Sorry for the delay in posting this week! Getting settled in at the fieldwork site was a little more time- and energy-consuming than I had anticipated. As I’m here thinking, talking, and looking, I carry with me a basic idea about history: we use the past, in the present, to act toward the future.
As I read discussion here, in social media, and in blog posts elsewhere, I am sometimes reminded of things I knew to do when I was a student. I had methods for managing my time and work flow, for sneaking up on my projects, for leaving directions for myself when I picked up writing the next day...I used those tools to write my dissertation and to publish articles early in career. I know that I could really use some of those methods now when I find myself struggling to get things done, but they are not easily accessible as they once were.
For this week, think about what tricks and tools you’ve adopted with regard to your scholarship. Is there something helpful that you revive to make things easier for you now? Can the past help you work toward the future (completing your goals)? We often learn as much from things that didn’t work, so feel welcome to share the “no” along with the “yes.”
As we get the second half started, here are last week’s goals:
allan wilson
1. submit FS
2. Do full draft of CR revisions
3. Eat healthily while away in field. Limit the chocolate and other sugar/ fat/ crap.
Contingent Cassandra
1. Get current swimming pass; swim at least once; spend some time in the garden.
2. Work on connecting/reconnecting with friends & family and planning trips for last 1/3 of summer. 3. More organization work; take a load to storage.
4. Finish up loose ends of computer upgrade.
Daisy
Mostly catching up time I suspect, and planning...
On the TRQ front - dig through 4 weeks of email and respond to important stuff.
But for the planning TLQ stuff there is more important things to do!
1) Get back to Hideous Paper and figure out what actually needs to be done, pick the three top things and just do them... Goal is to submit before I leave again.
2) Sit down with a bottle of wine and figure out how much stuff needs to be done for the tenure package being submitted in September... Pick three things and do them.
3) Do one day of updating professional pages/bios/googlescholarpages etc. I hate doing that and have been putting it off forever...
4) Book a few camping days
5) RUN!!!!!!
Dame Eleanor Hull
1. Do something interesting with last day before going home.
2. Review one chunk of translation.
3. Do a new set of minor revisions.
4. Re-establish home routines: gym, cooking, work schedule.
5. Arrange August travel.
Earnest English
1. Gardening: order elderberries, blueberries, and raspberries this week? decide on short-term or fall planting stuff?
2. Do yoga or tai chi one day this week for 10 minutes.
3. Write for 10 minutes 3x a week and engage in supportive reading in 10 minute increments a couple times. Log it as work time.
4. Engage with Spirited stuff most days. VT.
5. Get Workthingthatmustbedone done. Schedule the thingies I've got to schedule. Send the email I need to send.
6. Keep up with Farmstead duties.
7. Herbalism project?
8. Reread Slow Prof Preface and comment on it on the blog?
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Start new wordcount/writing application (https://pacemaker.press/)
Unpack and organize at least one box per evening
Ask about odd bones at doctor on Friday
Post on Slow Professor
Good Enough Woman
1) 40 pages primary source.
2) 2 chapters/articles.
3) Fix bib entries, add 10 more.
4) Incorporate notes from the last two weeks' reading into drafts and footnotes.
5) Email post-graduate coordinator to make sure everything is on track. Maybe email supervisors to find out when I'll get feedback?
6) Make the damn phone call to renew the damn AAA membership so we don't get stranded. Why do I dislike making calls so much?
heu mihi
1. Finish revision if possible. Don't, if not.
2. Write 2000 words of chapter 5/6.
3. Read three things.
4. Meditate 5 times.
5. Yoga 3 times.
6. Continue enjoying the summer.
7. Start revising ch. 2/3 for writing group.
humming42
1 Get everything in order for fieldwork: hotel, car rental, packing
2 Confirm contacts in fieldwork locale
3 Finish grading all assignments except final
4 Figure out what to work on while traveling
5 Add new material to RBP Chapter 2
JaneB
1) make a lot of lists - teaching, research, domestic. Read through the notes in my conferencing notebook and the last 4 weeks of (neglected) emails and transfer all the little tasks to postits, then start grouping postit list items and allocating them to points over the next couple of weeks - corral them, pin them down, make them stop yelling and distracting me from starting anything!
2) re-engage with the Special Issue Paper - let's say 500 words
3) spend an hour or so excavating and organising my desks at work and home - even if this just means putting all the paper in a box, make it LOOK better, and symbolically take back the terretory you can
4) contact the external organisation which according to a very well hidden and obscure part of NorthernUni's website is contracted to offer free short-term counselling to university staff. I keep finding myself >thisclose< to embarrassing emotional melt-downs over the lack of information and potential scaryness of the reorganisation, and know it's cumulative from the last nearly 3 years of unpleasantness (since Incoming joined the Uni, although he was a symptom not a cause, and it's just unfortunate that he is a very bad sort of manager for me - people who ignore their email then swoop in a criticise make me paralysingly anxious, that constant sent-to-the-head-teachers-office and about-to-be-sacked feeling which is almost certainly disproportionate and DEFINITELY unhelpful). Might as well see if I can get an external perspective. Although contacting strangers is scary!
