NAVIGATION
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For more information on using Notion, see the ‣ guide.
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Notion is how we communicate about projects, by commenting on specific project pages. That way, our communication is anchored in the project context (as opposed to the chaos of the email inbox) and we don’t have to orient the reader. For this reason, I suggest disabling email notifications, which defeat the purpose of keeping our communication organized by project.
Relatedly, project tasks are assigned via Notion. If you need someone to do something, add a task to the project page and it will show up for the person when they check Notion. When you are assigned a task, make sure the task status is up-to-date, so others can see whether you’re done with a task without needing to ask you directly.
If there is a longer topic that needs to be discussed, add it to an upcoming project meeting agenda, which is also housed in Notion.
Short story: Don’t.
Longer story: Knowledge work, including academia, has morphed into a culture where we spend more time replying to emails than doing more important—and meaningful—tasks, like writing a manuscript or coding. Even if we aren’t spending significant raw amount of time on emails, switching back and forth between tasks saps productivity because of the cognitive effort it takes to constantly shift attention. Also, emails are incredibly inefficient. Paragraphs of text in an email (and time it takes to process and reply) can usually be resolved in a 5-min meeting. For further reading, refer to A World Without Email by Cal Newport.
Communication, like all other behaviors, is context-dependent, so there is no default expectation for lab members to respond to messages within 24 or 48 hours. It all depends on the message (and its sender). For example, clinical matters should generally be responded to ASAP, whereas a draft might require 1 month to turn around. Please use your judgment to determine the urgency and importance of messages (e.g., you might respond more quickly to the DCT to make their life easier even if the message is relatively less important).
You are not expected to check work-related messages in the evenings or on weekends, even if others ping you during those times. Being “on” 24/7 is not a realistic or reasonable standard to set, so avoid reinforcing the notion that this is “normal.”
To show that you’ve received or seen a communication, you can 👍🏼 a message on Notion easily. When you’re assigned tasks, changing the task to In progress indicates that it’s in your work queue (see Notion guide for more information).
The lab often collaborates with other researchers doing related work, so it’s important to know how to be a good collaborator: being responsive, organized, and reliable at minimum. This means being proactive in your communication (e.g., when problems arise, when you have questions); staying on top of your tasks; being oriented to the project during meetings; and meeting deadlines you’ve committed to.
Generally, it’s helpful to keep your collaborators informed on the progress of a project (if it’s internal, Notion is a great way to do this). In particular, you must keep your collaborators informed of changes in the status of a research product (e.g., manuscript, poster, abstract) and get approval or assent on the product before sharing it outside the team. If someone puts their name on something, they take some responsibility for it, so we want to make sure people have the chance to edit/review what will be put out into the world.