the bits and pieces of work that need to be done on a daily basis into a weekly schedule.

The elements that you need to fit in are (among others):
- teaching
- class preparation
- research
- writing papers
- reading papers / keeping up with the output in your field
- faculty responsibilities (such as, directing a lab)
- service on committees and other regular meetings
- office hours
- time to reply e-mails
- admin time

As you can see, I filter out e-mail and admin, and bunch all these small tasks into an hour of mail/admin a day (even though that hour sometimes expands beyond its limitations). I'm not replying to every single mail the moment it shows up on my phone (I typically stow away my phone in the drawer and close my mailbox anyway), and e-mail has a low priority for me: I'd rather miss my daily hour of replying e-mails than my daily hour of writing papers. Because papers are fab and emails mostly flab.

Once you have identified your building bricks, you can start to construct the framework of your semester. First, think of how many hours a week you are willing to work. 30? 40? 50? I don't recommend that you plan to work more than 60 hours a week, because your brain needs to refresh and refocus from time to time as well.
Then, distribute the hours that you have over the different categories. Typically, your time can be divided along the different categories (just giving you some rough estimates - things might look very different for you if your responsibilities are different):

- teaching: the number of hours you are actually in class
- class preparation: 2 hours per hour of class if it's a course you've taught before; 4 if it is a new course
- research: a few chunks of 2 hours throughout the week
- writing papers: at least an hour a day
- reading papers / keeping up with the output in your field: at least twice a week an hour
- faculty responsibilities (such as, directing a lab): at least three times a week an hour
- service on committees and other regular meetings: as scheduled
- office hours: depends on your university guidelines
- time to reply e-mails: about an hour a day
- admin time: half an hour a day

The details of setting up your schedule for the semester are in a previous post from this series.

3. Make a semester planning

You have already identified how your Big Rocks are taking up time and space in your planning for the entire semester. Now, you can weave your other responsibilities around it.

Sounds vague?

Here are a few things to identify:

When will homeworks be due, and when will you take midterms?
What are your important self-imposed deadlines for your research?
What are good times throughout the semester to follow-up with (international) collaborators?

Have these elements sorted out, and add them to your planning.

You will see that, as the semester progresses, your weekly schedule will serve as a guide for you, but it shouldn't be a terribly rigid plan. You are able to, and allowed to, move some blocks of time around in your schedule as necessary. Similarly, you can identify weeks where your schedule might be disrupted because of conferences or other special activities. Make sure you already build these elements into your schedule for the semester.

4. Plan personal activities

So important - don't forget to plan activities that you find important into your weekly and semesterly schedule.

On a weekly basis, you might think of planning time for workouts, social activities, date nights and other "regular" activities that you want to do repeatedly during the semester. Make time for them, and put them in your planning. You will feel much better when you arrange quality time for yourself (whether that means an evening of reading a good book, taking a bath, or crushing a damn-hard workout), than when you just stick around the house after work, eat and veg out on the couch (not that you are never allowed to do so and always have to be productive, but that in-between state is just not good for you when you stay in that state for too long).

Then, on a semesterly basis, plan out a few cool things you want to do. It's OK to spend an entire weekend working, if necessary, but don't do so the entire semester - you might want to have something to look forward to on a shorter notice. Decide what you want to do with your semester breaks: work on a paper, or get out to the mountains and hike - both are great options. Sleeping in, trying to "write a bit", replying emails and watching Netflix - not so good, too much in that half-working half-relaxing kinda state.

5. Focus

Now that you have your schedule figured it, it's time to put your ass in your office chair and grind. Or at least, ideally. In reality, there are a ton of social media platforms, the news, food, internet, your phone, your puppy and your mother-in-law that all want your attention. So remember your Big Rocks of the semester, and focus on those. I recommend you check out my guideline for better concentration in five steps, to help you sharpen your focus.

Remember that you feel much more successful if you've spend a day pomodoring through a difficult task, with short breaks for coffee, walks, bathroom and all of that, than when you try to do a bit, then go to check Instagram, do a little more, then read a blog post and so on (guilty as charged - I admit!).

Focus, focus, focus - try to think of what you will remember of this semester in two or five years from now. It won't be that BuzzFeed video - I'm sure.