KJHaxton
1. prep for meeting
2. work on thing 1 and acronym report
3. add rows to blanket
4. finish the teaching stuff
Susan
1. Make last two revisions in text
2. Finish permissions work
3. Begin bibliography/footnotes project. Get through Introduction. (That's the worst because everything is new to the bibliogrpahy.)
4. READ, have fun. On Thursday I start a week with my three stepsons and 2 spouses and 2 grandchildren in a house I've rented. This includes a party for some 30 family members in a place I don't live on Saturday. I like everyone involved, but they are three brothers, and there are dynamics, so I want to try to keep calm and be low key.
Waffles
1. Draft 3 letters of rec for my grant app (hate writing my own LOR)
2. Spend at least 1 full day on relationship paper.
3. Spend 1/2 day on religion paper
4. Get coding report done.
I think that the best system I ever developed for myself was actually in the writing of a novel back in 2000, the year before I started graduate school. I was (initially) unemployed, thinking of myself as a writer but never writing, and I got fed up. "Self," I told myself, "you need to write 4 [hand-written, single-spaced] pages a day for the next six months--weekends optional--if you ever want to call yourself a writer again." And I did it, producing 200,000 words by mid-July.
ReplyDeleteThat kind of dictatorial, forced-march writing actually really works for me, and I can get a lot done that way. Of course, it needs revision, but it's THERE. I've been applying that (in various forms--sometimes it's time, sometimes word count) to my scholarship this year, and I've been more productive this year than I've been since like 2006, when I was cranking out the dissertation.
Last week's goals:
1. Finish revision if possible. Don't, if not.
SO CLOSE! Still waiting on one book.
2. Write 2000 words of chapter 5/6.
DONE
3. Read three things.
Read 2. It feels like I read more, though--this may be inaccurate.
4. Meditate 5 times.
Got 3. Circumstances, like a child waking up unseasonably early, intervened.
5. Yoga 3 times. DONE
6. Continue enjoying the summer.
Mostly.
7. Start revising ch. 2/3 for writing group.
Started.
Also: Draft Kzoo proposal.
DONE
Next week's goals:
I'll be traveling through Wed., so this will be a short list.
1. Finish infernal revisions!
2. Finish draft of ch. 2/3 for writing group, other than thorny paleographic problem.
3. Reread another 3 single-spaced pages of ch. 5/6 and work on straightening them out.
4. Read one thing.
5. Meditate twice.
6. Yoga once.
Four pages a day is tremendous. I'm reminded of this from Anne Lamott: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft."
DeleteYou've given yourself a way to find a place to start, and a very significant start too.
Also yay for good progress on goals. "Mostly" continuing to enjoy the summer is great. Being mindful about taking pleasure in things while we're in the midst of them can really benefit quality of life.
Topic: Tricks and tools from the past
ReplyDeleteI realized with a start that there are things I have let go that were benefiicial to my scholarship. I used to take copious notes, since photocopying was too expensive when I was a graduate student. I was telling Son #2 why he didn’t often reread his notes. He was thinking that his notetaking was superfluous, but I was pointing out how central it is. The act of writing down the notes internalizes the knowledge to the point that one often doesn’t have to refer to the notes any longer. Then I realized that I don’t take notes like I used to, content with scribbling a word or two in the margin of a photcopied article. I don’t internalize it like I used to, and I find myself rereading articles ad nauseam. I saw a study that taking notes on a computer isn’t the same, either--it needs to be done by hand. Fascinating stuff, and I plan to experiment with it.
Also, heu mihi’s point about writing every day hits home, too. I spend so much time getting back to where I was. I have heard of people who stop mid-sentence to prime the pump, but just doing something, however small, to connect with the project every day helps me.
Last week’s goals:
Start the new wordcount/writing application (https://pacemaker.press/) Yes--and I am finding it very helpful.
Unpack and organize at least one box per evening--Yes, except for Friday, when I was at doctor’s appointments all day.
Ask about odd bones at doctor on Friday. Yes.
Post on Slow Professor--No, to my dismay!
Analysis:
It continued to be a crazy week, but that is starting to feel normal. We spent today planting flowers in the brick planter by the front door, and in a couple of concrete urns in the back yard, as well as putting up some hanging baskets. It went quite a ways to making it feel more like home.
Settling into the house is taking a fair amount of time and energy, but it feels good. I have been keeping up with some of the writing I planned to do, but not all. I plan to work more on it this week, and got some interlibrary loan books awaiting me tomorrow. I encourage anyone looking for a wordcount/time accountability tool to check out Pacemaker (https://pacemaker.press/). I really like it.
I spent five hours on the train to and from New York CIty on Friday, and despite best intentions to post on the Slow Professor, I slept most of the trip. I can only accept that I must have needed the sleep.
