1. The importance of working hard cannot be understated (not the Importance of Being Earnest which is a play by Oscar Wilde, I guess but is not relevant, as in the stories of Stephen Leacock, where one begins with it was a cold and stormy night on the west coast of Ireland but it is not relevant since our story takes place on the east coast of Scotland, or something along those lines).
2. The importance of time management.
3. A famous, now retired eminent professor, would say that he would get up at 4 am to work. Not everyone can do that, but the advantage of that would be you get a couple of hours of freshness to yourself and to your work without distraction.
4. Develop good work habits.
5. Keep a diary and note down what you did every single day.
(An office mate in UD, Sean Oughton who used to be around on FB had exemplary word habits, and he would note down at the end of day what he did, and would file away every single paper he had photocopied and give it a tag and make an entry in a file so that when he wrote a paper in latex, he had a bibtex entry ready. An exemplar, but almost impossible to mimic).
6. Never play down your own ideas. No need to think that only others have good ideas and that you don't. And if you have good ideas, work them out to completion. A piece of advice given to me by my own thesis advisor Qaisar Shafi whose significant other Monika Shafi often reads my posts.
7. According to a late professor who talked to me over 30 years ago, when asked what research is, Michael Faraday is supposed to have said, work, finish, publish.
8. IMHO publishing is important because it gives you discipline and forces you to organize your thoughts and your work and also is a `deliverable' and is a good insurance policy against detractors. Of course you run the risk of being called a paper churner, but you have to live with that.
9. Obviously teaching is important. Keep meticulous notes and publish them, because you never know who might find them useful. Also it is something you will find useful if you have to teach the same course again and again.
10. Try to find a good publisher for your books. My friend Swati Meherishi across at Springer told me once that Indian students like books by Indian authors. Never quite understood why, but a publisher knows better than I do.
11. If you are an experimentalist, get your lab going asap, and generate data and organize it and work very hard to get it going.
12. Obviously getting funds for your research is very important. Leave no stone unturned.
13. In whichever city you are in, try and find others in the field and try to discuss and collaborate. Do not become isolated.
14. Organize small workshops and seminars at 0 cost. It has immeasurable value.
15. Involve students in your own teaching and research. Of course they are young, but they will enrich you.
I must also add that very few of these pieces of advice are those that I have applied to myself, because I am not very organized. But that is life. I would also advocate the pommodoro method for good work habits, if you are keen on it.
A very useful resource is You and Your Research by Richard Hamming. I found it very influential when it came to myself. I should not say which part, but it has many parts and different people may find different parts useful.
I guess I should relish my senior citizen status since people come to me for such gyaan and advice. It should be borne in mind that I am not a particularly distinguished nor is my career really exemplary. But I do admit it could have been worse.
