Hello everyone! I hope our US members enjoyed the celebrations last week in your own ways, and no household member was too spooked by fireworks. And that it's not too hot and humid (we've had a couple of very sticky days here, complete with thunderstorms for maximum humidity)! I'm not going to the Big Conference in my field this year, which happens over the coming weekend, due to a combination of home institution grant messing up, COVID concerns, not being willing/able to self-fund travel to any substantial degree and general creakiness. It will be in another country at the hot end of Europe, in a city which was built on a swamp a very long time ago, and the forecast is hot (heading for 100 Fahrenheit, high 30s Celsius) and humid. So I'm not actually feeling nearly as much FOMO as I thought I might!
Which leads me to our topic today - writing FOMO. One of my strengths as an academic is my ability to think up lots of options - project ideas, paper ideas, ways to teach a topic. But I am in a teaching and admin heavy role, and less and less able to collect primary data without collaboration (do NOT start me off on the state of our technical team and lack of support - cost-cutting to inane levels have created havoc), and to be honest even if I was 100% a researcher I wouldn't be able to do it all! The brain-monkeys do NOT like to let go of any possibilities, and because so many possibilities don't turn into actuality, it's actually very hard to predict what we should say yes or no to anyway. So, how do you handle FOMO with writing projects? what does that look like for you (half-done projects, a dream book, old data that 'just' needs writing about, agreeing to join three edited collections at once and creating unnecessary stress for your future self?)? Is it something you feel a tickle of occasionally in summer or a regular companion to writing all year round? Have you got any great ways of making choices or of temporarily parking ideas for your future self to pick up?
LAST WEEK'S GOALS:
Daisy
• Do one thing for SHINY paper
• Plan out CRUNCHY paper’s data content
• Continue finicky lab process
• Start next finicky lab process (I love these, they make me very happy!)
• Have difficult student conversation
• Move offices
• Get daily exercise
Dame Eleanor Hull
• expand Alms chapter
• dead languages: Latin daily, Greek x3
• write tenure review letter
• start over reading Relevant Romance
• observe work hours and dedicated special-project hours
• at least 2 things from Huge Summer List
• pay bills
• prioritize sleep
heu mihi
• no goals, but lots going on
JaneB
• Self-care: baselines, decluttering person is coming Friday I hope.
• Researcher: Wish-we-never-started project - project report meeting, finish up what I can. Comment on and send back to co-author first draft of consultancy based paper. Get my poster for Massive Meeting I'm Not Attending ready and sent to print. As many "small jobs" as I can before leave starts.
• Teaching: Make a summer list. If the info I need arrives by Wednesday, set resits and contact my advisee students who have work to make up over the summer. And set out of office!!
• Fun. Play D&D or do some D&D planning. Read something. Start the next blanket. Draw something. Make a summer wish list for non- work days.
Julie
• Finish interlibrary loan, start another.
• Write one day.
• Archive searches and request scans of documents
• Finances!
• Tidy desk
• Get baby clothes down from attic and wash to take to new niece this weekend.
• Try not to get too distracted watching Tour de France with son.
Susan
• Read last two prize books
• Read book for long overdue book review
• Read through comments on Famous Author and determine what's left to do.
• Attend two lectures where I hope I will see and meet people.
• Finish bits of admin that I decided could be done from here.
• Go to at least one museum and/or one play or concert.
• Have fun
LAST WEEK'S GOALS:
ReplyDelete• Self-care: baselines, decluttering person is coming Friday I hope. ish, and she didn't come because SHE was ill this week (I'd much rather she not come with germs!). We have an appointment this coming Friday...
• Researcher: Wish-we-never-started project - project report meeting, finish up what I can. Comment on and send back to co-author first draft of consultancy based paper. Get my poster for Massive Meeting I'm Not Attending ready and sent to print. As many "small jobs" as I can before leave starts. well, it's ending, so yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, quite a few actually
• Teaching: Make a summer list. If the info I need arrives by Wednesday, set resits and contact my advisee students who have work to make up over the summer. And set out of office!! ish. It did not arrive, so I did not set resits or contact advisees. Working on the guilt. out of office duly set.
• Fun. Play D&D or do some D&D planning. Read something. Start the next blanket. Draw something. Make a summer wish list for non- work days. planned and played, re-read some AJ Demas to start the reading mojo going, no (it's been hot), yes, started
So it was quite a productive week. I WAS supposed to only work Monday but worked Monday to Wednesday due to, oh, extra ,meetings, and my own inability to actually work effectively for the last few weeks/couple of months - I had to finish the poster, for example, and comment on the first draft, and although I had plenty of time on paper, well... life as me this year. I AM off this week...
GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK:
• Self-care: think about baselines and how I can make it easier for me to be consistent with them. Hopefully work with decluttering lady! Do at least seven things to improve my environment (do not need to be large things). Do at least an hour in total on sorting out my financial paperwork chaos.
baselines, decluttering person is coming Friday I hope.
• Check work email no more than twice (for urgent support of research students going to conference stuff and deleting of junk mail only)
• maybe make a pretty and detailed version of the teaching to do list (maybe. if it's really hot and I just want to sit anyway!)
• Fun. Play D&D AND do some D&D planning. Read one fiction and one non-fiction. Start the next blanket. Draw some things. Keeping adding to a summer wish list for non- work days. Start watching a series.
A productive week is a productive week! And you still had Thursday and Friday off. I'm so glad that you have this whole week off--checking work email no more than twice sounds like an excellent goal. Enjoy yourself!
DeleteAgreed---that sounds like a good week! And I hope this one is even better. I hate the financial paperwork so much, but I dealt with a little of it last week so I hereby pass that mojo on to you, via the magic of the interwebs!
DeleteDefinitely a productive week. I hope you enjoy being off this week and can rest and recharge a bit. It's cooler here after the thunderstorms, hopefully the same where you are.
DeleteI usually don't have writing FOMO in quite the way that you describe, because I often feel like I'm trying to find ideas rather than struggling with an excess of them...but I do have a tendency to commit to almost anything that's asked of me, because I suffer from "always flattered to be asked" syndrome and because I'm used to anxiously striving for anything and everything that I can put on my CV! I constantly have to remind myself that I don't have to do that anymore...and yet, I still do. For literally no gain (financial or reputation-wise; I'm quite settled in my productive semi-obscurity). And yet.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
I'm glad that I listed no goals. But I did do some things:
-wrote about 1200 words
-finished reading a book for my fall course
-worked on a photo album from our fall trip
-drafted a presentation on zero waste that I'm giving in the fall (through our town's sustainability committee, of which I am a member)
-sat twice, swam twice
-started reading a new book for research
-met with a grad student
-visited my family
So that's enough! Right?
This week: is busy, because we leave for vacation on Saturday, and I always feel like everything must get done before a trip. But I'll not fill this list with pre-trip stuff like vacuuming, because I'll do that and it's boring. I do have a writing session scheduled with a friend on Wednesday, and I hope to make a big push on this section of my current chapter then.
1. 1500 words of chapter
2. Send in grant pre-application materials
3. First round of edits on Proceedings essay
4. Finish reading current research book; start new teaching book
5. Finish first photo album from fall
6. Work on the cover of my house book
That's plenty! You wrote, you sat, you swam, you did an Engaged Grownup Community Member Thing, you did some class prep, and you had social/family time! I'm impressed! I hope your writing date is both fun and productive.
DeleteThat sounds like a pleasantly balanced week with fun things and useful things and work things and self care all mixed in. Have a great writing date! And I hope the vacation prep is more fun than hard work!
DeleteThat sounds like a lot. A writing date is a great idea and the sustainability sounds like a really worthwhile thing to be involved in. Don't worry about the vacuuming. My husband used to joke about tidying up for the burglars before we went on holiday.
DeleteI don't think I have a huge amount of FOMO related to writing, but have only recently got rid of heu mihi's tendency to say yes to everything. I've said no to more things recently, just saying "I can't". I guess the one thing is that Famous Author is an idea I began playing with 20 years ago, and I finally thought I had to write it just to not think about it any more. Generally, I can only write about what interests me, so I've worked to NOT sign up for lots of projects that are separate from what I think I'm working on right now...
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
• Read last two prize books YES!!!
• Read book for long overdue book review NO
• Read through comments on Famous Author and determine what's left to do. NO
• Attend two lectures where I hope I will see and meet people. ONE
• Finish bits of admin that I decided could be done from here. I THINK SO
• Go to at least one museum and/or one play or concert. YES (a play)
• Have fun (nice dinner with friends last night)
Well, a reasonably successful week, which would have been more so except I was scammed (and fell for it) in a project that took up most of Friday, and then the feeling of being violated/dirty wiped out the weekend. I've now secured all my cards and accounts, I think, and will begin to relax. (Short version: I did all the things you are not supposed to do, and then it was a kind of Stockholm syndrome thing until I got a clear head. It started late at night, when I wasn't thinking, and then I was in a net.)
