Priority, choices and consequences

When I was a bit younger, like all other naive beginning professors, I believed I am do everything: getting million dollar grants, teach five courses, public 6 papers, supervise 20 students on their capstones or thesises, play tennis three times a week, swim two hours a week, practice my cello everyday, run a department, design new degrees, mentor new faculties, participate 10 committees and still can put my feet on the coffee table every night watching Sinfield re-runs.

Then the reality hits me hard. Covering everything made my involvement superficial, quality of work is out of the window, little time to spend on individual students, and hundred of emails left unanswered every week.  I have to return my phone calls during commute, writing proposals till 2-3 AM. 

Selecting what are important is challenging yet has to be done, I replaced swimming with more time efficient running, two papers a year only, ask other faculty to step in for advising.  Over the summer, I need to review what I been doing over the last few years and have to make the difficult decisions: what valuable activites I will NOT do.