6. Reward yourself

If you work hard, you gotta pat yourself on your back. Nobody will come after you to pat you on your back, so you have to take care of it yourself....

Finish a paper on time? Go get yourself a massage.
Submitted your research proposal? Head to the beach for a weekend.
Graded all those exams? Time for a movie.
Got a paper accepted? Go out to dinner and celebrate.

Life is to be enjoyed - and as academics, we're often too hard on ourselves (we little club of perfectionists...). So take good care of yourself, and put a bit of sparkle into your semester. This bit of magic will make your semester so much more balanced and enjoyable.

So, go ahead, get started with planning your semester - both in terms of work and fun - and get back to me to tell me what your semester will look like!

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 20 things you need to do when living in the Netherlands

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

This summer, I am focusing on topics related to moving to, living in and working in The Netherlands.
Why? To celebrate the release of FactCards.nl! On this website, you can find all information you need as a foreigner coming to do research in The Netherlands. And even for me, coming from neighbour country Belgium and speaking the same language (well, sort of...), those FactCards would have been really useful and could have saved me from a few headaches...

In this post, I share with you the 20 things I enjoyed most about my time in The Netherlands, and things that I still enjoy when I come back for my research stay during the summer.

1. Bike

Who needs a car if you can bike your commute? When you live in The Netherlands, one of the first things you need to look for is a decent bike. Your bike doesn't need to be a shining new one, but you do want to have a bike that is right in size for you, and that has some gears to help you bike up hills/bridges. Get yourself some bike bags to transport your groceries on your bike, and you're ready to go!

2. Visit Keukenhof

If you are in The Netherlands during spring when the tulips are in bloom, you just need to go and visit Keukenhof. The wealth of flowers in and around the Bollenstreek is simply overwhelming. I just wish I'd gone more often during the years I was in The Netherlands (I did go 2 out of the 4 years I lived in Delft).

3. Visit Amsterdam

The iconic capital of The Netherlands has much more to offer than drugs and the red light district. It's a stunning city with beautiful architecture and charming canals. The museums are world class, there are plenty of great places for dining, sipping coffee and hanging out, and of course you need to enjoy the presence of the water everywhere.

4. Travel to the neighboring countries

The Netherlands is very well-connected to its neighboring countries. You can take the train right into Belgium, France or Germany, or take the boat to the United Kingdom (or connect in Brussels to the Eurostar train) (keep in mind that you might need an additional visa for visiting the UK!). Snatch a cheap flight on Ryanair or EasyJet and go explore another city somewhere in Europe. Enjoy it where you are there, in the center of Europe!

5. Buy yourself some flowers

Flowers are cheap in The Netherlands, so indulge and get yourself some flowers every now and then to freshen up your house. Tulips in spring, roses in the early summer - you might want to buy them from your city's market to get a great deal.

6. Swim in the North Sea

Ah, the North Sea - there is not a sea or ocean in the world that smells like the North Sea. It's not the beautiful Mediterranean sea, but there is nothing like walking on the empty beach in November or swimming in the very salty water of the North Sea. Enjoy a day at the beach, and enjoy all the attractions of the beach towns.

7. Sample international cuisine in Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the melting pot of the Netherlands. While Rotterdam might not have come out of the wars of the 20th century without wounds, it is arguably the city with the most modern feel of The Netherlands. Marvel at the highrises, then go sample some international cuisine - Rotterdam caters to all tastes.

8. Go to the Hoge Veluwe

The Veluwe feels far away from everything else in The Netherlands, and it makes for a perfect weekend getaway. Stay close to the national park, bike around the park and visit the Kröller-Müller Museum. Watch the wildlife and hills that are so distinctly different from the flat and mostly urban landscape of the rest of the Netherlands.

9. Sail

Head to Frisia, hit the lakes and sail - or learn to sail. Water sports are the most popular sports in The Netherlands during the summer. Head out for a day and sail the waters, feel the sun on your skin and the wind in your hair - sailing might be one of the most relaxing activities you can do.

10. Go to a summer festival

Europe and summer festivals - it's a match made in heaven. Chose a summer festival according to the style of music you like best, camp out and feel the unity in music while rocking out to one of your favorite bands.

