There's a phrase that I often turn over in my mind: "doing much, but getting little done". I can't remember where I got it from - and Google hasn't been able to furnish me with an answer - or whether I made it up myself. But when I started thinking back over this month, I couldn't really point to anything that I'd really done.
Looking at my timesheets, I've objectively worked more hours in March than February and I've objectively had significantly less marking and teaching. And yet, whereas February saw an exciting trip to the Netherlands, and an expression of interest submitted, I'm not sure I can point to anything I've finished in March. At first thought that's a little depressing: there's always the trap of getting busy without being productive.
But I think some of it's a matter of perspective. Or rather, granularity. I've done much, and even if I haven't finished much, I've progressed a variety of things:
PhD Theses. I have two students coming up to submission, and so I've been reading through two PhD theses and providing detailed comments. I was reading both theses at the start of the month, and I'm still reading them both at the end of the month. But I have read five chapters between them, which puts me about a third of the way through.
Developing my technical skills. I've been starting to play around with the Raspberry Pi Pico W, as an alternative microcontroller to the Arduino, to use it in future prototypes. That's been fun. I've also been working on controlling i2c devices without using intermediary libraries (like Adafruit). It's fairly straightforward and something I've been meaning to do for a while. Of course, to show for it, I have much learning, but no new prototype.
Attending workshops. I've attended two Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship days; a Workshop for putting in a Research Council hub bid; and a Deadfblind International Technology network meeting that discussed issues and ideas. All great experiences, but none create tangible outputs… yet!
Attended meetings and made some connections for an upcoming workshop in May (watch this space).
Supported an application for funding for a workshop to be delivered by a colleague (again, watch this space!).
Collected some natty prototypes from Duke Makes for the Feel the Physics project and did some rudimentary prototyping.
I've also done my first ethics review in three and a half years. That's been good. And reviewed a paper for journal. And my Expression of Interest was shortlisted, so it's now time to write a full proposal!
So, in terms of concrete achievements and drawing a line under things, this hasn't been much of a month. In terms of keeping plates spinning until they're needed… well, it looks rather better. Let's see if some of these can pay off next month…
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