Anyway, I got to one lecture, which was great, but then for the next one missed the time *and* then locked myself out of my flat, necessitating a trip to the agents who rent the flat when I'm away: my brain is still not fully focused.
I addition to what was on the list, I've been reading for pleasure - managed 4 books this week, 2 non-fiction, 2 light fiction.
Goals for this week. I have two long nights of meetings (scheduled for 8-4 in California, 4-midnight here) today and tomorrow, so am keeping expectations low.
1. Read comments on Famous author and plot revisions
2. Meet with co-editor of Big Collaboration to plan introduction better
3. Read the book I need to review
4. Go to a museum
5. See friends
6. Make plans for rest of summer here.
7. Go to at least one museum, maybe another play?
Congratulations on finishing the prize reading! That's a big accomplishment. Sorry to hear about the scam; I gather these things do tend to snowball. What kind of non-fiction do you read for pleasure? Lately I have looked at some non-fiction books that sounded interesting but was shocked at the lack of rigor and inconsistent tone . . . no wonder students have so much trouble developing a suitable voice for writing papers! Anyway, I hope the week ahead goes well.
DeleteSorry to hear about the scam, but overall that sounds like a pretty decent week - and I hope the time-shifted meetings are fun!
Deleteon non-fiction - I am shocked by how repetitive/seeded with personal anecdotes some things I've read recently are, against all expectation - a book called the Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs contained far more folksy descriptions of macho palaeontologists than I expected (I persisted because, Dinosaurs, and I'd paid for the book on the basis of having heard a generally high quality radio programme by the author). And now I just started a book about fungi and there's a bit of the SAME THING, it's as much about being a post-grad doing fieldwork as about fungi. That said, it does seem to be better edited and written for an audience with a longer attention span than the dinosaur book. But after this I'm moving back to history in hopes of finding something a bit more meaty!
The scam sounds awful. Hope you can manage not to dwell on it, and just enjoy the museums, plays and reading.
DeleteAlso curious about the non-fiction. I like diaries and memoirs. I recently read Raynor Winn's books and Katherine May's Wintering, which is a sort of memoir, sort of reflection. And Sarah Moss's Names for the Sea, which is a memoir of a year spent living in Iceland. But I have found that other non-fiction lacks rigour sometimes, and the personal anecdote doesn't always work. Our book club recently read Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which we were all appalled by for precisely that reason: she inserts herself in the story without any self-reflection. The science part was fascinating, but I spent a big chunk thinking: 'ethics committee???'
I generally like memoir. Just read Polly Toynbee's book, which was fascinating on her family, a bit less revealing about her. Then I read an interesting but somewhat treacly book about a children's home in WW2 evacuated to Ascot: clearly the woman whose house sheltered the children and the woman who ran the house were fascinating characters, and they changed the lives of the girls who were there. Now reading Peter Brown's memoir, which is (as you would expect) well written and makes interesting connections between his family background as Protestant Irish and his research on late antiquity. I haven't gotten to the more "intellectual autobiography" part yet. (In another life I would have loved to study late antiquity, but I don't think I have the linguistic chops.)
DeleteI like some memoir. Can anyone recommend any good teacher memoirs? For some reason, I'm really interested in reading about school teaching/watching teacher vlogs right now (I have NO wish to be a school teacher, but I'd love to have my own classroom to set up, and meeting my students where they are involves getting some understanding what happens in schools - and my experience is too long ago and in a very different system). And teaching is teaching. Any university education memoirs or lighter PD books that are worth reading?
DeleteI generate ideas like rabbits generate rabbits, so I have a list, and things get parked there, sometimes for years. When some New Shiny Thing first occurs to me, I'll write down everything I can think of about it, so I have some record of what I want to do with the project, and then I try to leave it alone till I'm done with the Current Thing. However, for a long time I kept getting myself into new things because I'd think I could surely finish one thing well before I'd have start on (let's say) a conference paper I'd been asked to give . . . and then of course I wouldn't manage to finish the one, and I'd wind up with two projects. Then there was the Huge Honking Translation, which was a part-time project for years, alongside various other work, and the multi-article project known on my blog as the Macedonian Marginalia Project (MMP), which started as one thing but wound up as four different articles. At present I'm trying to focus on The Book, so any conference paper has to be related to it (except next spring there will have to be a paper on my sabbatical project, which sounds impressive but shouldn't be too much of a distraction---only obviously with my track record it may turn into something else that will take years). Even concentrating on the Book, its chapters keep subdividing themselves and growing much longer, but at least all that material is clearly related to the central topic. I have long recognized that I have a problem gauging the scope of a project!
