Top Left Quadrant: Week 16: Success

Friday, 19 August 2016

Week 16: Success

Earlier today I was reading a post from Esme Wang (http://journal.esmewang.com/why-neurologically-success-doesnt-stick-and-how-to-get-it-to/) in which she wrote about how our brains remember failure and criticism much more readily than we remember our successes. Then I got an email from a graduate school friend asking if I would be interested in joining a roundtable at an upcoming conference to discuss the different metrics for “success” at different types of institutions.

Next week is the last for this iteration of TLQ, and I know when I look back at what I set out to do 17 weeks ago, I will lean toward my failures before I take account of my successes. So before we get there, take this week to mark and celebrate a success from this season. Whatever it might be. Remember that creating small habits is also a big success because we sustain those habits.

Loud and proud, what do you want to remember, going forward, that was a success for you? Writing about it will help your brain remember.

Last week’s goals:

Dame Eleanor Hull

1. Finish paper and don't make an ass of myself at the conference.
2. Finish the syllabi (in Tom's Midnight Garden, maybe; some mythical 25th hour of the day, anyway).
3. Spend time with family, spend time outside.
4. Keep being careful about food and telling servers what I need.

Earnest English

1. Writing: engage with writing 4x; also work on grant.
2. Gardening: keep on blueberry watch.
3. Work: some prep for fall
4. Meditate: 3x/week
5. Herbalism: move forward a bit with one project
6. Office: work on going through more boxes

Elizabeth Anne Mitchell

Comment on more chapters of the Slow Professor.
Finalize schedule.
Put up one gratitude post.

Good Enough Woman

1) Spend at least 30 minutes per day on editing (footnotes, bibliography, or the switch from North American to British punctuation and spelling: curses on these differences!)
2) Work late Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
3) Finish draft of Chapter 4.
4) Do "final" revisions and editing for Chapter 1 (so I'll have something complete under my belt).
5) Help daughter prepare for Saturday's craft faire at the library.
6) Complete registration paperwork for kids by Monday night.
7) Make sure kids are ready for school in a week!
8) Be present in the classroom for my students, but do the bare minimum when I'm not in the classroom.

heu mihi

1. Finish teaching book
2. Select readings from next teaching book
3. Run three times (health permitting--I feel like I'm getting a cold), meditate three times
4. Read 3 essays
5. Read two chapters of someone's dissertation
6. Write a conclusion to ch. 3
7. Reread ch. 5
8. Plan KJ essay

humming42

I have set daily deadlines, so the RBP goals for the coming week are to get through to the end of Chapter 3 and have the first three chapters ready to submit. That will be more than halfway done. There is a TRQ abstract that I will finish tonight, so I won’t officially include that for the week ahead.

Jane B

1) to be deliberate in what I do and say, and in the choices I make (The Slow Professor says that's a mark of a resilient academic, and key words I'd use to describe what unbalanced, stressful days feel like include rushed, pressured, reactive, firefighting. So let's try and have the theme of the week be the opposite of that...).
2) to do one thing-that-is-good-for-me and screen and words free every day - go to the gym or do some decluttering or do some crafting
3) do 5 hours of peripheral writing related to research - e.g. commenting on a draft I'm a co-author on, free writing, planning for work

karen

1. Truckloads of marking - commit to regular chunks each day
2. Continue to move more, and make time for music practice
3. Short freewriting bursts to map out summer writing projects 3 x 10 minutes over the week.

KJHaxton

1. dig out research tool for scary project, make alterations, seek ethical extension if appropriate and get it ready to go.
2. try and clean the silk screen, prep and make a new run of prints (I have so many ideas brewing)
3. get sufficiently through semester prep without making my office messy.

Susan

1. Put notice on course website about assignment for first class. (I was hoping to put up a draft syllabus, but it's much too drafty!)
2. Finish comments for roundtable on Friday.
3. Send off tenure review
4. Pay bills
5. Do ironing/ pack/ etc.
6. Make trivial changes in notes while traveling.

