Warning: this post contains no physics whatsoever, although some of you might still be interested in reading it...

Relaxing in the hideaway of Elafonisos (see picture on the left) I am led to take a detached look at my work activities, and to try and determine whether I am doing some mistake here and there.

I am talking about my excessive list of occupations, which unavoidably leads to neglecting some of them in favor of others, or (worse still) to manage all of them in a sub-optimal way. I think this is a quite common issue for senior researchers, and more in general it is something who happens to everybody who has a job which goes beyond the "nine-to-five" involvement. So maybe by talking of the issue openly here I may get some advice, too.

I have only recently started to acknowledge the fact that my time is precious and that I need to defend it as hard as I can. Until a few years ago, I used to accept with enthusiasm any proposal, any student who wanted to work with my group, any offer to teach this or that course, any chance to give seminars or talks here and there. But this is the behaviour of a dilettante (which I of course am), not the one of a professional (which I also am).

So let us look at the whole picture. I am a member of two scientific collaborations (CDF at the Fermilab Tevatron, and CMS at the CERN LHC). I could have left CDF three years ago, when I was basically left alone in the local group when my two closest collaborators left the Department, both to work for ATLAS. But I was performing an interesting, honorable task for CDF (review every paper as a member of the Spokespersons Publication Review Group), and I decided to continue. Besides reading papers, I continued also to be a internal reviewer of specific analyses (five in the last three years), and to take data-taking shifts (a week, once a year). All in all, these tasks amount already to some 20% of my time, if performed at a sufficient level. Needless to say, recently I am spending more like 5% of my time on that, and I feel bad for it.

Within CMS I have an important responsibility as deputy chair of the CMS statistics committee. This is real work, and one which could in principle absorb as much working time as I could throw at it. But I also need to participate in the analysis activities of the CMS-Padova group; review CMS papers (four in the last three years); follow students (two ph.D. students, three undergrads in the last three years). None of the above activities can be dodged -I certainly cannot stop doing analysis, since that's where the real fun is!, and I certainly cannot refuse to follow students or decline invitations to review papers (which is real work too, involving frequent meetings and hard thought).

And then there's the rest: this blog, which of course cannot be ignored, and my teaching activities (a 40-hour course on Subnuclear Gauge Theory in the Fall). Needless to say, with all of these things going on, I am surprised I can still find time to sleep.

As I said above, having so much in one's hands means handling everything rather sloppily. So here are my personal evaluations of the things I have been doing in the past year. I will be merciless.

For CDF I would give myself an F -I am basically dropping out. Which is understandable: CDF is closing down soon, and it makes little sense to invest my time there; on the other hand, I feel bad by neglecting my few remaining duties there.

For the Stat Com work, I might reach a B minus. That means I try to be tidy and do all that's needed, but of course if I could invest more time in the activities there would be many important issues to take on, and I am not doing enough of it.

For the analysis work, it is kind of hard to evaluate my output. I am participating in too many different analyses (four), so of course I am doing little for some of them. But I have spent an enormous amount of time recently in producing a very interesting tool which we might use for the background evaluation in a SUSY Higgs analysis, and this of course must count. I would think I can give myself a C there.

I have managed well the internal review commitments in CMS in the last year or so. I have been chair of three analysis review committees, and I think I did a fair job in all cases. Here I will claim an A minus, meaning that I did well, and I do not think I could have done better if I spent more time on this task.

With students it is harder to evaluate myself. Mia took her PhD in February, and it was hard to converge, but I did much less than I had promised to help her. And Luca, another PhD student I am following, has received very little help from me too -but he does not really need much of it. Undergrad students I think have been happier with me, though. Overall, I think I deserve no more than a D plus.

Finally, there is the blog -which I won't evaluate, but just say that I think my time spent here is more than adequate- and the Gauge Theory course, which I think deserves a B.

So overall, it's a rather average score: some utter failures, some shiny spots, and a mediocrity overall that is ultimately close to my philosophy of life,  which the ancient Latin poet Oratius stated so well. However, the question is not how good I manage, but whether I should try to drop some activities in order to improve my score somewhere else. And here, unfortunately, I have my own idea already... But I am open to discuss yours.