The return to work was a bit difficult, in that in addition to catching up with a lot of email, I had to work on my annual faculty report. If it meant anything to anyone, I would still dislike doing it, hating blowing my own horn, but it means nothing. There is no impact on salary, no pat on the back. I always respond to my staff, knowing they will hear nothing up the line, but the silence is deafening, and frustrating.
Next week’s goals:
Keep up with Slow Professor
Write or plan everyday on Pierpont article
Continue unpacking one box a night
Call for doctors’ appointments
I am ecstatic to be back on the internet and in better touch--I was stunned to see the depth of my dependence! I hope everyone has a lovely week!
Thanks for the recommendation on Pacemaker. I bookmarked it and will check it out.
DeleteI agree completely on your thoughts on notetaking. I have been trying to remember this summer that a word or an asterisk in the margin doesn't mean anything when I revisit the article a month from now. But if I write out what I'm thinking about while reading, I have the beginning of an argument, a paragraph, or a meaningful thread.
Settling in comfortably to a new home is such a good thing. I am staying at an airbnb for fieldwork and thinking about how my host has made little decorative touches to the apartment that make a real difference in how welcoming the space is. At some point, probably in the fall, I'll try to perk up my homefront too.
*have some interlibrary loan books awaiting me tomorrow* sheesh!
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to think about useful things I did during my PhD, and honestly couldn't come up with a single thing I think I did well... Ask me again in ten years :) It feels like everything I learned was in the "don't" category... At least I'm making new mistakes these days, not redoing old ones. The best tool for me is the simplest "sit down and write something" approach, doesn't matter whether I use bribes or threats or tricks to get it done! Actually, more specifically, writing first thing in the morning by getting up at 5, or at least making sure to write first thing Monday morning when I get into the office, both help set up the day or week for success.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good week for getting back to routines and normality after a month away.
Last week's goals:
1) Get back to Hideous Paper and figure out what actually needs to be done, pick the three top things and just do them... Goal is to submit before I leave again. I LOOKED, I SHUDDERED, AND I CLOSED THE FILE... FAIL...
2) Sit down with a bottle of wine and figure out how much stuff needs to be done for the tenure package being submitted in September... Pick three things and do them. DONE, and it is not that bad... READ ALL THE RULES, READ 2 OTHER PACKAGES FOR CONTEXT, EMAILED REQUESTS FOR COMMENTS, and UPDATED CV.
3) Do one day of updating professional pages/bios/googlescholarpages etc. I hate doing that and have been putting it off forever... THOUGHT ABOUT IT and did a new bio.
4) Book a few camping days DONE
5) RUN!!!!!! DONE
This week's goals:
1) Back to Hideous Paper - revise methods and results
2) Revisions for Minor Revision paper
3) RUN!!!
4) 2 Abstracts and 2 travel applications
5) Little grant application
6) Big grant Notice of Intent
Have a great week!
Sorry that Hideous Paper is still being Hideous. With hope, it will find a way to meet you in a better space where you can work with it.
DeletePreparing the tenure portfolio is agonizing so definitely feel greatly satisfied for getting work done there. We have an annual review process that is a vacuum, similar to what EAM mentioned above. And while it feels like a waste of time, it certainly made it easier to put my tenure package together.
1. Draft 3 letters of rec for my grant app (hate writing my own LOR) - DONE
ReplyDelete2. Spend at least 1 full day on relationship paper. - DONE
3. Spend 1/2 day on religion paper - NOT DONE
4. Get coding report done. - DONE
Tips and Tricks:
I have quite a few - the ones I'll talk about now are related to dealing with overwhelming or critical feedback on written products. I created these strategies during my dissertation, and they worked really well for helping me cope with my diss chair's feedback (she wasn't mean, she just never said ANYTHING positive and sometimes her word choice was less than ideal). First, I read through all comments. Next, I make an objective and clear to-do list of everything that I need to do. If the comments in the text are particularly stinging, I put my own comment in paraphrasing what I need to do, and then delete the more emotionally laden comment.
Then, I let it all sit overnight. The next day, I play music really loudly and make sure my mood is good (and I eat a good breakfast) and I make a smaller to do list from my big one, and I just power through it. I get easy things done first so that I feel successful. I keep my door closed so that I just keep working without any interruptions. And then this process is repeated as many days as needed.
As it happens, I got feedback from my postdoc mentor this weekend on my F32, and I'm having to do this process. She is so nice, but my confidence is a bit low - so some of her comments hurt a bit. So, I just made my big to do list of 30 items, and tomorrow morning, I will start working on it.
This week:
1. Get next version of F32 turned around by Wednesday morning.
2. Work on relat paper
3. Get letter done
4. Try to get back to religion paper
As an aside, does anyone else have a colleague who constantly complains about how busy they are and how much they are working? I have a colleague like that and it drives me INSANE. She constantly complains about having had to have worked over the weekend (that's every weekend for me), and how she has SO MUCH work to do. I have to stop letting it tweak me so much - but I'm not a complainer about work load, and I feel like colleagues who do complain about workload a lot tend to be thought of more highly - like people think they *really* are doing more than everyone else. It really annoys me, and it really shouldn't.