Waffles

1. Finish body paper
2. Finish religiosity paper
3. Finish report
4. Get back to relat paper.

33 comments:

Dame Eleanor Hull22 August 2016 at 02:49
Last week's goals:
1. Finish paper and don't make an ass of myself at the conference. YES
2. Finish the syllabi (in Tom's Midnight Garden, maybe; some mythical 25th hour of the day, anyway). YES (skipped a session at the conference to finish)
3. Spend time with family, spend time outside. YES
4. Keep being careful about food and telling servers what I need. YES

An excellent week. I had a great time, too.

One of the servers I talked to pointed out another place where one of my problem foods could hide, which was very helpful and explained where some past, previously inexplicable symptoms might have come from. I'd say figuring out the food and realizing that I can feel vastly better than I was accustomed to feeling was my single biggest success of the year.

Goals for this week:
1. Stick to schedule for doing research and class prep.
2. Finish footnotes for new and improved MMP-1.
3. Put in an hour doing something about the MMP-3 R&R.
4. Figure out new exercise schedule that works with the fall's on-campus days.
5. Important errands: 3A batteries, toothbrush heads, book for reading group.

I bet I made a list of things to do with the MMP-3 paper, so I'll look for that. But if I didn't, that's probably my first step.

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Good Enough Woman22 August 2016 at 07:20
Submitting a draft of half of my thesis before vacation felt like a success, and getting good feedback felt like an even bigger success. Although I'm not quite where I wanted to be at the return to school, I think I'm still in a manageable position. I hope. Beyond this, I'm sort of holding my breath and not counting my chickens. I'm still quite nervous, but that's par for the course.

Last week's goals:
1) Spend at least 30 minutes per day on editing (footnotes, bibliography, or the switch from North American to British punctuation and spelling: curses on these differences!) NO, but I made progress.
2) Work late Wednesday and Thursday evenings. YES.
3) Finish draft of Chapter 4. NO, but I made progress.
4) Do "final" revisions and editing for Chapter 1 (so I'll have something complete under my belt). YES, pretty much. Just a few hours of work left on this one.
5) Help daughter prepare for Saturday's craft faire at the library. YES.
6) Complete registration paperwork for kids by Monday night. YES. (But next year, I will make sure not to do this on the evening after my first day back teaching. Too stressful.)
7) Make sure kids are ready for school in a week! YES, for the most part.
8) Be present in the classroom for my students, but do the bare minimum when I'm not in the classroom. YES. I might be pushing the "bare minimum" to the totally-butt-naked minimum.

The best thing about this week was realizing that it really doesn't take that long to convert a chapter from North American punctuation and spelling to British punctuation and spelling. I did this for chapter one with relative ease, so I'm feeling less freaked out that I have so much of that kind of editing to do.

Next weekend I'll be traveling to a not-too-distant library to review a lot of sources in a short amount of time. But I also need to get writing done. I'll be away from home for two nights. I'm hoping to spend one day researching and one-and-a-half days writing. I really need to finish drafting chapter four, and I should start drafting the conclusion. I'm feeling sad that I'll miss family movie night on Friday since it's the end of the first week of school, and the kids are really going to want to reconnect with me, and I'll want to connect with them. Eyes on the prize.

This week:
1) Finish drafting the remaining sections of chapter four even if they are rough.
2) Write 700 words of conclusion.
3) Go through a lot of sources quickly on Friday at the library, return to library for half a day on Saturday if necessary.
4) Add 15 sources to bibliography.
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karen22 August 2016 at 14:22
I think my biggest success over this session has been being gentle with myself about learning a whole lot of new things. Certainly room for improvement, but I've been immersed teaching new content in a fully online unit (never done that before) and stepping into an administrative role with again, so many things I've not done before or not had to think about previously. So success equals giving it a go and keeping myself firmly in growth mindset.

