Task Management is the Name of the Game
Planning
Task Management
Yellow Island
Mussel Biomarkers
Plan of the Week: April 6 - April 12, 2026
High- level outline for the week. Adjusted daily to reflect progress of the day before
- This week’s plan is to continue to move forward with the methylation analysis, refresh mutual goals, expectations and priorities with Steven, and set goals for April.
Monday - Planning the week & Setting April Goals
Tuesday - UW-RUA, No Science
Wednesday- Friday: Will Outline post Steven 1v1Thursday - Task management
Friday - Biomarker Manuscript - ‘Clarify’ edits
Saturday - No Science
Sunday - Reading
Plan of the Day
Granular level task list to accomplish the high- level goal outlined above
- Get my crap together! I have a multi-car pileup of tasks across so many different science projects and personal projects that today is the day to knock out what I can, schedule or delegate what I can’t, and to make a few prioritization decisions to align with some of my larger goals and deliverables.
Projects Touched Today
- All of them! No, seriously…
- Yellow Island
- Mussel Biomarkers
Progress Notes
- Today started with knocking out some personal business. I bring it up because all of the ‘hurry up and wait’ gave me time to take a look at my brain dump task list from earlier this week, break down some of the multi-step tasks, identify what would or would not make the boat go faster.
- “Will it make the boat go faster?” is the fundamental question Martin McElroy asked of the British rowing team while they were going for (and attained) the gold medal in the 2000 Olympics.
- Are the preparations, decisions, or actions I’m making and taking making my boat go faster? Going back to one of my favorites, Nick Saban, he is all about the process, not the outcome. So when you put these together you get the reinforcement of the daily task of focusing on what makes a difference (McElroy), and a commitment to meeting the daily task with 100% (Saban).
- All that to say that today was a mini-reset and refocus on what makes my boat go faster.
- First up, I knocked out the logistics for the 5 tide series on Yellow.
- I made my ferry reservations, bought my tickets, pulled together my supply lists, touched base with the land steward to confirm the volunteers’/ interns’ schedules for support, and verified transport times to and from the ferry landings. Made my next steps list for food and travel days, pulled out the gear I’ll need to keep in the trunk, and blocked my travel time in addition to the tide survey times rather than having 24hr blocks on my calendar.
- Next up, I pivoted to some event management for the upcoming UW-RUA event’s I’m coordinating.
- I followed that up with a touch-base style ‘office hours’ with a few travelers that need some additional support in getting their visits planned and on their way.
- Next on the list was a critical review of the biomarker manuscript. I keep making ‘large’ to-do’s like ‘write the abstract’, rather than the actual steps. This took a long time to keep myself focused on the critical look rather than fixing the thing I put on the list. It yielded a coupe of pages of notes that feels a little daunting.
- I batched the type of notes into writing, citing, and clarifying. Any notes that don’t fall into those categories are not a priority to get the work out.
- The clarifying section includes notes like, “lines 22-26 state but don’t explain the connection between legacy contaminants and climate- driven stressors.” What is one sentence that ties these together?
- The citing section includes notes like, “line 31, 34, and 37 have synthesized for the public report-level citations.” What are the individual papers/ research that support this synthesis?
- The writing section includes notes like, “lines 242-249 is about the spatial pattern of the biomarkers, but not the spatial pattern of the contaminant classes that is clearer and statistically significant.” This is where the results are misaligned; the contaminants are spatially significant, but the biomarker response is not, this is where the IBR and Contaminant Indices come into play - justify why these ‘scores’ are important in the narrative by connecting the spatial analyses to the biomarkers.
- I attended Maya Groner’s seminar and learned more about marine diseases than I thought! Some very interesting and ‘pugilistic’- themed research going on in the Bering!
- Finally, I made a plan of attack for tomorrow’s edits on the Biomarker manuscript, identified the one report I want to review this evening to dig into in the morning, and called it a day.
- “Will it make the boat go faster?” is the fundamental question Martin McElroy asked of the British rowing team while they were going for (and attained) the gold medal in the 2000 Olympics.
Outcomes: Products & Word Count
- Biomarker manuscript critical review: ~800 words
Today’s total: 800 words
Monthly total to date: 1721 words
Annual total to date: 34,394 words
Annual target total to date: 49,000 words
Next Up: Tomorrow’s Plan
- Biomarker manuscript. My goal is to work through the ‘clarify’ notes and complete the research for the wdfw report I want to support with not only the report, but the published research backing it.