I love my job. Really I do. I'm excited about my science: I like thinking about it, writing about it, making data happen. But I get so much more done when I have some kind of outside motivation. For example, I told you about my recent deadline for a paper. Honestly, without that deadline I don't think that paper would have been done for months.
For several reasons, I can no longer do Twix Challenges. I miss that fun, positive influence on my work habits. Now, however, PI and I started a new thing. We each had a small side project we wanted to get done last week, so decided that whoever finishes by noon on Monday gets to keep a silly trophy in their office. If both or neither of us finish, then the trophy goes in the lab. It will stay wherever it lands until we initiate a new contest when we both have something we need to get done. I think it will help.
Sometimes my lack of internal motivation makes me feel bad. If I like my work, why is it so hard to do it? The best answer I can come up with is it still is work, after all. I like it, but I don't like it in the same way I like a picnic on the beach. I think I just have to give in and do whatever works without feeling like it says anything about my "passion".
4 comments:
I think it's completely normal to need external motivators for some phases of projects. They have a lot of stages, and you can't necessarily like all of them. So for example, I love designing a project but I hate the actual data collection and stats.... and then I love the writing. So external motivators get me through the middle part!
Besides what Psycgirl said, I think it also has to do with focus. You probably have several things that need to be done, and then spend time deciding which is more important, remembering what this particular project/step was about, etc. An external motivation, particularly a deadline, makes you focus on one of them -- and suddenly you get much more done as you exclusively work on this one task.
Nevertheless, setting up deadlines for myself doesn't have the same effect, so who knows, maybe there are other effects behind this ;)
I am of the same mindset and I agree with Amelie that it has a bit to do with focus. When there are several things to be done, having a means of establishing deadlines is a great way to focus the to-do list.
This is exactly how I feel about work and it makes me wonder if I need a different career. :-) Setting my own deadlines doesn't work for me because no one else has any expectation around that deadline. Touching base weekly with my PI at least ensures I get something done, but this grant I'm supposed to be writing is killing me?!
Post a Comment