77. Mastering Grant Writing: Avoiding Last Minute Hassles

Are you exhausted from the last-minute hassles, all-nighters, and sacrificing your weekends just to get that grant application in on time? If you've ever found yourself thinking, "I can't keep doing this," then this episode is tailor-made for you.

In this episode of the Academic Revolution podcast, hosted by Harvard-trained pediatric hematologist-oncologist and leadership coach Inga Hofmann, you'll discover how to avoid last-minute hassles and stress associated with grant submissions. This episode is packed with practical advice and strategies to help you manage your time effectively, work with deadlines, and create a strategic plan that visualizes your end goal and works backward.

• Introduction to the Last-Minute Grant Hassle (00:00)
• How to Write Impactful Grants (01:31)
• The Problem with Last-Minute Work (02:10)
• Breaking the Procrastination Cycle (03:32)
• Creating a Plan with the End in Mind (07:26)
• Practical Steps to Success (13:22)
• Conclusion and Strategy Call Offer (17:37)

LIMITED TIME OFFER! To further personalize these strategies to your unique situation, I'm offering a free strategy session! This is your opportunity to get tailored advice and transform your grant submission process.

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Transcript

0:01

Last minute hassles all nighters and riding on weekends. Just to get your grant in. I'm sure you have been there before. And let's talk in this episode, how to avoid this. So if you have ever. Felt like, oh my goodness. I'm tired of this last minute. Hassle and crunch for the deadlines. This episode is for you stay tuned for after the music and we will be right back. Welcome to the Academic Revolution podcast, where we are creating a movement to change the future of academic medicine forever. I'm Inge Hoffman, a Harvard trained pediatric hematologist, oncologist, and a passionate leadership coach with over 20 years of experience in academic medicine. This is the first podcast for academic physicians that will show you how to achieve higher productivity, become an impactful leader, and create a highly successful career doing what you love without sacrificing your personal life. You and I know that the traditional system is broken. So it's time to say no to the old publish or perish mentality and say yes to lasting change. Join me as we transform academic medicine from the inside out, one physician at a time, starting right here with the academic revolution podcast. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the academic revolution podcast. I'm your host. Hoffman. I'm so excited. You are here. And I want to talk a little bit more about how to write impactful grants in this episode. In the last episode, we talked a lot about how to make sure that your grandkids funded and look at some hidden factors in particular. Appealing to the emotional response that where we always have. In the impact that you grant can have when writing grants. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and take a listen and shared with your friends. But today let's talk about some practical aspects. Off how to actually get all that writing done. Because sexual first, we have all been sitting there trying to cram in a writing project. And beat the grant deadline last minute. And. For the most part, this is never a very pleasant experience. I certainly have thought to myself. I will never do that again. That was horrible. That was so stressful. I'm so glad it's over. And that silly grant is submitted and you're just like having a sigh of relief and to tell yourself you're not going to ever do that again. But guess what? Next time the grant deadline comes around, you find yourself in the same hassle. And, you know, often. We think, well, you know, that's how I walk well with the deadlines and pressure. And the truth is. And do you want, and I already know that we never do our best work last minute. That is just not really possible. You don't do get best work last minute. Because you might not even have enough time to proof read. To read it over to leave your mentors or others that give you feedback with enough time to review the grant and maybe find some you know, loophole was just maybe even grammatical arrows, all that good stuff. So. We all know that good things take time. And so we want to talk about that a little bit today. I know that a lot of us say. Oh, I function best under pressure. And. I understand where that comes from. And I've used to believe that too, because we all need deadlines in order to get us into action. Because if we don't have deadlines, y'all have experienced that. And I have yet to have a coaching client that says, I don't really need a deadline. Right. They usually tell me. You know, I function very well when I have a deadline, like a grant. I can get it done somehow. But if I don't have a deadline such as a manuscript first submission then I'll really struggle and things procrastinate and linger around longer than they should. And chances are you have experienced that too? Or you can think about a time when that happened to you. So when we say, The grant deadlines, really a function well under high pressure and deadlines. It's a bit of a lazy answer when excuse, because. Truth is at least personally for me. And I'm just keeping it very real here. Is that we just have to make it book when we committed to that deadline. Right. And because we didn't get our act together earlier. And I totally understand why that is because in academic medicine, they are so many competing forces that are against us. And if we're not careful, all those competing interests from other people and the things we have to juggle clinically administratively teaching. Private life, little kids, all these things. Compete for our attention and something that isn't urgent in a world where we constantly get bombarded with seemingly origin things. Notice that I didn't say that. Bale urgent. It is very easy to then put the important things to the side and said, I would get to that tomorrow. And that's how we then end up with last minute