It struck me this week that a good analogy for this time of year is noodles. As in, long and thin – not wet and floppy. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.
Academia isn’t so much a feast or famine job, more feast or very well fed: there’s always more you could be doing, but some periods are more chocabloc than others. This is one such season. That means there are lots of little jobs that need doing, and there is no chance you can free up a day or half day to work on one thing. Everything has to be tackled piece by piece. Each day (apart from delivering teaching, supervising PhD students, attending meetings and helping out with Open Days), I have an assignment to mark, a foot force rig to make, an upate to FATKAT to implement, two theses to examine, two of my own students whose theses need feedback and the WHISPER prototypes to build. That’s eight things to juggle.
That means that each day, I spend some time reading my students’ theses; some time making a prototype; and some time reading theses to examine. This also means that each thing takes a long time: I’ve the least three weeks working on all eight things in parallel. You’ll note that papers and proposals have been dropped entirely. The rigs and prototypes are the priority right now, for if they aren’t ready in the current window of opportunity, then that’s it: all papers and grant applications that would follow from them blink abruptly out of existence. So it’s short term pain for long term gain. You have to play the long game.
Of course, this means a period of the classic “doing much but getting nothing done”. You work for little, but none of these things are completed. Of course, the smart time manager breaks their tasks into smaller goals. Design it; make it; test it; calibrate it; read this chapter. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this week was more of the same. Not very interesting for a blog, but hey – that’s life. In the coming week or so, we hopefully have a Stuart Murray seminar on Johnny Mnemonic and post humanism; an IMPRESS workshop on foecal incontinence; and the first WHISPER focus group.
So if you’re thinking: I wish he’d shut up about all the interesting things he’s working on and get to some actual results – your wish will soon be granted. Except for the shutting up bit. :op
No comments:
Post a Comment