I love your R&R system. At the recent writing retreat, a colleague gave a presentation on a similar system she uses. It occurred to me that one of the significant benefits is that it makes the report back to editors/reviewers so easy because you've documented all of your revisions as you've made them.
DeleteComplaining Colleague reminds me of the ever-present Reviewer #2, explained here by Ashley ML Brown: "For those of you unfamiliar with the academic meme, Reviewer #2 is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the peer review system. No, wait, all that is wrong with the peer in peer review." There's even a Facebook group called "Reviewer 2 must be stopped." I don't currently have Complaining Colleague but I definitely know that type. It is so frustrating, especially when that person is perceived by the administration and others as being so dedicated and so successful because they really just won't shut up about it. I have empathy, and would welcome advice from others here.
Your "tip" for comments will be helpful for me as I'm in the home stretch of the PhD (if I ever receive the actual feedback!).
DeleteAs for "busy" colleague, I had a fellow grad student like that in my first M.A. program. I found myself getting into "I'm so busy" one-upmanship with her. I finally decided that when I'd see her, I'd just say things like, "Everything is great. It was a really productive weekend," or "My project is going really well," etc. The strategy worked. She was kind of floored--stunned into silence.
That's pretty much always my response. One of my profs calls it the "I'm busier than you are game" and advised us to never play it.
DeleteYES I have these they are so ANNOYING
DeleteYes, have known a couple of people who make a very good job of being busy all the time. It's a fairly effective means of not being given more to do so has some strategic value, and more strategic value if the 'higher ups' pay heed. But it is incredibly annoying and like Good Enough Woman, I don't engage in the busier game. I think it stems from a lack of awareness that everyone is busy, that no one is 'busier' than anyone else (it all levels out hopefully), and that everyone deserves to have their time respected.
DeleteI like the tips for dealing with feedback, making an action plan sounds like a productive means of dealing with difficult (productive) criticism.
Hello, everyone,
ReplyDeleteI missed last checking-in. Anyway.
Topic:
What worked well? It is difficult to think of any. However, one thing I am sure is that if I start, I can work on, but if I cannot start, I cannot start and postpone the work till the last minute. So what I try to do is how I can make a good start - easily, happily, and motivated. I have not found any good solution, though.
Last goals (from Week 8)
1) Set the time to write, and keep it. Amend it to fit to my working schedule better. - Not really. I ment to do it, but I didn’t.
2) Think about my problems from my mental aspect. Do what I need to do but have procrastinated so long, too long, because there is no formal deadline, only I have decided to do that. So it is me who have decided and have to. DO. - When I decided goals for the week, I thought I determined to do so. However, simply I did not. Why?
3) Continue to work on Chapter 2. Write a draft. (following Goodson and others, write first, revise later) - Done, but a little.
4) 5 minute exercise more than three times a day. Continue. - A few times.
Next goals:
1) Work on the review article I had put off for a long time.
2) Continue to work on Chapter 2.
3) 5 minute exercise more than three times a day.
Have a good week, everyone!
If your schedule allows, going somewhere for a writing date might be a good option. Whether to the library, a coffeehouse, or somewhere else (as an undergrad with a lot of tolerance for noise and distraction, I would go to McDonalds, where "get it done and get out of here" was easy to follow) so that you are literally setting aside time for writing. When I try to set writing time at home, it seldom gets done until, as you say, it's totally urgent and no longer enjoyable.
DeleteThank you for your comments, humming42! It sounds good to go somewhere - Maybe I can go to the university library for one hour or so and just concentrate what I need to do. Thank you for the idea!
DeleteTricks and tools: the most effective is a combination of doing just a little every day (write a sentence, read a section) and finding time for periodic deep engagement of two or more hours at a time. I once looked back to grad school, wondering how it was that I could take multiple classes then, yet now can't work effectively on multiple projects. I realized that in my grad program, it was normal to take incompletes and finish work in the summer, sometimes even years later. So in fact I wasn't working on multiple projects then, either, but choosing one to prioritize and just keeping up with the reading on others. That explained a lot.
ReplyDeleteAbout questions of time, energy, mental state, and so on, I need to do a whole post chez moi, but I'll say this here: I have recently got a handle on some food sensitivities I've had for a long time. That is, I knew about some of them, but not all, until the last few months. And now I feel about 100% better, at least 80% of the time. I sleep better, I have more energy, I don't feel like I'm struggling upstream when I'm trying to work. So if you suspect there's some health problem that you could fix or do better with (tinker with meds, exercise regularly, change your diet, make your workspace ergonomic), let me urge you to do it. Take the time / make the effort. Fixing a physical problem can show that that WAS the problem, not anything purely mental or psychological.
Last week's goals:
1. Do something interesting with last day before going home. YES (not super-interesting, as I had a massive headache, but it was a good day).