hassles. I have done that before, more than I like to admit. I'm sure you have been there. So, and again, there is no shame or condemnation. It's just like noticing, okay. This has been a pattern. It is really hard to break it in our stressful, intense epidemic environment. I'm not going to lie about that, but I think there were some tangible things that you and I can do to not get into this and just tweak things and see how that serves us better. And that's what I want to talk to you about today to give you some practical pips. And the last thing, of course, you're probably like, yeah, I know that I really don't do my best work last minute. I, this a no brainer. Why are you having a whole episode about this? Well, I think that's be, they come stone to, okay. We know that this is not the best way to do things. But how can we overcome that pattern and how can we do it differently? Where's this letting deadlines sneak up on us. How can we be intentional with our time and getting the work done ahead of time? And by night. I've worked with coaching clients. This comes up a lot, probably for. Almost all of my coaching clients. I would say. At some point or another, they face a deadline like this at grant, a manuscript that needs speed. Getting done. And oftentimes we come up with a plan. And they often say, I need a plan to get all these projects done. And we love our plants and medicine. Don't we, we, we say that daily in the hospital on rounds, right? We need to come up with a plan for this patient and the same is true for your academic life. So one thing that I found incredible, helpful, this is probably. One of the most transformational things I've learned over the years and that I apply. With my clients routinely, is that working with the end in mind? This quote, I think comes from Steve cubby. And he often said, you know, when you want to work with the, into mind, What we often tend to do is that we look at a goal. Let's say I need to get my grants submitted by whatever next. Submission deadline for the NIH, whether it's October, and then we say, okay, what are all the things I need to do? And then before, you know, what kind of time progress is fast and you'll feel like in the auntie ran out of time and not all the tasks are completed. What helps is working with the end in mind and then setting clear milestones, what you need to do to accomplish along the way. So let's say you want to submit a grant for spring 20, 25. From the time I'm recording this as an example. Then you'll can think about, okay, what if I'm submitting this now or I've have just submitted this grant. Look. At yourself in the future and say, what does it look like if I already accomplished this goal, how do I feel, but has been done and kind of look at that, how good that feels. It's important to visualize those things. And they bomb. This time, I got it in with ease not last minute. And it felt great. And I'm celebrating with my family. So, what does the end product look like? Again, visualize that. And then usually I take my clients through a process. To help them think backwards working from this end in mind. What would need to be accomplished? Working in a backwards timeline. So if you look at spring 2025, we then might look at okay, if it's, let's say March, you know, what do I need to get done by by January? 2025 or by December 31st, 24. And then looking back, maybe on a monthly basis. Okay. What are the milestones now working backwards that need to be accomplished. In order to fulfill that goal. And that is very, very powerful because when we are working backwards, We actually get some clarity. Needs to be done. What I've often found that if we're facing forward, And we are looking at, okay, the grant needs to be done and submit it by X date. Then we kind of looking forward and I'm, we're getting BD. BD easily overwhelmed. Oh my goodness. I have two. Right. All these sections, we are shut up again. What. I need to brag first. And it can feel very overwhelming and then people kind of get a little bit flabbergasted and stressed out and working on bits and pieces here and there. When we work with the end in mind, we basically say, okay, here's the finished end product? What happened a month before that? What did I have in my hand? Chance to saw a month before the grant submission deadline. I probably have a pretty close to final draft. Ready? You have a, basically a pretty final draft ready that maybe you're showing to. Collaborators, mentors, sad, or to give them enough time and then you need to submit the whole thing to you are. Department for submission and for approval. Right. So see how that gives you already more clarity, and then you go backwards and say, okay, if that is the goal of the month before. What do I need to have it ready? The month prior to that, maybe you will want to have a pretty good. A life raft draft, you know, all the pieces on planes, but you're still tweaking. Some of the aspects you're proofreading, maybe giving some already feedback from mentors, et cetera. So you go backwards in the process to help you gain clarity. And every time I do this, I've run trainings on this. I've done retreats on like vision retreats will help people with this process. When they're set certain goals for the year. I've done this with my individual coaching clients. And every time it is so powerful, but a big aha, this grades and that people feel like at the end of the process, when we were talking about. Okay, what are you going to do next week? It is Krista CLIA and their field like. I can do this. And that's what I want for you. So again, work with the end in mind and give you enough. Self and have Rico room to actually get it done. Men do you do that? It creates a powerful tool and plan in your hands. That you actually feel empowered, not over bomb. And have very clear steps in direction. What needs to happen? Month to month, week to week down to what need needs to get done tomorrow in order to baby-step yourself to success. But this grand or minus script or whatever it is. And you hear me say this a lot, baby. Step yourself to success. That's the key part, because