This week we talk with Melissa Spencer about handling multiple projects. Melissa is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Virginia. She is a job market candidate this year! Melissa’s research focuses on well-being of women and minorities, across the areas of reproductive health, infectious diseases & domestic violence.

Alex Hollingsworth - is an Assistant Professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs at Indiana University. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth

Sebastian Tello-Trillo - an Assistant Professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Follow Sebastian @dsebastiantello

Links:

We were talking about how to improve "focus" during work. One technique is the Pomodoro technique. You only need a 25 minute timer, but if you care for more fancy apps, Sebastian uses Tide (https://tide.fm/en_US/). He has also heard good things from [Forest]. Alex uses Focus-to-do (https://www.focustodo.cn).

Melissa started her own chapter of women in economics at UVA. If you are interested in starting a chapter, she recommends checking out the resources from "Women in Economics at Berkeley" (http://calwomenofecon.weebly.com)

In terms of recommendation of the week. Melissa recommends speaking to people that are not economist about your own research.

Sebastian's recommendation is to have a "Nice Emails" folder. Save any email in PDF format in this folder for when you are feeling down but also for any potential review you may have in the future

Alex's recommendation of the week  is a software that blocks access to fun-website so you can concentrate on your work. It's called self-control (https://selfcontrolapp.com)