2. Review one chunk of translation. NO.
3. Do a new set of minor revisions. YES.
4. Re-establish home routines: gym, cooking, work schedule. YES.
5. Arrange August travel. NO.
I'm pleased with how fast I handled those revisions. And yet I'm in the same position I was before w/r/t revisions. Apart from being able to label something "forthcoming," I feel like I'm the Red Queen.
This week's goals:
1. Stick to exercise, cooking, work times, etc. routines.
2. Make progress with MMP-1 revisions.
3. Work on fall syllabuses and planning.
4. Make lists and plans for (a) House Stuff and (b) work, thinking carefully about remaining summer (about 5 weeks) and the transition to fall teaching.
Shouting out a "yes" for looking out for and looking into the physical problems. We do tend to forget that we are whole beings, and that we can't separate mind and body the way we were told to. What affects your body has consequences on your mental and emotional state, and vice versa. It's good and encouraging to know that you have more energy and clarity along with better sleep.
DeleteWhat kinds of scholarly productivity tricks from the past can I use now? I love the question and am very interested in other people's answers because my most productive period in Primary Field was when I was writing my dissertation. But I have responsibilities and calls for my time and attention that I didn't have then. While I did blog my productivity at the time (which was also my most productive blogging time), I don't think I can import many of those tools to my current life: waking up late, staying up late, working through the day whenever I wanted, switching to a coffee place where I couldn't moan loudly, scream, pace or talk to myself, going back home so I could pace/talk/moan my way through a problem without being arrested. My most productive Secondary Field/writing time was in Grad School, Part 1 and then early on when I was still focusing on SF. I think the difference is the community I had. I have no community around that work at this point. It's hard. What I need is a writing group. And before a writing group, I need to get some writing done so I have something to show my writing group. Which means I need to get writing. What I've noticed that's made me more productive overall is that most projects need to be broken down into steps, and then each step can be picked away at as time permits. What could this mean when applied to Secondary Field writing? It means I should make things easier for myself by breaking down what I need to do and figuring out how to get pieces done without a lot of fuss or sturm und drang. I have this project in a bunch of different files and feel like in order to really get my arms around it, I need to print out and reorganize and go through a massive purge, but I bet that's not true and that I can chip away at things. I need to spend some time figuring out how I can chip away at things and make things easier for myself.
ReplyDeleteThinking about all this makes me think how much I need to use heu mihi's forced-march approach. I need to go back to my 3x 30-minutes per week for the duration of summer. I'm glad it's still early in my summer, and I haven't wasted a lot of time. I also need to print out the stuff I want to revise. This will make that much easier.
Last Week's Goals
1. Gardening: order elderberries, blueberries, and raspberries this week? decide on short-term or fall planting stuff? MAINLY YES: I did a lot of gardening work this week, including getting all the beds planted with seeds that will hopefully make the most of the short season. I have only a couple more gardening projects to do, and then there's little to do but maintenance, weeding, and worry. I do still need to order the elderberries and blueberries. I'm not ordering raspberries because we found a huge raspberry patch in the scrub. (!!!!)
2. Do yoga or tai chi one day this week for 10 minutes. NOPE: I had a surprise health issue this week, so I'm giving myself a free pass on this. Also, I need to think about exactly how I'm going to do this. Am I going to relearn the tai chi sequence I learned before? Am I going to do and follow Candlelight Yoga? And this is only reasonable when the weather cooperates. I'm not sweating all day and then pressuring myself to do yoga at night.
3. Write for 10 minutes 3x a week and engage in supportive reading in 10 minute increments a couple times. Log it as work time. DID 1 DAY. MUST UP MY GAME HERE.
4. Engage with Spirited stuff most days. VT. GREAT JOB!
5. Get Workthingthatmustbedone done. Schedule the thingies I've got to schedule. Send the email I need to send. GOT WORKTHINGTHATMUSTBEDONE DONE. SCHEDULING MUST HAPPEN.
6. Keep up with Farmstead duties. GREAT JOB.
7. Herbalism project? NOPE.
8. Reread Slow Prof Preface and comment on it on the blog? YES
Analysis
ReplyDeleteI've been reading. It's lovely. I've cooked some vegetables as well, which is a major feat. I want to figure out how to cook more during the year too. We're doing some Spirted!-focused things as well, such as taking him to the library three times a week. I've been doing some work things, but trying not to let them take over my life. Some things are great; some are worrisome, but I'm trying not to focus on those things that don't need active engagement. (Today, I woke up with a headache, so I've decided to have a relaxing day, with the family's permission.)
Oooh! I also did a Small Project thing. I'd like to do one per week, if possible.
Upcoming Week's Goals
1. SFP/writing: 3-30min sessions this week. Read. Print out stuff for 8y.
2. Gardening: Get salad seeds started in basement. Order elderberries and blueberries?
3. Work: I have to be on campus on Thursday. My big goal for the week is not to be tense every moment until then. Also, schedule 2 things. Write a letter of rec. Return student email. Send email. Get new parking sticker. Work on Talk.
