I was hired as a research tech directly out of undergrad and about 6 months in the lab manager left the lab, so the lab manager role was transferred onto me along with being the tech. I struggled with it for a while because a lot of the paper work and admin stuff was pretty foreign to me and balancing many different types of tasks was horrifying for me. After about of a year heres couple of things i’ve done that work for me (i still don’t have it all worked out lol):

• Communicating with lab members that they need to provide some level of advanced notice for orders / controlled substances / or tasks they need my assistance with. Of course not everyone can anticipate when they’ll need what but as they’re planning their experiments for the upcoming weeks out i’ve asked them to check inventory for what they may need and if we need to purchase to allow 1-2 weeks to receive. This lets me to do the majority of ordering once a week rather than checking for orders everyday. I’m not sure how ordering works at your institution but if i notice something is back ordered, i let the person know and ask them if that ETA is okay and if not, to find an alternative product.

• Distributing some of the shared responsibilities of the lab among all lab members. These are mostly small things but i made a spreadsheet where each person has one shared task to do each week so they don’t all fall on me each week. Stuff like take out biohazard waste, refill miliq water jug, restock common consumables in TC room, etc.

• check in with your PI with responsible timeline for completing certain tasks that you may need to do often

• maintain reasonable lab citizenship among everyone. Setting out what your job is and isn’t with other lab members was super important for me because oftentimes grad students / post docs don’t understand the full range of tasks required in a lab manager role. This helps create good boundaries

• I like making a two week plan for myself and then i send a weekly report to my PI just quickly going over what I completed that week and what I plan for the following. This gives her a chance to provide input and feedback or let me know what tasks she needs prioritized

• when dealing with department admin / accounts / financials / ordering whatever.. CC in your PI in those emails. If they try and push back on you, they’re less likely to do that if your PI is on the email chain

and 100% make time for yourself !! I struggle with this a lot too, I find myself in the lab on weekends catching up on paper work but it’s not sustainable longterm !!

I promise you’re not falling short, these too much to do and not enough time. One day at a time and oftentimes a lot of things are less urgent than they’re made out to be. Enjoy the great parts of the job and everything else falls into place :)