11. Join a sports or hobby club to make friends

While making friends in The Netherlands might take a little more time than in other parts of the world, you can help your luck a little bit by joining a sports team, a music group or by singing up for evening classes.

12. Go watch a soccer game on a big screen

The Dutch go crazy when their national team plays - especially in the world cup or Eurocup. If it's a sunny game day, don't miss the atmosphere and go watch the game on a big screen. Have a beer and enjoy the orange madness.

13. Travel by boat or bike

The Netherlands are an excellent location for slow travel. Towns and cities are close to each other, so you don't need to worry about long stretches without shops or restaurants when you travel slowly. Travel by bike along the excellent biking facilities of The Netherlands, or travel by boat along the rivers and canals.

14. Walk in wooden shoes

Just because we need to throw in a little cliche here too: go for nostalgia and get yourself a pair of wooden shoes and walk around in them, reminiscing the old days.

15. See the windmills of Kinderdijk

Now that we're talking about the typical Dutch cliches, we can't miss the windmills of Kinderdijk. Maybe a little bit too much of a touristic location, but hey, you just need your picture with the windmills to show your family back home that you really are in The Netherlands.

16. "Terrasje doen" in summer

When the sun's out, you gotta join the locals and sit on the terrace of a pub with a beer or soft drink. It's called "terrasje doen" (doing a terrace), and we even talk about "terrasjesweer" (terrace weather - when the weather is good enough to sit outside).

17. "Gezellig" in winter

The days are dark and short during winter, so it's the perfect time of the year to cuddle up on the couch under a blanket or spend evenings playing board games and indoor grilling with friends - all of it at a slow pace, with smell of comfort food around. "Gezellig" we call it in Dutch, ad it loosely translates to "cosy", but it's much more than that - you need to experience it.

18. Fine dining in Brabant and Limburg

The Southern parts of the Netherlands are closer to the Burgundian Belgians, so they know more about good food and fine dining (not saying this because I am Belgian...). Maastricht is a lovely city in Dutch Limburg, close to Germany and Belgium, where food is plenty and delicious. The same goes for Brabant, famous for baked goods, such as Bossche Bollen, and more extensive meals than the rest of the country.

19. Take a mountain of sandwiches for lunch

How does lunch look like in The Netherlands (and often Belgium too)? Well, you take a loaf of bread, take at least 4 slices of them, and put something between two slices. You can for example put cheese between two slices of bread and you have one "dubbele boterham" (a sandwich). Jam is a popular choice for breakfast (yes, you can just do the same for breakfast).

20. Visit a spa

Did you know we call a spa a spa because of the city Spa in Belgium, a famous bathing place for the rich and famous? Spas in this part of the world a luscious experience, with pools and saunas to enjoy (absolutely something I miss when I am in Ecuador). Perfect for a cold winter days, to rejuvenate and heat up in a Finnish sauna.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 20 Things You Need To Know When Moving To The Netherlands

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

This summer, I am focusing on topics related to moving to, living in and working in The Netherlands.
Why? To celebrate the release of FactCards.nl! On this website, you can find all information you need as a foreigner coming to do research in The Netherlands. And even for me, coming from neighbour country Belgium and speaking the same language (well, sort of...), those FactCards would have been really useful and could have saved me from a few headaches...

From my side, I'd like to give you an overview of 20 things you need to know when moving to The Netherlands:

1. Gratis

First Dutch word to learn! "Gratis" means "free", so you see it a lot in the supermarket: 10% gratis, 1+1 gratis, ...

2. Ride a bike

A bike is a useful and necessary means for transportation. Many people in The Netherlands bike their commute, and you surely should considering joining them when you move to The Netherlands - by the time you reach the office, you've had some exercise, and you'll feel refreshed and ready to start the day. Don't bike too slowly though, you'd be a bottleneck in the traffic.

3. University buildings have closing times

Unlike in the United States where most university buildings are open 24/7 if you have door access, the Dutch universities and laboratories typically have closing times for safety reasons. Don't try to break into the building on a Sunday, or stay at night past closing time... the guards will find you.

4. Start looking for housing early on

Finding affordable housing in The Netherlands can be quite a challenge, and I wrote a post about this topic for AcademicTransfer earlier on. Start looking for housing as soon as you can, and you will find something.

