Ticked off - and really happy!

As scientists our jobs involve a lot of project management: I myself at this moment am running three projects within one umbrella project, and this requires good organisation skills, good time management and note keeping.  Note keeping I would say is the most important, and although I am the first to admit I am not perfect: I have recorded notes in pencil instead of pen *gasp* - but only because I had lost my pen down the back of the bench - and I scribble and scrawl instead of, er, write; I do make an effort to get everything down of what I have done that day - what the outcome was and what I am going to do next.  I cannot describe how frustrating and sometimes how nerve-wracking it is, while you are setting up a complicated experiment - that may have to run its course overnight or over the weekend - for you to get distracted for one tiny second and forget what you have just done, or just added!!! At this point you have two choices: you can either throw it all away and start again - and waste materials (possibly some of which you have had to meticulously prepare yourself) and time and money, OR, you can continue, hoping that you have just done what you thought you had done right,

.......and spend the rest of the evening or your weekend biting your nails off.

SO ALL HAIL THE GREAT LAB BOOK! (Or laptop, note pad, ipad, whatever you prefer), the great keeper of reaction mixtures! - where every ticked off component is a swipe of  relief and assurance that it has been truly added and is contributing to your experiments success! (Or you'd hope so).

Yes, note keeping is important, and in this job it can be a very reassuring and pleasing to be ticked off all the time!