Last week:

1. Truckloads of marking - commit to regular chunks each day.
Some done - much more to go.
2. Continue to move more, and make time for music practice
A little of both.
3. Short freewriting bursts to map out summer writing projects 3 x 10 minutes over the week.
Hell no (see marking).

Next week:
Has enforced rest due to en eye procedure where I will not be able to read/write for a week or so. So I'll try to get various tasks to where I can walk away and the world will not collapse (spoiler, it won't, even if I don't do everything I'm aiming for) and set out of office email.

Susan, if you want to contact me to organise the next session (I'll reply when I can read) my email is: more news from nowhere (but as one word, no capitals or punctuation) AT gmail dot com.
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Waffles22 August 2016 at 23:03
I have to remind myself of my successes somewhat regularly, as otherwise I get too mired in what I don’t know or haven’t done. Here are my recent ones:
* Just two years ago, I wasn’t sure I would be allowed to be readmitted to finish my PhD (I had to leave the program a few years ago), but in less than two years, I not only got readmitted, but I completed my PhD.
* I got a dissertation grant
* I somehow hornswoggled the world’s best mentor who does research in the area I want to specialize in to take me on as her postdoc.
* I wrote and got a larger (for me) grant accepted that partially pays for my postdoc.
* In these two years, I have done almost 10 conference presentations
* As part of my postdoc (which I officially started in May, but began working with my mentor less than a year ago), have gotten one publication, have 2 under review and 2 more on the cusp of being ready to submit.
* I submitted my first NIH grant.
* I have been given access to a network of strong, kind, supportive, and smart researchers who provide amazing mentorship for me.

So, onto what I did or didn’t do last week!
1. Finish body paper - DONE
2. Finish religiosity paper - DONE
3. Finish report - DONE
4. Get back to relat paper - Will do this tomorrow!

This week:
1. Finish poster
2. Start review
3. Finish relat paper
4. Set goals and plans with mentor for upcoming months.
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Contingent Cassandra23 August 2016 at 02:50
Topic: this is exactly the question I need right now, since I'm feeling discouraged at a summer that didn't go quite the way I envisioned, even though, realistically, I got quite a lot done.

So, successes: the largest one is the grant project, which has gone quite well, and the bulk of which is almost finished, at least for now (there will be some required follow-ups during the coming school year, and also some follow-up I need/want to do to see if we can extend it further, but so far we're on schedule and delivering what we promised, and it looks like it has the potential to be genuinely useful to the intended users, so hurrah! I also got my main computer in shape to serve me well for another few years (I hope), which is the sort of housekeeping activity the results of which are invisible unless you *don't* do them, and find yourself getting accustomed to a slower and slower computer (I've done that) or dealing with a crash/breakdown/loss of data (so far, I haven't done that, thank goodness, but I know I'm in a position to recover fairly quickly if/when it does happen, which is a good thing). Since I'm not terribly good at keeping up with physical housekeeping/organizing (though I've made some very small progress on that, too, this summer), it's important to remind myself that I do a pretty good job of organizing, backing up, and generally tending to my virtual files (which, at this point, contain the vast majority of the records vital to both my work and my financial life).

I hope I'm also continuing to gain insight into what routines, patterns of work and rest, etc., allow me to be at my most productive (which is never quite as productive as I like), but that's an ongoing process, and an uphill battle.

So, goals for the last two weeks:

1. Finish grant-project reviews; coordinate grant project as necessary; get my individual contributions as close to finished as possible before break (and finish after break)
2. Some friends/family contact (before and after break)
3. Do the most necessary early class prep before break (welcome/warning letters to student in classes with an onlne component -- which is all of them, actually)
4. Some household stuff (mostly take a load to storage)
5. Take a break (working in a bit of exercise if possible, and trying to get/keep on a regular sleep schedule and eat reasonably well, but focus mostly on unplugging and leisure reading)

Accomplished: most of it, including the much-needed break (I still have some grant-project work to do, and still need to take a load to storage).