5. The Dutch are not misers, but they use their resources wisely

What I appreciate a lot about the Dutch, is that they use their resources wisely. In their neighboring countries, this might be seen as being stingy, but in reality they are not misers (and donating much more to charity than the Flemish!). As compared to Ecuador, I see much less excessive wealth in The Netherlands (luxury cars, houses with tons of antiques, ...). Sure they exist, and sure there are superwealthy neighborhoods in The Netherlands, but most people are not big fans of excessive spending on material goods. Calvinist spirit or something...

6. Bread makes a meal

You take two slices of bread and put something in between (ham, cheese, spreads, ...). Repeat a number of times and you have a meal. When you are too busy, you can even have three of these meals in a given day.

7. No authoritarian systems

At work, the Dutch treat eachother as equals, and the team leader will coordinate how you work together, but will not be playing the big boss over you. Other countries might have clear systems of who has authority over whom and to whom you need to ask permission, but in The Netherlands I've been surprised many times by the confidence my senior coworkers put in me and how they trusted me with certain tasks without asking me to constantly report to them.

8. Everybody is heard during a meeting

Junior or senior member, everybody has a say in a meeting. It's called the poldermodel, the Dutch way of running meetings, and the disadvantage might be that, since nobody is really taking on the big authoritarian position, it can be harder to reach consensus - everybody needs to contribute and feel that they have been heard.

9. Always bring a gift when you are invited

Chocolates or flowers are always a success. When you are invited to somebody's house, or to an event hosted by a colleagues, you are expected to bring a small gift as a token of your appreciation for the invitation.

10. People go crazy over soccer games

When the Eurocup or the Worldcup take place, the country morphs into a sea of orange. People start grilling outdoors, drinking beers together while watching the games on temporary big screens provided in the big cities and party all over the place. They might look intimidating, those crazy orange Dutchies, but they are fun to hang out with, no worries!

11. You are expected to be independent

Since the system is not relying on authority, you are expected to work independently. You are not expected to report to your supervisor as a spoon-fed student who just spews out the results of an analysis, but you are expected to take initiative and move your research forward by yourself.

12. You are expected to set your own schedule

Nobody is going to make your planning, and you are expected to decide when to work and what to work on. If you work with other people or if you need to do laboratory work, you are of course expected to show up to work at the times when your coworkers are available.

13. Be punctual

I heard that in the very South of The Netherlands, you can have 15 minutes of a delay without needing an excuse, but in the Rotterdam-Amsterdam region, you are expected to be punctual. No excuses.

14. Be honest

No need to go in convoluted ways around people, especially those in a more senior position, if you need to get something done. Talk clearly, and tell people what you need, without asking them if they please could maybe do something whenever they have the time for it - the message won't go through.

15. Expect honest feedback

The Dutch are direct, which means they give you their ideas in a honest and direct way. Their feedback is not trying to be politcally correct, but they go straight to the good and bad points of your work.

16. Some regions are very packed - be courteous to others

Parts of The Netherlands are just very densily populated - and people here are used to live in densely knit cities. Be courteous to others, and everything works fine.

17. You won't impress your colleagues by working 120 hours

If you do so, they might think you have a planning problem or that you can't do your work in the normal allotted time. You'll see people leave their offices in time to go home for dinner at 6pm. You might think they leave early and are not working hard, but you should see the amount of work they get done during their working day...

18. Many people speak English...

Almost everybody in The Netherlands, and certainly everybody in the universities, speaks English. This makes your arrival much easier, and often English is the language of choice during meetings to make sure everybody can follow.

19. ...but you should learn Dutch

However, if you are staying for a few years, you should learn Dutch. It's part showing respect for the culture of the country, and part a way to really become part of the country and its systems.

20. It's fun!

As with every new place, I needed some time to adjust to The Netherlands, but after many years here, and still spending my summers here, I can say that I really enjoy living in The Netherlands and working at TU Delft.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Self-care in academia

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

I'm in the middle of the process of publishing guest posts on self-care in academia, in which I've invited fellow academics to share their thoughts on self-care, and have them explain what they do to stay sane in the sometimes bitter environment of academia. In this series, academics have discussed how exercise keeps them mentally and physically healthy or how they try to find some time for themselves while studying, working and taking care of their family.

