Working hours, remote work, and vacation

As our work is predominantly theoretical/computational, we have a lot of flexibility around when and where we work. Please set your hours based on how you work best. That being said, part of our job is being a contributing member to the lab community, and in my experience the spontaneous interactions we have here are some of the most impactful for the quality of our research. I'm generally in lab ~930-~6, and I try to be as available as possible during that time.

If it fits you, I would encourage you to plan one day a week where you work from home (or elsewhere out of office). This shift in perspective can be helpful for your work and I encourage you to take advantage of this time to think freely and critically about your project and current approaches. I do ask that you plan to attend lab meetings in person -- in my experience, remote attendance encourages people to listen (at best), rather than participate, in lab meetings. Also, I ask that you plan to be physically in lab 3-4 days a week. Of course, this can vary week to week and exceptions will be made to fit people’s circumstances.

I will sometimes message at evenings, or on weekends. Please do not think this means I expect you to act on, or even read, the message until the next workday unless it’s specifically designated as urgent/time sensitive. It only means that I thought of something relevant to your project and didn’t want to forget. If you'd prefer I not message you outside of working hours (unless urgent), please let me know and I'll schedule these for the next workday.

I expect you will be taking vacations. I usually take off from the weekend before Christmas until the weekend after new years, a few days around thanksgiving, a week or two over the summer, and the various official 3-day weekends. I’ll lightly respond to emails during these times, do some reading, maybe some writing. But in general I like to use this time to recharge, spend some time with family and hobbies, and I encourage you all to do the same. For more about work-life balance in academia, please see [Work-life balance] TODO: @dan include link.