Goals for the coming/this week:
1. Finish up the last of the work for this phase of the grant project (mostly my individual contribution and some follow-up, especially making sure we all get paid).
2. As much class prep as possible (TRQ, but important to getting both TLQ and TRQ aspects of the semester off to a solid start)
3. Some family-relationship-tending (which involves, in part, visiting the storage facility, so I will finally get at least the partial load that's been in my car for over a month there in the process).

That's probably all I can realistically expect from a week with significant TRQ aspects, and a daylong meeting tomorrow, so I will leave it there.
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Matilda23 August 2016 at 03:40
Hello, I have been absent for several weeks, again.

Topic: Thank you for the topic. Success. Well, the most important TLQ goal has not finished yet, actually not proceeded well. Is there anything success? Yes, I have finished a book review. It was much harder than I thought, and reading it again, I am not sure I did it well, but anyway I have done it.

During my absence from TLQ group, I had two big job-related events, both lots of preparation needed, and one 5-day family trip. All were, well, rather successful – I had expected much worse, but actually I enjoyed all. Of course, trip was a great fun, and we enjoyed more than expected. Two events turned out to be a kind of fun, which I had expected the total opposite.

Last goals (carried over for several weeks)
1) Work on the review article I had put off for a long time. – Done. Not perfect, but, anyway, done.
2) Continue to work on Chapter 2.- Continued, and to be continued.
3) 5 minute exercise more than three times a day. – Not too bad. I at least continue to exercise some way every day. I want to do more.

Next goals
1) Work on the presentation in September- coming soon, but still long long way to go.
2) Prepare for the research trip to UK in the first week of September – coming very soon. Sending lots of e-mails to arrange my trip, also I will be visiting the place where my family will stay during my study leave next year.
3) Continue to work on Chapter 2.
4) 5 minute exercise more than three times a day. Have less and healthier snacks.
5) Have fun with my children. Stay together and have a good time together.

I have read lots of great things and some difficult things in this TLQ posts. It helps me a lot, when I feel busy, tired and confused. This is why I like this TLQ group.

Have a good week, everyone!
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JaneB23 August 2016 at 09:38
Successes, hmmm... well this has not been a good summer, but I've picked up and started over enough that I'm in a better place than I was a month ago, never mind three months ago (ignoring recent whiny blog posts - yes, I just had a really hard week, but it was a not-hopeless kind of hard, which feels necessary). Also, my office desk is really tidy, which it hasn't been for two years, so yay! Small things... but they add up.

last week's goals
1) to be deliberate in what I do and say, and in the choices I make (The Slow Professor says that's a mark of a resilient academic, and key words I'd use to describe what unbalanced, stressful days feel like include rushed, pressured, reactive, firefighting. So let's try and have the theme of the week be the opposite of that...). did this for the first 3-4 days and it was great, although I kept feeling I wasn't doing ENOUGH... lost it completely over the weekend, but picking up again
2) to do one thing-that-is-good-for-me and screen and words free every day - go to the gym or do some decluttering or do some crafting yes for the first few days...
3) do 5 hours of peripheral writing related to research - e.g. commenting on a draft I'm a co-author on, free writing, planning for work yes - some braindumping before the Crowded Capital meeting, lengthy comments and editing on the draft I'm co-authoring, overall that added up to 5 hours.

next week's goals:
1) tidy the small table next to my desk, do filing (even if just into box files labelled "2015-16 misc"!)
2) prepare talk and workshop for conference
3) planning and identifying 'constrained units' of work to do during the following 3 weeks when I'll mostly be travelling
4) be deliberately deliberate.
2)
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Circe23 August 2016 at 11:31
Topic: I'm so glad it isn't just me that does this! Sometimes I think I complete stuff and forget to enjoy the moment of 'done-ness' and just start on the next thing. Only see what remains to be done and what didn't work! So I submitted the acronym report which was a big deal, I also submitted another thing that was unexpected and quite challenging to write. The knock-on from this is that I've barely written a word in August but that's OK.