4. Do one LittleProject task.
5. Yoga/tai chi/meditate. Figure this out more particularly.
6. Family fun and tasks like VT.
7. Read, because I will anyway.
Slow Prof Discussion Update: We're discussing the Introduction at: http://absurdistparadise.blogspot.com/2016/07/slow-week-2-introduction.html
I'm inclined to say that once you have some touches with SF writing, you will drawn to work on it more and spend time with it. Right now it sounds like distance from that project makes it feel more overwhelming than it is.
DeleteI need to find something that I can LittleProject because the name alone will charm me into working on it.
Tips and Tricks - unfortunately as a PhD student I learned bad habits. Did all the lab work then spent 6 weeks intensively writing a 60,000 thesis (obviously having assembled the necessary literature, analysed the data etc as I went along so it was just writing and editing - hah! 'just'). My biggest problem is that I write very badly before I am ready to write and spend a long time in 'pre-writing' phase, then bang! all the words come out and are reasonable but usually too long and in need of a good edit. But I can easily produce 5000 words in a sitting this way. The biggest barriers to this are the empty space to work this way. Getting used to working in small patches of time is a slow and painful process.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. prep for meeting - done, and meeting survived. Now just need to deal with the meeting aftermath
2. work on thing 1 and acronym report - very much still ongoing, both taking a lot of effort/work/time/mental space but progress is being made. Both have deadlines of the end of the month.
3. add rows to blanket - done
4. finish the teaching stuff - not done, item 1 and 2 expanded more than desirable
This coming week:
1. deal with meeting aftermath
2. finish draft of thing 1 and send to people who know more
3. email to ask questions about acronym report
4. edit current draft of acronym report
I can imagine that it's a challenge to get the space and time alone to be so deeply engaged in flow. As a person who works in those small patches of time that you mention, I'm kind of awed by people who can be highly focused for a long period of time.
DeleteHmmph, I'm in awe of people who can make better use of those small patches of time than me :)
DeleteReporting late because of being on the road to get back home.
ReplyDeleteTips and Tricks? I'm smack dab in homestretch of the thesis, wishing maybe I had kept a better annotated bib or that I'd used an endnote software. The best tip came from my supervisor at the beginning: "Start writing right away. Don't wait until you feel like you know enough." Looking back, I know this saved me. I've also taken a lot of notes, and while these notes are handwritten, "dark" archives, they are still quite useful.
Last week's goals:
1) 40 pages primary source. YES! Closer to 70.
2) 2 chapters/articles. NOT DONE.
3) Fix bib entries, add 10 more. FIXED ENTRIES. Did not add more.
4) Incorporate notes from the last two weeks' reading into drafts and footnotes. NOT DONE. Decided this was too difficult to do while traveling.
5) Email post-graduate coordinator to make sure everything is on track. Maybe email supervisors to find out when I'll get feedback? NOT DONE. Right now I'm just carrying on without the feedback.
6) Make the damn phone call to renew the damn AAA membership so we don't get stranded. Why do I dislike making calls so much? DONE. Did, in fact, go online and managed to remember my password. Miraculous.
This week: I just go back home last night, so spent this morning at the grocery stocking up for the family. Must also still do some unpacking. But I have a couple of hours free to work this afternoon, and the family know that things are getting real now an that Mommy is going to be working a lot. I can't believe all I must get done in the next two months before submission. Would be easier with some feedback from supervisors . . .
Only a few days left, so:
1) Make a work schedule for remaining chapter revisions.
2) Re-read chapter 3, evaluate need for organizational changes
3) find places for notes I made during trip.
4) read 50 pages primary source
5) read 2-3 articles/chapters.
6) More veggies for family.
7) Do one or two fun things with family, but work rest of time.
Sorry for the typos. Hurried without proofreading. Writing a 300-page thesis without typos might be the death of me.
DeleteGlad you're back and everyone is ready to help you transition into the final push. Your advise from your supervisor reminds me of a day when my adviser told me I really didn't need to read the entire consummate biography of one of the somewhat incidental people in my dissertation project. I fondly recall her tsk tsking me when I find myself spending way too much time in prep mode rather than work mode.
DeleteI hope you have a good rest of the week!
My gosh the work I have been doing this week in the field has been all consuming. Hence last week's goals:
ReplyDelete1. submit FS. NO. Didn't even look at it.
2. Do full draft of CR revisions NOTHING
3. Eat healthily while away in field. Limit the chocolate and other sugar/ fat/ crap. SOME. Far too much tea and cake, and hardly any decent exercise.
Exercise has always been the thing that helps me 1) work and 2) stay sane. During my student days, I used to spend my lunchtimes playing squash and tennis, and that has disappeared. It might be a good time to rethink this one. I find it hard to compare strategies then and now, as my life is so different. Now, I have a raft of responsibilities that simply didn't exist back then.
