How do I manage research operations and recruit participants?

Running a study and running the operation around it are not the same job, and no one warns you of that. The study is the part you trained for. The operation, the scheduling, the recruiting, the endless coordination, is a whole second set of skills you are being asked to pick up on the fly. Feeling overwhelmed is not a personal failing. It is the natural result of doing two jobs at once. Recruiting is often the piece that sinks people, because it depends on others saying yes on their own time. The trick is to make participating easy and clear: a simple ask, an obvious benefit, a low cost in effort. And build a small pipeline rather than chasing each person, so you always have more coming than you need right now. Start by writing down every operational task the study requires, in one list, out of your head and onto paper. Half the overwhelm is trying to track it all mentally. Once it is visible, you can order it, hand parts off, and stop carrying the whole thing in your mind at once.