The first time I mentioned self-care on this blog, was after realizing that working 100 hours in a week was not going to do me any good. Torn between knowing that working too hard eventually makes me sick but really loving what I do and getting sucked in so easily, I set out on a quest to set healthy limits for myself. I played around with my schedule to see how I can plan in time for self-care (note that during my days as a PhD student, I followed a schedule that worked for me, but as a fresh professor with more duties and more tasks on my plate, I had to start again to look for what works for me.) My schedule is still a work in progress, and changes every semester as the hours that I teach change, but I feel like I've got more grip on my time.

In this post, I won't go into detail on how I plan my activities, and how much time it all takes me, but I will focus on why different elements of self-care are important for me (as they might be important for you, or as other things closer to your heart might be more important to you).

Here's a list of activities for which I make and take time to prevent me from turning into a bookworm:

1. Exercise

At the moment, exercise is back to the front seat in my life (after slacking for a good while). If I don't exercise, I get more tired, less focused and I don't sleep as sound at night - I need my movement (not necessarily as the large amounts that I'm putting in at the moment, but for stress-release it's working very well). My current workout routine is a work-in-progress, just as my work schedule, but it's a combination of lifting weights, spinning, bodypump classes and yoga classes (plus the occasional pilates, TRX, HIIT or other group class).

2. Music

Last august, I flew my cello to Ecuador (as a ticketed passenger). I've been erratically playing ever since, but just tinkering with things and playing through songs I studied before - no in-depth study. Since January, I'm back in full swing with technical work, and playing every single day (I missed a few days while I was in the US for a conference, but other than that it's been a daily habit).

Playing music is something I've been doing since I was 7, and I had forgotten how it helps me to develop focus for deep work. Trying to figure out a difficult piece of music (the fingering, the bowing) requires 100% of my attention. That deep focus is similar to what I need (but can't always achieve) when trying to untangle a research problem.

3. Creativity

Creativity has always been important to me, and since January I'm back into doodling around with pencils and into writing poems. I'm forcing myself to show up and do something - even though it might be bad - and build my creativity muscle.

Finding time to engage in creative exercises is important for researchers: you need the ability to think out-of-the-box when coming up with novel solutions in research.

4. Learning

I'm not watching online lectures and TED talks that much anymore, but I'm always enrolled in some MOOC or following another type of online course to learn something new.

Learning new skills and broadening your understanding of this world is not only important for your personal development, but helps you to make links between disciplines and teaches you to study research problems at a different angle.

5. Writing

Five years of blogging, and a life long of writing stories, self-made magazines, poems, journal entries and whatnot - writing has always been something I enjoy, but especially in the recent years, I learnt that blogging has improved my academic writing skills. Again, maintaining this blog, with its steady output of posts, has forced me to show up and write, even when I sometimes don't really feel like. And similarly, I show up and write my journal papers, and magic happens (or grumpy reviewers put dark spells on my work).

6. Gaming

My mom, my sister and myself used to spend days on end playing Nintendo games (Eat that, gender stereotypes!). When moving to Ecuador, my husband and I got us a WiiU, and I enjoy gaming every now and then. It might not benefit my research, but when I need to switch off my brain, it's good to get engrossed in the quest for a triforce.

7. Food preparation

I am currently having help in the household three times a week. I've outsourced cleaning, laundry, ironing and part of cooking and food preparation (following my recipes). It's OK to give work out of your hands. It's OK to spend money on outsourcing these tasks (now I have time to play the cello at night instead of spending all my evenings in the kitchen). Too often, I still find myself in the mindset of the poverty-ridden graduate student - I still like to twist and turn every penny before spending it. But now that I've left the most difficult financial years behind me, I've come to terms with the idea of spending money and getting time for myself in return.

Still, every evening I prepare my breakfast for the next morning (all the ingredients minus the liquid go into my Vitamix), box up my lunch for the next day and add snacks to my bag with food for the day. I've always preferred home-cooked food (my parents never went out to eat nor ordered, just my mom's home-cooked meals rich in vegetables fresh from the farmer's market), I easily catch stomach bugs and I'm very often hungry - having food around me saves me time at lunch, and makes sure I have the right fuel for the day.