Next goals:
1. Do CR revisions , that are now becoming urgent
2. Get back into a good exercise routine- exercise for at least half an hour every day.
allan wilson
*Very* late check-in (a combination of the summer term class, the grant project, and plain old exhaustion are keeping me close to the overwhelmed point; sorry).
ReplyDeleteLast week's goals:
1. Get current swimming pass; swim at least once; spend some time in the garden. spent some time in the garden
2. Work on connecting/reconnecting with friends & family and planning trips for last 1/3 of summer. a bit; need to do more
3. More organization work; take a load to storage. some; not yet
4. Finish up loose ends of computer upgrade.some.
Goals for this week:
1. begin work on individual contribution to grant project.
2. do some family & friend reconnecting/trip planning.
And on the topic: oddly, at the moment I seem to be dredging up a lot of memories of just how long some of my least productive patterns go back (as in to elementary/middle-school age), not so much in a despairing "It's hopeless" way, as in a curious, "what's really possible?" way. I'm not quite sure why I'm thinking so far back at the moment; I suspect it's some combination of menopause and grieving (neither all that intense, but still definitely a new pattern).
DeleteAt the moment, I'm not doing a terribly good job of remembering things that worked, though perhaps I can come up with two (one easier to reproduce/achieve than the other):
--I find it easier to complete projects when I'm not juggling a lot of them. I really liked the term-time vs. vacation division that applied through most of college, and tended to focus on household projects during vacation and school work during term time. Some of the conditions aren't easily reproduced (although I had more household responsibilities than normal among my peer group, I still didn't have the same degree of day-to-day responsibility as I do now, and I need to do some school/professional work during term time), but trying to have single-focus periods, even days, when I can would probably help (and I'd really like to cultivate the art of focusing on a single project, without thinking about everything else I'm not doing, for even a few hours).
--taking breaks, especially walking breaks, is important. Those are the conditions under which I had many of my best thoughts as an undergraduate writing seminar and junior papers and a senior thesis. This *is* a habit which is reclaimable, and combinable with other goals (self-care).
Oh, and
Delete3. Take a load to storage.
GAH! I come over here to start working on next week's post and realise I never got around to this weeks'! Oops... and no reason really other than "summer, and too much not-summer to do...".
ReplyDeletetopic: Interesting one! When I wrote my PhD, which I guess is a useful touchstone as it's the time when I last did a sustained piece of writing without anything ELSE going on, I actually worked a split shift, a version of the "out of step" sleep/activity pattern I fall into now if I'm sick/off work for a stretch and don't pay attention, just time shifted. I am old enough that when I was writing my PhD, I worked in a group where there were about ten researchers and four computers, two PCs mostly for data analysis and two Macs mostly for writing. We also had some access to computers through student services, but nothing LIKE today. So to some extent this work pattern was probably about managing access although we didn't look for or read papers on the internet then, and once a day email checks were considered a bit excessive (my supervisor communicated via slips of paper left on desks, or at the daily tea break half hour we were all supposed to attend), so I may be imposing current patterns on the past to interpret it.
Anyway, I would get up, walk/cycle to the lab, arrive between 8 & 9, and take over one of the Macs. I'd work on it until 11, which was T-Time, go to tea break, then after that usually hand over the Mac to someone else and either switch to hand editing and revising printed stuff or reading/note-taking (by that point most articles I needed were Xeroxed and in my box files - my library routines were down to a weekly check of new issues for extra material in a pretty structured manner). About 1, I'd leave - I'd spend the next couple of hours eating and getting some exercise, in various orders - I might meet a friend for lunch then walk home the long way around, go to the gym to do weights and grab lunch there or eat my packed lunch in a nearby garden, cycle home or to a park or some fields near town and go for a walk, play squash with a friend then grab lunch, whatever. Then I went to bed for 3 hours or so. When I woke up I showered (if I hadn't directly after exercising - this had the added bonus of making sure I got hot water, not a given in a shared house first thing in the morning!) and went back to work, arriving about 6pm once nearly everyone else had left. Except for PartnerInWriting, who was also writing up, but who worked a "late day" rather than a split day (we never saw her before morning tea, and we often passed at the bike racks as I left for lunch. PIW and I would then each take over a Mac and write really intensely for a couple of hours, then start to get distractable - between 8 & 9 we usually went out to grab something to eat as our evening meal. There was this brilliant hole in the wall sort of take-away a 5 minute walk from our lab that made 2-3 vegetarian/wholefood all-in-one savoury dishes like pasta bake or a vegetable stew with lentils and dumplings or paella, and a fruit crumble with granola topping every day, and main plus crumble to take away cost less than a burger meal (and large servings - half the crumble often went home to be breakfast), so we often walked there for takeaway, ate our meals in the empty tea-room, and went back to the lab. I'd then print out anything I needed to edit later, tidy up a few ends, and set off home around 11 (PIW sometimes stayed a bit later). Then take a couple of hours to wind down, read a book etc. before going to bed, where I slept for about 6 hours, then repeat. Saturday I usually only did the morning half of the writing, then spent the afternoon and evening with other people or doing something not-work, Sunday was church and post-church stuff until about 3, then a nice long nap, then planning for the week ahead.
