The grant was uploaded to the grant website on Sunday after final readout. On Monday we started internal routing. During the routing process, participants (collaborator, co-investigator) confirm participation and check accuracy.
Tuesday afternoon the routing paperwork reached to Office of Research Administration (ORA) in our institute. The ORA will oversee research in general, including grant submission process. All University grant applications have to go through the ORA.
On Wednesday we had weekly zoom lab meeting. I presented an update and planning for my research. As there was a 5 months COVID break for the lab meeting, my update was covering this past 10 months, plus future plans. Preparing for the meeting was like having a strategy session, and it was good.
I like working on strategies. Like policies, strategies guide us and tell us what we need to do and what we should not do. Make things easier.
Also Wednesday an ORA officer checked the grant's budget and files, and pointed out some places to fix. We fixed these, uploaded new files, and notified the officer.
These are some of the things we do. Just minding our business.
There was little movement on the grant on my front today (Thursday). They are working on it.
As the grant is almost out, I started organizing next, upcoming things. There is a short writing with Oct.31 due. There is a manuscript to write. We have the datasets, some of the figures, conclusions and rough draft. I want to submit it to a journal in 3-4 weeks. There is a paperwork to file, so that we can send some mice to collaborator for analysis, and so on.
I found "multitasking" is not very efficient form of working for me. Focusing on a limited number of projects (like assembling grant, writing a manuscript, etc) and doing one or two things at a time is preferable to juggling too many projects in a half-baked manner.
Brain work is like working out in a gym. You can do so much in a day, and you can get tired. Time and energy seem like resources that I want to allocate wisely.