8. Meditation

Since January, I'm back in full swing with meditation. I've taken a subscription to Headspace, I'm revisiting the Silva course, I'm using Stop, Breathe and Think, and sometimes I just sit in silence.

Meditation is as important for your mind as exercise is for your physical body. I know this - I've been on and off with meditation since I was 15 - and still, I find it hard to keep a constant practice.

9. Sleep

I've always been the first person to shout all over the internet that you should sleep at least 8 hours every night. Currently, I'm averaging between 7 and 8 hours of sleep every night during the week (my 5:45 am wake-up time requires an early bed-time, and that's hard for me). Nonetheless, I try my very best to get 7,5 hours of sleep every night, to make sure my brain functions optimally the next day at work.

10. Reading

I read 105 books in 2014 - and that year, reading was an important aspect of self-care for me. At the moment, reading is a little less important, and meditation and music have taken a more prominent role. Our priorities and perspectives might shift, and the amount of time we get to spend on different elements of self-care as well.

Regardless of the fact that I'm reading a little less voraciously than before, I still consider reading important for my mind, for fueling my creativity, for my learning, and for improving my writing.

What are your non-negotiable acts of self-care? Why are they important for you? How do you make sure you find time and space for these activities?

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: 10 Ways for more Efficient Teaching

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

For the last year (and then some), I've been having a teaching load of 3 courses in the Fall semester, 3 courses in the Spring semester and no courses during the summer (when I go back to The Netherlands for research).

Preparing, teaching and managing 3 courses is a challenge if you still want to keep any time available for research, writing papers, catching up with the literature, service commitments and more. Preparing, teaching and managing 3 new courses, while keeping all of the above tasks up and running is brutal - and that was exactly the story of my first semester. By now, I have settled into a routine, and even though I'm still improving my courses in many different ways, I feel I got the hang of all the tasks related to teaching. Since my first semester was a swim-or-sink kinda experience, I had a very steep learning curve. Today I'd like to share some of the things that I learned.

1. Plan your lectures

Have an overview in the syllabus of what you'd like to teach in every course hour that you've been allotted. Try to avoid vague descriptions of "I will cover topics X, Y and Z", without really knowing how deep you want to dive into each topic. Having a schedule for the entire semester will help you prepare your classes - you'll know how to limit the amount of material you prepare based on the maximum amount of time you can spend on a given topic in class. On the other hand, your schedule can also work as a booster for your preparations - just like a good planning for a paper can give an impetus to the productivity of your writing.

2. Plan class preparation time

It might sound very obvious - but if you teach a lecture, you also need time to prepare for this lecture. The rule of thumb seems to be that you need about 2 to 4 hours to prepare each hour of lecture. For new topics, you probably need very close to 4 hours, just for class preparation alone, not taking into account the time it takes to develop homeworks, exams and to grade. Since your classes probably run on a fixed schedule on a weekly basis, it can be very helpful to schedule your class preparation time with a weekly template.

3. Plan time for grading

Preparing class might take quite some time, but whenever you get homeworks back, or exams, you will need at least some time for grading these. If you plan your week or month ahead, you can schedule time after the due date of a homework or after an exam to grade this material. I try to grade exams (and often homeworks too) within 24 hours after I receive the material - I consider it good practice to provide prompt feedback to the students.

4. Sort out the technical part before the semester

If you are going to play around with presentations on your laptop or tablet, it can be helpful to check the classroom in which you will be teaching in advance to see if everything is working fine. If you are going to use computer labs, make sure the computers have all the licences you need for teaching. If you are teaching a laboratory class, try to make sure you have all materials before the start of the semester.

This advice, however, is not something I have been able to live by. I've been changing classrooms a number of times - often needing to figure out how to hook up my tablet to the projector in every different classroom. Last semester, I started teaching a laboratory class, while the laboratory itself wasn't even in use and the equipment was being shipped from Italy. You can save yourself some stress by trying to get everything sorted out in due time.

5. Find your best teaching schedule

If your university allows you to give a suggestion for your class hours, it can be convenient to take your personal circadian rhythm into account. My most productive hours are in the early morning, a time of the day I set aside for working out and writing my papers. After lunch, I typically get a little sleepy, and teaching at that time (and being standing up and talking) is a perfect way to mitigate my post-food-coma. I would get way less work done if I'd spend that time behind my computer trying to solve some deep work problems.