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of the Huge Honking Translation, apparently my life is not complete without translating some version of that story, so now that the Anglo-Norman version is done, I'm fiddling with the Latin one. If I do a sentence a day, it'll take about eight years. When I finish Book One, I'll ask my AN co-translators if they want to join me on this project, which may speed things up.
How I did:
Delete• expand Alms chapter: YES, not finished, but wrote a bit over 1000 words. I'm happy to be back to writing.
• dead languages: Latin daily, Greek x3. YES to Latin (see above), NO to Greek.
• write tenure review letter. DRAFTED---need to finish it off this week.
• start over reading Relevant Romance. NO.
• observe work hours and dedicated special-project hours. NO.
• at least 2 things from Huge Summer List. YES!
• pay bills. YES.
• prioritize sleep. YES.
When I set goals, I had not considered that the "dedicated hours" goal was likely to conflict with the "prioritize sleep" goal. Getting enough sleep involved naps and sleeping late, but I am definitely more productive when more rested. Nonetheless, it's frustrating not to be better at making and sticking to plans. I'm trying to think of it as experimenting with creating structure.
New goals:
• continue to expand Alms chapter
• dead languages: Latin daily, Greek x3
• finish and submit tenure review letter
• start over reading Relevant Romance
• experiment with structuring work hours
• at least 2 things from Huge Summer List
• prioritize sleep
I think I like summer---I like being warm, and not having to wear many layers of clothing, not shoveling snow or driving in bad weather, being able to sit outside (rather than having to move briskly). But I get more headaches and seem to have more trouble sleeping in the summer, not to mention being a magnet for bugs---I currently have a bite on my jaw, which is so attractive. Grumble.
Sounds like a good week - and like your papers behave a bit like mine. There are always more ideas... and I am a verbose writer...
DeleteBugs are a substantial part of my grumbling about humidity! They looooove me and my immune system always over-reacts so I look like I have some terrible plague after five minutes near a few midgies...
Having similar sleep issues - I have these long spells of being awake enough to fret but not really awake enough to get up and do stuff in the night then sleep late or long for naps... and I'm wary of giving in to an entirely natural pattern of sleep because it will make it VERY hard to revert to "normal world hours" as left entirely to myself in summer I tend to sleep properly 7am-noon then 4pm or 5pm to c. 9pm, and to only have Proper Brain Function after about 11pm... ah it's a pain needing to pretend to be a functional grown up!
Sounds like a productive week. Sympathies on the sleep front. I am waking early at the moment, probably because it's light, but tending to be too groggy to get up and be productive. Thankfully no bugs here, though.
Deleteand **I like that*** ugh editing...
DeleteMy writing FOMO is book projects, in that I really want to be writing something big and challenging, without the immediate constraint of a word limit. It's also related to career anxieties, as books count for a lot in my discipline, and at my career stage, I really should have a second book out by now. Obviously there are good reasons why I haven't, but FOMO isn't rational! It was nice to be reminded last week by Dame Eleanor that good work takes time.
ReplyDeleteI used to be very bad at saying no to things, usually book reviews. I still say yes to too many of those, but I'm trying to be more discerning. I have twice in the last couple of years said no to chapters for survey volumes, even though both were very much in my field, simply because I couldn't spare the time for the catch-up reading I've have to do (and sadly this kind of companion to/general audience textbook doesn't count for much in career terms).
Last week
Things got away from me rather. Not sure what happened: I somehow lost focus and rhythm, so didn't feel very productive or energised, and didn't manage to engage with all the interesting replies to my prompt.
1. Finish interlibrary loan, start another. - NO (had about 20 pages to go)
2. Write one day. - YES, but not that productive.
3. Archive searches and request scans of documents - YES, NO
4. Finances! - NO - started looking, but just got overwhelmed with options.
5. Tidy desk - NO
6. Get baby clothes down from attic and wash to take to new niece this weekend. - YES. And we had a great weekend with my brother and his new little family. Niece is adorable.
