In today’s competitive research landscape, we are often rewarded for over-production but rarely taught system maintenance. For Early Career Researchers (ECRs), the pressure to be a high-output researcher, an inspiring teacher, and a departmental citizen creates a workload that is often physically and cognitively unsustainable.

In this seminar, Rachael will translate the principles of Systems Sustainability into a professional framework for the next generation of academics. Whether you are managing lab equipment, complex datasets, or human participants, the logic remains the same: to produce high-quality output over a 40-year career, you must optimise your most limited resource, your time.

Key Takeaways:

• The Resource Depletion Model: Moving from time management to energy management by understanding the cognitive cost of task-switching across research, teaching, and admin.
• Strategic Growth vs. Scope Creep: Distinguishing between career-building opportunities and time-zapping activities that give no career return on investment (i.e. when do you say yes and when no?)
• The Zero-Waste Workflow: Maximising the outputs from your time input by recycling, e.g. turning a conference poster into a paper, or a teaching module into a public engagement project.
• Engineering Resilience: Building buffer capacity into your schedule to handle the inherent unpredictability of academic life.

Meet the speaker

Professor Rachael Rothman
Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She is Co-Director of UK-HyRES, Director of the South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre, Co-Director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, Lead of the Life Cycle Assessment Regulatory Science and Innovation Network and Academic Lead for Sustainability at the University of Sheffield. Time Management is essential to balance the roles and responsibilities!