6. Protect your data

As sad of a truth as it is, some students will go far in order to try to know the exam questions or even try to change their grade behind your back. Keep a watchful eye on your accounts and your data. (And yes, I hate pulling up this little curtain of suspicion, but I learned the hard way that not everybody is fully honest in those terms).

7. Ask for a TA

If you can get a teaching assistant to do your grading and supervise exams, go for it. It always takes some effort to delegate work to somebody else, but in the long run, having a TA can be a godsend. Once you know he/she is trustworthy, you can let go of your control, and just trust him/her with the work that otherwise might be taking up your precious research time (or, sometimes, unfortunately, the time you spend sitting in meetings).

8. Do you really need to grade every homework?

Ask yourself if you really need to grade every single homework. I've known professors who simply put a "1" if you submit a homework, and a "0" if you fail to submit. Other professors used to give us back the solutions of the homework, and tell us to grade it ourselves (I might have been even more strict on myself than the professor would have been). I'm currently trying out a combination between short homeworks that have as a goal that the students sit down with their coursebook and work through something, which are graded simply based on submission ("1" or "0"), and longer homeworks that I need to fully revise, to see how their understanding of the concepts is.

9. Highlight possible exam questions in the coursebook

One way to gather exam questions while preparing lectures, is to highlight possible exam questions in the coursebook while reading it. Once you are at the point of preparing an exam, you can simply go through these highlights and notes about possible questions, and pick a number of questions from the book in this way.

10. Print all your material at the beginning of the semester

I try to print and copy all material (homework assignments, syllabi, notes, homework solutions, additional material) at the very beginning of the semester, and then distribute this material as the semester progresses. Especially if your university complicates the process of actual printing and copying of materials, by, for example, sending you to a copy center, it can save you quite some time if you do everything at once at the start of the semester.

Pro-tip: Don't be a perfectionist!

I still see a lot of room for improvement in my courses. I started teaching without having nice PowerPoint presentations. Slowly but surely I'm now turning my class preparation notes into presentations for some courses. I sometimes wish I could write my own coursebook, or at least a bundle with examples that the students can use as material to prepare for their exams. The reality is that I only have a given number of hours in a day, and I will make these improvements and changes over the next few years. If you want everything perfectly prepared, you'll be spending way too much time to prepare a single lecture hour, and you'll be sick with exhaustion by the end of the semester.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to set goals and resolutions for the New Year

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

The beginning of the year is the moment when millions of people swear they will make this year better than before. We decide to change some of our habits, live healthier lives, become more productive and -generally- become a better version of ourselves.

The new year is associated with setting resolutions and goals, both for our personal as well as our professional lives. I myself have come a long way: originally, I never set new year's resolutions (because everybody always seems to focus on wanting to lose weight, something which is completely out of my range of interest - I don't even own a scale). A few years ago. I started to set goals and resolutions at the beginning of the year, inspired by all the productivity blogs I'm fascinated by - and I ended up making the typical rookie mistake(s): setting too many goals, and not having a focus in these goals. I ended up with my own method for setting goals, which involves a good deal of self-reflection, and which attempts at finding a balance between focusing on priorities in life and still finding space for an array of different interests.

In today's post, I'd like to walk you step by step through the process of setting achievable goals, and turning these goals into reality.

1. Review your year

Before you enthusiastically start making a list of all the things you want to achieve in the new year, I recommend you reflect on the previous year first.
If you need some inspiration for this review, you can start by replying these questions:
* What are your 10 top achievements of the last year?
* What are your 10 top failures of the last year?
* How would you summarize the past year in a single sentence?
* What do you wish you would have done in the last year, but didn't?
* What did you do in the last year, that you wish you wouldn't have spent your time on?
Alternatively, you can free-write or journal about your past year for a given amount of time, and then reread what you wrote and summarize the major points for further reference.
Once you start setting goals, you can use your list of goals at the end of the year to reflect back upon your successes and failures.

