Most important, I've come to the conclusion that I have to focus more on my research. I have a number of project that are "close" to completion, but it's better to have ONE completed and submitted than THREE that are "close". So, for the fall semester, I'm trying to work on only one project at at time until it (or at least my part of it) is done. I've tried to "juggle" projects in the past, but that ends up with me spinning my wheels. For me, multitasking just doesn't work.
To give you an idea as to what's on my plate:
- I just finished a paper to submit to the Eastern Finance Association annual meeting - it's a regional conference, but i go more often than not, since I have a lot of friends in the association. The deadline is today (in about an hour), but it's done and submitted. Now we let it sit for a week and then give it another go-round.
- Next on the line is a couple of days' work on a paper that's being presented at the FMA meeting in about a month's time. All I have to do is write up a short section of the lit review, so it should be done by Friday.
- Then I put in about a week's work on a third paper. I've done most of the empirical analysis except for one part. Once done, this goes to my coauthor who does the writeup.
- While I'm waiting for one or the other of these things to come back to me, I work on creating a data set for another paper.
In fact, I have some students who are taking all three classes with me, so we'll either end up on very good or very bad terms by December. Either way, it should be interesting.