It's November. And that means that today I have to start GETTING THINGS DONE. If Dr. Crazy can find time for writing and research with a 4/4 teaching load, then I have NO. FREAKING. EXCUSE. Crap.
So, today is the day that I try to figure out how I will fit in the writing/reading time. When I was working on my dissertation, I wrote in the morning. Not first thing - first, I had to have coffee and check email and shower and do 30 minutes of yoga. So I usually got to work around 10:00 am. And I forced myself to sit there for a minimum of 2 hours whether I liked it or not. And it worked - nearly every day, after sitting there long enough I would start writing. I wrote my dissertation in about three months, writing in the mornings on Tuesday through Friday (I taught on Mondays and I refuse to work on the weekends). I don't know how I'm going to make it work now. Obviously I can't work at that rate, because I have other things that need doing, and the dissertation writing was so intense that I was pretty much useless for anything else.
But I do have tangible deadlines now. I looked up the NSF guidelines for the grant cluster I want to apply to, and the next deadline is January 12. I think that's just about perfect. And I am presenting a talk on the phylogenetics paper (the last damn unpublished chapter from my dissertation - but it needs a lot of work) at a conference in early January as well. So these two things will need substantial work in the next two months, which sounds a little scary but with the deadlines to motivate me, I can get it done. Deadlines are good.
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4 comments:
I'll miss you honey!
deadlines suck, but they are useful. good luck!
What Betty said about deadlines being useful. The only way I've gotten anything done is because I create situations in which I *have* to get things done or I'll look like a fool. I'll send some good writing vibes your way :)
2 hours of writing a day is a good habit to keep. If I didn't do time-dependent benchwork, I would definitely do that. I may have to try it as an experiment for my next grant, but I'll just have to get up 2 hours earlier. Ugh.
Thanks for being motivated and setting a good example!
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