2. Analyze the different areas of your life

You can't review your year solely based on your academic performance. If you were not living under a rock for the past decade, you should know by now that your physical and mental health deeply influence your productivity and academic outcome. Therefore, I strongly suggest you carry out your annual review and set your goals based on the different categories in life. If you need some guidance, you can use the following categories:
1. Health and fitness
2. Intellectual life
3. Emotional life
4. Developing your character
5. Love relationships
6. Spiritual life
7. Parenting
8. Social life
9. Financial life
10. Career
11. Quality of life
12. Life vision
You can carry out your annual review, by thinking about each of these categories, and giving yourself a grade for each of these categories - this exercise helps you to see which areas of your life might need a little more attention in the following year.

3. Identify your priorities and values

We're not at the point yet of listing down goals and resolutions... First, I want you to think about your priorities in life, to get the correct mindset for listing your goals. Limit yourself to somewhere between 3 and 5 priorities. Again, these priorities are broader than your academic life; your career might be one of your priorities, but should not fill up your entire priority list (if that's the case, go back to step 2, and realize that your career and intellectual life, which both encompass your academic work, are just one aspect of life, and that you need to add some juice to the other categories to stay balanced).
Do not come up with more than 5 priorities - you risk spreading yourself too thin and losing focus.

Next, take some time to reflect on your personal values. Which personality traits and characteristics do you value most? What makes your heart sing? How do you want to live your life? Do this exercise to make sure that you stay close to yourself and your core, and avoid losing yourself.


4. Define your goals, based on your values and priorities

Now it's time to list your goals! Stay close to your values and priorities to identify your goals. Limit the number of goals you set for the year - you're not superhuman, and you don't want to be spending a little bit of energy on a 1000 different tasks - if you want to make a difference in your life or in the world, you'll need to pour a good amount of energy in a limited number of tasks.

I've set 15 goals for 2015 because I like the symmetry in the numbers, and I'm working on developing/strengthening two habits this year (meditating daily, and practicing the cello daily). That's already more than enough for me (and I do am someone who likes to raise the bar for myself to challenge myself to perform better and better).

5. Make a plan

Setting goals is one thing, but turning them into reality requires some planning. If you are working on building habits, such as exercising or playing an instrument, I recommend you build these activities into your schedule. You can check out this post if you want to learn more about developing a weekly template to fit in all your activities. If you want to write a certain number of journal papers during the year, set deadlines for yourself by when you want to finish each manuscript, and plan your writing accordingly. To keep an overview of your planning, you might want to use a yearlong calendar that you stick to the wall in your house and/or office, or you can use a digital calendar (I use Google Calendar). To keep track of the activities that you need to do, one by one, to reach your goal, you can use a hand-written task list (again, I recommend you put it somewhere in your house and/or office where you can actually see it, to remind yourself of your goals) or use a digital version (I use Todoist).

6. Track your progress

If you want to build better habits, it helps to track your progress, and see your chain of days in which you "did" your new habit. The longer you grow your chain of days on which you fulfilled this habit, the more of a pity it becomes to actually break this chain. You can use a paper calendar on the wall, and mark every day that you "did" your habit, or you can use one of the many apps that are geared towards this purpose (I use Lift).
Don't beat yourself up if you drop the ball somewhere during the year - we all get sick, face family emergencies and the like. Just remember that when you build good habits, it's much easier to pick them up again if you've wandered off, and if your habits are geared towards building a healthier, happier and more focused version of yourself, you will become a wee bit more resilient when you need to face hard times.

7. Find an accountability partner (or talk to yourself)

See if you can find a partner (or more partners) who share one of your goals. You can partner up with a friend who wants to get in shape, and work out together, or at least keep each other motivated by sending WhatsApp messages. You can see who else in your research group or university wants to find more time for writing, and organize a #shutupandwrite meeting once a week in your university. You might have heard this piece of advice a number of times before... What I like to do, is a technique that is slightly more geared towards the quiet among us. I, for one, enjoy the silence of working out on my own from time to time. I also find it beneficial to reflect on my days and progress at regular intervals. As such, I've come up with my "internal coach". In my journal, I reflect on my progress, and analyze what is not going very well, why things might be more behind than I would like, and think about strategies to improve the situation.

Happy New Year - may this year your most productive, most focused and most enjoyable ever!