often we get so overwhelmed with a big picture, that band, not sure where to even start. And then we freeze and then we procrastinate because we are overwhelmed or lacking clarity. And then we kind of don't know what to do and don't start. I don't want. And that is the worst place, because then we keep on procrastinating and get into last minute, hassle. And obviously interruptions. Of clinical care and other random things we could be doing will be much easier than really getting some thought on paper with a grant or manuscript. But with this process. You will have clarity what to do. And then it's much easier to say, okay, this week I need to. Maybe. Outline my specific games and create a very rough draft with three bullet points each for my specific aims. Now that is something you can suddenly do and say, I'm on a schedule two hours this week one, I'm going to just do a brain dump session and sketch it out. And for the second one, I'm going to take all these random ideas that I threw on a piece of paper. And now I'm going to put them at least in an outline in bullet points, not even concrete sentences. Now suddenly see how that feels much more manageable versus I need to write the specific aims page and it needs to be perfect by the end of the week. So when you do work with the end in mind, you allow yourself to put things in small increments that become manageable. And then the key part. Is now that you have clarity and a clear path forward to your success. Now of course, you need to set yourself appointments and dates with yourself. To actually work on these concrete things every week. And that is very powerful. And really leads to success. Because my mentor, John Maxwell, it says. Success is determined by your daily agenda. It's not these. Hey, Rorick sessions over the weekend, where you abandon your family and work late at night. To get things done. That is a big self-sacrifice and honestly, Not how most people enjoyed working. But the success really. Comes, when you focus on little steps on a daily or regular lab basis, maybe you don't have it every day down because you have clinic days and maybe yes, you will be on service at times. But have routines around. You are. Academic productivity that help you create success. So. Do your best work, do it step by step. Scheduled appointments for yourself, be mindful of collaborators and mentors that you need to incorporate in these milestones. And. again, work with the, into mind and create these rough milestones along the path of months and weeks and days. Guess what? Then you have wiggle room to marinate. Then you will have regular room for when your child gets sick. Then you will have wiggle room and you have already accounted for. Oh, Matt, wake I'm on service. Nothing will happen when I'm in service. I hope this helped you. Key part is, pick a goal. Let's say it's a grant deadline. The spot we focused on in this episode, okay, this is my commitment to myself. To get this Grandon, make sure it is. I hate the word realistic, but make sure it's realistic. Like I had people come to me and they say, I decided to put this big grant and animals like a two-three week deadline and they had nothing done well, again, that is a project that Papa beco. Sideways because it's just not enough time to do any decent, good work. Even if you work on an odd day and it's also not fair to mentors or collaborators to put them in that timeline and say, well, because I didn't get my act together. You now have to respond within 24 hours. And we all hate that when people do that to us. So be mindful to not do that to others. So I can work with the end in mind, pick a date, pick a commitment that is. That is actually doable. Yes, it can be a stretch goal, but please make sure that it's doable and you're not trying to submit an For three weeks from now, when you have a zero. The Sierra club, but you have Horner bride about nothing Britain. Down and you're starting literally from scratch. That's probably not a wise choice. But let's say three months from now or four months from now, put it out. Work with the end in mind. See what it looks like as an end product, then March backwards, straight milestones for yourself down to what are you going to do next week? I understand this all sounds great. And probably you're like this. Really good, but I'm kind of trying to figure out how this works. So if you want some help with this, to map out your timeout and your milestones. To get your grant or your manuscript mapped out. And with a specific plan. I want to offer you to hop on a strategy call with me. That will be a free call. It is my gift to you all for being a loyal listener. Let's just hop on a call for about 45 minutes, 30, 45 minutes. And get you some first action steps together to create your milestones and your timeline. So that you have a strategy and a plan, how to get that next grant written. And then if you're interested, exploring how further working together would look like, and if that would feel right to you and seems like a good fit. We can totally talk about that as well. That's so if you want a strategy session we each out to me, what I will do is I will put the link, how to schedule that call in the comments of the show notes again, to shownotes. He confined on whatever app you listen to. For this podcast and then look in the notes below. That will be a link. How to schedule a call with me. And if you have trouble with that, you can also find me on Facebook. Under anger Hoffman, one F two ins and reach up there. So have a wonderful day. I hope the surfed you and talk to you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the Academic Revolution podcast today. If you've gotten value from today's episode, I would love for you to share it with your friends and colleagues and help create a movement that changes the future of academic medicine forever. Also, don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn and visit ingahoffman. com for more information on how to work with me. Links are in the show notes. Until then, be well and see you on the next episode of the Academic Revolution podcast.