Nowadays this sort of schedule suits, except starting about 11-12 in the morning, having the middle break about 4pm-8pm, then working until 1-2am. THEN the stuoopid internet surfing kicks in, but hey...
DeleteAnyway, this is just NOT AN OPTION any more. It's antisocial, it doesn't "fit" with the world around me, and I get "Monday jet lag" really badly if I have to go back from comfortable to 'normal'. Also I can't eat that way any more - I want my evening meal as soon as I start the second active phase.
What CAN I learn from that?
* That even working at 'top pitch' I was actually WORKING for maybe as little as 8 hours a day on the intellectual heavy lifting stuff, and if you discount pottering around the office/talking to PIW often as little as 6 hours. I do best with short intense bursts and lots of messing around in between.
* More exercise would probably help - it was kind of forced on me by having to cycle everywhere, and everyone else doing the same, but I did do more, and walking was particularly good 'simmering time' - the best way to get around an idea block was long walk then nap!
* Boy I didn't enjoy living in a shared house, it's just not in my nature however nice the people were, and they were that year - this routine got me out of most of the forced-interaction times, reduced my exposure to having to be social at work (PIW didn't really count because we were PIWs...), and yet since most of my friends were also doing PhDs and in the same town I got to socialise in small pieces of time, when it suited us both, and sometimes for as little as chatting whilst stood in the queue at the same sandwich shop then both running back to our theses... so I was able to indulge my solitary nature, but was part of a connected community at the same time.
* I don't miss being a PhD student, but I miss having a proper lab group, knowing my place and my path, having lots of friends within a short travel distance, having companions on the thesis path, having a church life that suited my particular "brand of Christian" (AncientInternationallyRenownedUniversityCities have a very wide range of congregations and denominations, you can find happy-clappy ones and family ones and highly intellectual ones and sometimes even in the same place, and no-one really expects all their spiritual needs to be filled in one place - I mostly went to a non-conformist protestant church where sermons were intelligent and book-filled and practical and where there was a small student group (whose bible study supplies included a New Testament Greek edition and a huge biblical atlas/gazetteer/history volume, because we were nerds), and topped up with high-Anglican evensong midweek (25 minutes of sit & stand & numinance, with no sermon) and late-night Taize on Sundays where the sometimes trite words were balanced out by the meditative singing (Taize style, at least in that place and time, meant a service of a mix of short readings and singing-meditation - the music is short pieces, usually 2-4 lines, and often suitable for singing in a round or with very simple harmony, which are sung over and over, mostly acapella) and the late-night-with-candles-meditation setting was sometimes transcendent. I miss being able to sing SO MUCH. I couldn't go to that service any more, or even my Sunday service (metrical psalms, hymns), without feeling that loss acutely. And without singing, I don't feel part of anything.
last week's goals:
Delete1) make a lot of lists - teaching, research, domestic. Read through the notes in my conferencing notebook and the last 4 weeks of (neglected) emails and transfer all the little tasks to postits, then start grouping postit list items and allocating them to points over the next couple of weeks. I got as far as going through the email and writing lists on postits...
2) re-engage with the Special Issue Paper - let's say 500 words nope, but I did create a new figure for it, so if a picture's worth a 1000 words...
3) spend an hour or so excavating and organising my desks at work and home at work this is going OK - it makes a decent 'out of the chair' break. I've only just started in on my desk, because I decided that in order to do the desk I needed to clear out the recycling corner (we have to take our own recycling to the bins, and this is non-trivial, so it tends to accumulate), and I also needed to sort out the 'random pile of stuff' over which much of the recycling had spread - that's now in neat stacks and I know exactly what's there, the recycling space is not empty but emptier and I've found old boxes that fit exactly and labelled them up for the different kinds of waste. And I've completely cleared off the top of one filing cabinet to act as over-flow bookshelf, which will solve the 'where can I fit this in' dilemma every time the next object I touch on my desk is a book. At home, though, things are if anything worse (the Furry One pushed a pile that was on the windowsill off onto the desk and the resultant cascade destroyed what little structure there was. And she had PLENTY of room already, the little g*t).
4) contact the external organisation which according to a very well hidden and obscure part of NorthernUni's website is contracted to offer free short-term counselling to university staff. yes. Have an intake appointment at the end of the month for 6 sessions, which is more than nothing...
Oh, and the coming week:
DeleteWell, the week that was. Not much point really setting goals as I already know what happened? Might as well though for tidiness' sake. Meetings, basically...
1) complete the lists
2) read and comment on grant application from colleague
3) spend an hour or so excavating and organising my desks at work and home
4) go to the gym twice or so
5) keep on top of emails
6) do pre-course homework and prepare for software course
7) finish second semester report for old admin role
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ReplyDelete