Changing Academic Life Mary Czerwinski on managing people, managing stress, and the work to do good work
Mary Czerwinski is a principal researcher and research manager at Microsoft Research in Redmond, US. Mary shares some great experiences about her role as a manager and how she plays this out practically in enabling and protecting people, and establishing a culture in a group. She also talks about some of the key insights from her own research work on stress and how to manage stress, from email management strategies, to designing technology interventions as well as some very easy practical interventions that we could all try out. A theme throughout is the importance of getting to know yourself and your values, and of planning– this is the work to do good work.
“How you choose to look at stress...” “Honouring your calendar”
She talks about (times approximate) …
01:45 Her current work and background
04:20 Managing and leading a research group
07:15 Establishing a group culture, dealing with issues, conflict resolution, one-on-ones
11:10 Insights from research on stress, managing email, choosing how you look at stress
17:00 Knowing the rhythm of your day, your priorities, and planning
18:20 Personal interventions, the ‘tools in the toolkit’ e.g., deep breathing, mindfulness techniques, new work on DBT, Pop Therapy
25:05 Challenges now with escalating pace, needing to say no more often, importance of prioritizing based on knowing what are your values
28:50 Wish for the younger generation: prioristing the important things and still having time to accomplish what you want to in work, needing to make time for family and self
30:08 End
Final notes:
Pop Therapy - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/pop-therapy/
Mindfulness – loads of resources https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/mindfulness
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy