Fruit of my brain

Hellooooooo!!! (she calls from the bottom of a deep, paper-lined well).

I've been hunkered down, trying to finish my two Qualifying Papers (40+ pages each) and my Qualifying Portfolio for my Review coming up. Well, sing Hallelujah, as of about 4:30 this afternoon, it's done. Isn't she pretty?

 

Let me tell you, mine is a brain that does not take kindly to hunkering down. Usually I give in to my dilly dallying with a shrug, in a kind of wild-horses-can't-be-broken kind of way, but turns out wild horses don't get a lot done.  They definitely don't get doctorates. Humph.

I did manage to find a few techniques to keep myself focused. I was chatting with my friend and fellow mom/PhD student, Melissa, and she offered to send me a procrastination questionnaire from her work with students. The aim of the questionnaire was to figure out what type of procrastinator you are so you can use specific tactics to overcome that particular brand. Well, hello! I was 5 of the 6 kinds and that was even when I fudged a little to save my self respect.  I am a perfectionist, dreamer, worrier, crisis-maker, overdoer procrastinator. Nice to meet you.

It did help to think about all of these patterns and avoidances that become part of my daily habit (thank you, Melissa).  I came up with a few aids of my own. They're probably obvious and what you already do. I think I'm also a late-blooming-idea procrastinator.

1. Garbage pail. When I cook, I always grab an empty bowl to put all of the little pieces of trash (egg shells, apple cores, peelings, etc.) while I prepare the food. So I decided to set up a garbage pail list next to me on the desk. In the past, every time I had a thought flit across my brain ("oh, I need to call ____," "is the laundry done yet?") I would use that as an excuse to get up and disrupt my work. Now I said, "Brain, this is not the time to deal with this. Put it on the garbage pail list and you'll deal with that later." Totally worked.

2. Timer. 50 minutes of work, 10 minutes of break. Repeat. Turns out what works for a 3-year-old works for me.  Not that I made our children work 50 minutes at a time when they were 3, mind you. Just using the timer to aid better behavior is a very 3-year-old thing.

3. Lay out the day in 2-hour increments. I think I got this from About A Boy*. I don't know why, this just helped me stay realistic about how much work I really could accomplish and kept me from getting overwhelmed. It takes me a while to settle down to writing so I really do need a nice chunk of time. Mine looked like this:

5:30-7:30  Take Maddy to seminary, to high school, go back home, say goodbye to G and Sam

7:30-9:30  Shower, get ready, tidy up the house, make calls

9:30-11:30 Write

11:30-1:30  Lunch, run errands, answer emails, etc.

1:30-3:30  Write

3:30-5:30  Chat with kids as they come home, help with homework & practicing, etc. Maybe write a little if everyone's all set.

5:30-7:30  Dinner prep, eating, clean up, family time

7:30-9:30  Relax, family devotional, maybe a little more writing

9:30-11:30 Get ready for bed, reading, watching, sleep

Scheduling to the minute makes me really rebellious. I've tried that before and I end up feeling too bossed around and I go to a matinee movie instead (That's probably the dreamer+crisis-maker procrastinators in me teaming up right there.) This gave me enough flexibility and structure to stick to it.

4. Parking lot. Sort of like the garbage pail, this is a document open on my computer screen while I write. Sometimes I'll get little jolts of ideas for another place in the paper so I found that if I had a parking lot for them (rather than suppressing them or running with them) it kept me productive and yet still able to use the inspiration that came (and trust me, I needed all the inspiration I could get).

Anyway, that's what kept me sane while I pushed through to the deadline (and, admittedly, the deadline got pushed back along the way. Just keeping it real here, folks.)  Do you use any tricks to get yourself on track? Or are you of the mysterious non-procrastinating variety?

. . .

p.s. I was really moved by my advisor/mentor Fred's obituary in the Boston Globe today. I think it captures him beautifully and I feel lucky that I knew him. I've still been sad about his loss and a bit bewildered about how to move forward.  Today I came across a lovely, generous letter of recommendation he wrote for me a few years ago. It gave me a pep talk and soothed my soul. Thanks, Fred.

. . .

*"I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour. Taking a bath: one unit, watching countdown: one unit, web-based research: two units, exercising: three units, having my hair carefully disheveled: four units. It's amazing how the day fills up, and I often wonder, to be absolutely honest, if I'd ever have time for a job; how do people cram them in?" (Hugh Grant as Will, About a Boy). 

The nibble of reality

Oy, I received an email from my advisor this afternoon. When I saw her name in my inbox I had a little adrenaline rush. Or some might call it a wee panic attack. You see, I've been working steadily on my papers and qualifying review portfolio this summer. Steadily but not speedily. I had a deadline of September 14th and, you know, that's miles of time. Acres, at least.  However, my advisor was emailing to let me know that my committee needs my materials two weeks in advance to review them before the meeting on September 14th, meaning my deadline is now next week.

Reality isn't quite biting yet (that will be next week!) but it certainly is nibbling about the edges today. So I'm going public with my intention to dedicate several hours a day, preferably early in the morning, from here on out.

But first I had to write this post. Priorities, you know. 

. . .

p.s. This morning after getting a haircut in Boston, I took Sam (Maddy's in an intensive driver's ed class all week) to the Harvard Museum of Natural History as a reward for coming along to the salon. He liked the duck-billed platypus and the whales suspended from the ceiling.  I loved the butterflies and glass flowers. Maybe I'm just getting adept at avoiding everything that can nibble or bite. 

Ensconced

(This entire post should be whispered.)

Hello.

I am sequestered in a super secret hidey hole this week in a self-imposed writing retreat.  Just me, a stack of research studies, my computer, and a stretch of hours every day. A gal in search of self discipline, that's me.

I give all internet friends permission to scold me outright if I show up on facebook or twitter this week during working hours. Go ahead, publicly shame me like the old lady in Princess Bride. I need the deterrent.

But (she throws out an escape rope) don't be surprised if I still show up here now and then. It's my reward. If I'm good and stay away from the internet for a lot of hours in a row, I'll let myself think and write about other things besides parenting interventions and program retention and attribution theory and other such things. 

My poor, mushy (rebellious, addled) brain is being put through boot camp and doesn't like it one bit.

Pray for me. Send good thoughts and maybe some doughnuts.

. . .

picture by Thibodeau, found via pinterest

Me vs. Me

Turns out that going to London for a week, then turning around and going to Washington, DC, for my (final!) fellowship meetings for four days results in a sizeable backlog of work on the homefront.  I have to pay the piper, apparently.  Man, I resent that piper sometimes. I'd much rather hide my head in the sand. Or in a giraffe costume, should that be conveniently on hand.

Towering at the top of my list is a major paper I promised to my advisor this week. It's sooooo close and yet so far from being done. I am experiencing major writing dread and I seem to be repelled from my computer. Well, maybe not my computer (here I am enjoying it immensely, see?) but definitely anything associated with academic writing.

On the other hand, I really want to do it. I do! I love the ideas I'm writing about and want to keep moving forward. I chose this set of challenges. So there's the battleground: me vs. me. I'm so good at sabotaging myself, too: my ultimate opponent.

When I was driving home this weekend, I heard a compelling Radio Lab story about this very issue. A woman named Zelda Gamson was trying to stop smoking: wanted to stop, knew she should, but somehow the "other" her kept getting in the way. I was fascinated to find out how she finally triumphed over herself. Would it be setting up a fabulous reward? Finally deciding to improve her health so she could be there for her grandchildren and (please bless) even their children?

You know what it was? She made a pact with a friend that if she had another cigarette she would send $5000 to the Ku Klux Klan. That's right, she would fund lynchings and prejudice and evil. And you know what? After decades of trying and failing to rid herself of smoking, this time she never took another puff. The key for her was finding something so revolting that it outsmarted all of her little excuses and compromises. Fascinating!

Well, back to work...surely you've figured out that even this post is a distraction from what I really should be doing. Time to locate some self discipline or get out my checkbook, I guess.

What would be the worst negative consequence you could give yourself to motivate a change or behavior you're after? Or do you work better with rewards?

p.s. I will do a mega-London post once I have made some headway toward my deadline. (Besides, if you're like me you probably overdosed on London and royal wedding coverage over the weekend, right? Take a breather and I'll inundate you soon. xo)

As you wish

This week is the kids' February break. I welcomed it with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I always love the opportunity to spend more time with my littles (though not so little anymore), especially with a more relaxed, no-homework stretch of time.

On the other hand, we've had roughly 763 snow days in January and gone through our down-time wishlist several times. Also. My school doesn't have February break so there's that delicate dance of being sufficiently available to both worlds, which really amounts to doing minimal school things (emailing with students, meeting with a few) for a week. When the two roles duel at sunset, the mom role always wins and I'm fine with that. 

Last night we headed to our local theater, which was hosting a nostagia movie night with The Princess Bride on the big screen. It was awesome, complete with a cheesy trivia contest and audience participation in joining in on lines (including as you wish, my name is Inigo Montoya, & inconceivable, of course). What a blast we had. Sam and Maddy got into the spirit of things by wearing home-crafted Inigo Montoya nametags. Watch out Rocky Horror Picture Show, there's a new(er) show in town.