7. Try not to get too distracted watching Tour de France with son. - NO! It's too exciting this year, unlike other years, when the yellow jersey has been won on day 2. Torn between wanting Pogacar to take it in style, because he's fun to watch, and wanting Vinegaard to hold on to it because he's a fighter. Gutted for Cav crashing out before his stage win. And as always, there's amazing scenery and (on the British coverage at least), snippets of Tour history and fun anecdotes.
This week:
1. Finally finish interlibrary loan, read another from the pile.
2. Write
3. Work-related admin: edit section of a handbook, meet with a colleague to discuss next year's teaching.
4. Read and comment on dissertation proposals.
5. Order scans from archive.
6. Finances!
7. Get daughter ready for school trip to France next week.
8. Fun stuff - watch Tour highlights, find some new pleasure reading for the summer.
The second book is such an issue for historians. Even the people who are fast are usually slow compared to other fields. Some people find fairly efficient second book topics, or some neat little thing that becomes a great micro-history, but as someone who engaged with a whole new subfield for her second book, count me among the slowpokes. And good topics usually take a lot of time.
DeleteThe career aspect is very challenging. I would LOVE to write a book - but the obvious book for me to write is more of a technical guide than either a popular tome (acceptable, at least on some career tracks) or a substantial piece of original research (which would be unusual but not impossible in my field of STEM) - most of what would be original would be the organisation and clarity of explanation (I'm not being that braggy there, most of the existing papers are a MESS with changing terminology, changing symbology, and several of the key papers written by authors whose background is not really my field so the WAY they write works for me because of my unusual educational background for my field, but seems to confuse most potential users who come from the "normal" subject backgrounds).
DeleteOr fiction.
Or polemic, but I have huge imposter syndrome for writing the sort of polemic I feel called to, about students and universities and teaching...
I find papers very restrictive, but they're also the only part of my "career track KPIs" where I have some control of delivering, so they have to take most of my attention. And they do have value - but if each paper is a useful lego brick in the wall of knowledge, what I WANT to do is build a crazy wonky little creature running around the growing landscape, not just add handy bricks to the store. Or retire and write fiction and draw wierd little creatures. That would suit me too!
Project FOMO is my big nemesis, and by extension the writing is always behind. I have way more ideas and projects than time and capacity. With tenure and new job and feeling pretty secure I definitely have less worries about taking on everything at once because you never know when the next thing is coming, at least from a project perspective, I know there will always be work. However, it was exactly by taking on everything and doing ALL the things that I got to where I am in my lovely job now, so hard to argue with the result... But there is not always money, so I still have to apply for everything and anything, and some of the work for that is less interesting but keeps the lights on. So, a trade-off for sure… In practice it looks like many half-done papers, projects “finished” but not written as well as they could be, your basic massive academic back-log…
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals:
Do one thing for SHINY paper ONE TINY THING…
Plan out CRUNCHY paper’s data content DONE
Continue finicky lab process DONE
Start next finicky lab process (I love these, they make me very happy!) DELAYED FOR HUMIDITY REASONS
Have difficult student conversation DONE, AWFUL
Move offices DONE AND HAVE NEW HUGE WINDOWS!
Get daily exercise SORT OF
This week is a minimal goal one, I was away all weekend for a quick work trip to former town, so that was great and I saw lots of old friends. Leaving for field work in different area today for the rest of the week, I’ve never been there so it will be a new experience.
This week’s goals:
Review
Field stuff
Brainstorm papers/project with colleagues coming for field work, this is fun!
Empathy! And huge congratulations on making it to that point of security (which I've still not reached - my current situation is so poor for research and getting worse, so whereas things were actually quite decent in the early 2010s, now, well...).
DeleteAnd congratulations on the HUGE NEW WINDOWS! I'm supposedly moving later this summer and the office I've been offered has better windows than my current one, and is on the afternoon sun side of the building, but has less appealing views (both are rectangular - the current one is longer and narrower, with windows in one narrow end, and looks onto a lawn with mature trees - the new one is smaller and a bit squarer with windows on one of the wide walls, but the view is the main access road and the administrative building plus some very nicely manicured plantings). I'm hoping the gain in light (and the change of space - I have never felt emotionally safe/content in my current office, I just DO NOT LIKE IT) will help me get some mojo back and spend more time on campus!
Have a wonderful time in the field...
At least the awful student conversation is over, so that's good---and you have a new office with huge windows as your reward! I hope you have a great time doing your field work! Also hope, for JaneB, that your new office proves much more appealing!
Delete