Last week:
1. dig out research tool for scary project, make alterations, seek ethical extension if appropriate and get it ready to go.
- nope, but did confirm when the tool could be used. Will move this to post-holiday list.
2. try and clean the silk screen, prep and make a new run of prints (I have so many ideas brewing)
- yes, yes and yes! Managed to clean the screen off and prep and run some new prints. Very happy.
3. get sufficiently through semester prep without making my office messy.
- partially - will be doing some tidying today though!

Next week:
1. get work ready to do while travelling and conferencing (I always get stuff done on trains or when I wake up stupidly early)
2. enjoy conference (presenting poster not talk so much more relaxing)
3. tidy up office and leave half-decent to-do list for following week.
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humming4223 August 2016 at 20:53
Topic: well, I wrote two book chapters and two short articles, along with an abstract that was accepted for a journal article to write in September. While I am very happy with those things, I am also panicky about rbp since the manuscript is due a week from tomorrow and I am still writing. Am thinking about asking for just a bit more time since I would rather submit something clear and well proofread than not. I would appreciate any advice you all might have on this.

Last week: I am behind on the deadlines I established. Even though I left myself two days to sweep up the messes, I have syllabi to write (one new prep), campus meetings, and classes next week while trying to finish the manuscript.

This week:
1 Write and turn in syllabi
2 Finish chapters 3, 4, and 5.
3 Look for photographs/permissions in spare time
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Earnest English24 August 2016 at 21:36
Sorry for the late check-in. Late last week I began a flare-up of a chronic condition, and I'm feeling weak and sickly.

About celebrating our successes: I was reading in Fierce on the Page that one might try treating one's self as an animal trainer does: ignoring all the negative behaviors and then giving wild positive reinforcement for the positive behaviors. With animals, the positive behaviors increase and increase. What if we did that? Just ignored the negative and celebrated successes wildly? Something to think about. With being sick, anything I've gotten done deserves wild praise, at least. My big effort has been in working on the office. It's like a different room in here, while it's still far from done.

Last Week

1. Writing: engage with writing 4x; also work on grant. NO
2. Gardening: keep on blueberry watch. YES
3. Work: some prep for fall NO WAY
4. Meditate: 3x/week NO
5. Herbalism: move forward a bit with one project NO
6. Office: work on going through more boxes YES!!!!!

Since I'm sick and it's already Wednesday, I'll write just a couple goals:

1. Writing: do what you can.
2. Gardening: keep on blueberry watch.
3. Draft email to SameMind.
4. Office: work on going through more boxes.
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Elizabeth Anne Mitchell25 August 2016 at 19:24
I’m most proud about not falling into the Slough of Despond, I think. It was not so much that I became a Pollyanna, but that I endeavored to find concrete steps to combat my feelings of despair. For various reasons, I struggled with impostor syndrome mightily this summer, feeling out of place among my academic colleagues and my fiction-writing groups alike. When I’m in that struggle, I usually disappear, but although I was (far too) often late with my comments here, I did show up every week.

Let me rush to assure all of you that none of you have made me feel unwelcome, and I greatly appreciate that!

Last week’s goals:
Comment on more chapters of the Slow Professor. No.
Finalize schedule. Yes.
Put up one gratitude post. No.

Analysis: The week before classes start is just crazy, even though I am not teaching this semester. It’s as though a miasma of anxiety permeates all things, from the freshmen who can’t find their dorm (which looks like every other dorm on campus, so that’s understandable), to the professor who needs something esoteric put on reserve yesterday. I want to put Xanax in all the water fountains! Add to that a somewhat less than neutral meeting with the boss, and all my nerve endings are bare and agitated.

On the good news side of things, all should calm down in the next week.

Next/this week’s goals:
Assess what I want to write and put an outline of each project on paper.
Breathe.
Parcel out the bigger projects into more manageable pieces for the semester.

Have a great rest of the week!
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Friday, 19 August 2016

Week 16: Success

33 comments: