Montage mode

Sometimes when I have a lot of work to do, I try to imagine myself doing it like a movie montage. People in movies always seem to be able to get so much done with such joy when their work is overdubbed with upbeat music and they flip from one scene to the next. Dontcha wish you could go into montage mode sometimes?

Have I shared this here before?

External motivation

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".

Something is better than nothing

Yesterday I stayed home and failed to work, so today I went to my office. I was there for about 6 hours, and I got maybe 2 hours of real work done. It's tempting to feel really shitty about that, but I'm trying to have the mindset that something is better than nothing.

I remember the Dissertation Coach commenting that she has clients who avoid work all week, and then finally get motivated by her impending phone call (she has weekly phone meetings with her clients, who report their progress and then work with her to make a new plan for the next week). So they work for only a few hours in total all week, but still they get more done than they otherwise would without the accountability of the scheduled phone calls. Today when I sensed I was straying too much, I called EGM and we agreed to write for 30 minutes and then call back. It worked. Then we did it again. I still ended up reading a bunch of crap on wikipedia, but at the end of the day I had the introduction to my last chapter fleshed out, made the realization that I needed to report some addition results, calculated said results, and made a table to display them. So I could have done a lot more, but it was better than nothing.

The psychology of bedtime

Can someone explain to me why I don't want to go to bed at night? Even when I'm nodding off on the couch? And then desperately want to stay in bed longer in the morning?

Seriously, every single morning I get up and say, I'm totally going to bed earlier tonight. And then I stay up late doing all manner of lame-ass bullshit. Lately this game has been holding me hostage on the couch when I really want to go to bed. Is there any more stupid way to be spending my time? Even my down-time could be more satisfying if I did something else. I feel like a kid who will do anything to stall going to bed. Yet I would very much like more sleep.

Anyway, it seems like lots of people have this problem. I've blogged about it before, and know some of you have too. What makes us do it? Why don't we just go to bed already?

Butt in chair, eyes open

Alice Academic posted an interesting question: How do you stop yourself from ramping up the coffee when you have a deadline? She has increased her coffee intake in recent months, wants to cut back, yet worries that she'll need it to get through her summer writing goals. Personally, I only drink coffee first thing in the morning, at which point it is the most delicious substance I can fathom, whereas later in the day it has the appeal of sewage sludge. But the core problem -- needing a boost to make the writing happen -- is common. When I'm not working in the lab, I do suffer from the antsy pantsies or, conversely, drooping eyelids. Here are some ways that I deal with it:

• Jumping-jacks. Everyone thinks this sounds really lame, but it works. 5-10 jj's when I'm getting sleepy perks me right up.
• I take a short walk around my building. Moving around, getting a little fresh air, and most importantly, getting a little sunshine really wakes me up.
• I almost always go to the far-away bathroom. My legs start to fall asleep if I'm at my desk too long, so it's good to get frequent "exercise snacks".
• No reading bloglines unless I'm eating, which is how I define an official break. I think keeping focused on a single task rather than flitting among distractions is a good thing, but it's so hard. I haven't decided if this one really helps or just makes me bored.
• Having my breaks really be breaks, and making myself wait for them until a specific time or I've met a specific goal.

Like Alice, I've got a lot of writing coming up so I'm also looking for strategies to help stay on task. What do you do to keep your ass in your chair and your mind on your work?

The grass is always greener

Why is it that every task looks better than the one I'm doing? I would almost always prefer to be working on something else. It happens at all scales. For example, when I'm processing a sample, I'll be itching to work on a different part of the same sample. Or I'll wish I to be processing data when I'm at the bench. Or longing to be in the lab when I'm writing. I'm never satisfied.

Currently, I'm torn between two writing projects and I fear it's developing into a log jam. I had been working on my next paper/dissertation chapter. I had gotten kind of stalled by some difficult yet very relevant papers, but I was making good progress of taking notes on them. I was just about to begin working the notes into text when I learned I should drop everything to work on a complicated fellowship application. I spent most of last week reading up on a new subfield so I could put together a proposal. Now I want to work on both. Or not on either of them. Or both.

I'm hoping that writing this post will help be refocus. I need to just decide what I'm going to do today and break it down so I get something done. Not really want I want to do on a Sunday (especially after having worked 27 hours last weekend), but I'm feeling so much anxiety right now that I think only some progress will give me any relief.

Log jams

As hard as I try to follow great advice to push through the tough times in my work, I still find myself periodically stalled by difficult tasks. I get in a psychological situation where I can't get myself to do the task at hand, yet I won't let myself do anything else instead. So nothing gets done. It will end when I finally force my ass to stay in the chair and just do it, and it usually ends up less painful than I anticipated. In fact, the process of dreading the task is usually worse than actually doing it.

I have various tricks to get myself to just do it. Sometimes I think of a treat that I will give myself when I finish. Or Awesome Technician and I will make a bet over who will finish what we're doing first, or issue a Twix Challenge. Sometimes it works to set a timer and decide that I can't work on anything else for a certain amount of time. Or I disable my internet for a while. These tricks have variable success.

The thing is, I always feel so good when I finally finish the thing and relieve the log jam. It's always awesome to get back to the work I'd rather do and feel like I've made progress. Why can't I just get over it and take care of these things before my anxiety expands to make a log jam? How do you get over the inertia? How do you get yourself to work on something that feels so hard?

Dry spell

Man, I got nothing tonight. It goes along with nothing all day. I've had lots of post ideas floating around, but then when it's time to write them I can't think of anything. It fits with a general pattern of low productivity lately. I've had lots of odds and ends sorts of tasks to do. This kind of work can sometimes make me feel hyper productive because I'm constantly crossing items off the list, but lately it seem like these tasks are taking longer than they should, I'm flitting from one thing to the next, and I'm not getting any of them all the way to completion. It feels like one key thing that is semi-out of my control is missing from each little project.

Then there's the real roadblock: an overdue review. I'm having a serious flare of impostor syndrome that is making this thing take a million years to finish. I got some (editor-approved) guidance from Research Advisor today, so maybe I'll be able to wrap it up soon. I might write more about this topic, but I dunno. Feels a little inappropriate for this blog somehow. More impostor syndrome, perhaps?

My brand of imposter syndrome

The other day I wrote about how the “I’m not good enough” voice causes procrastination. I’ve always struggled with imposter syndrome because mine manifests in a slightly different way. I knew I suffered from it, but I also knew that it wasn’t in the same way that other people describe. I never feel like I shouldn’t have been allowed into my program or that I’m not smart enough to be a scientist or that it’s just a matter of time till everyone realizes I’m not smart. I always feel like I’m not passionate enough. It took sitting through that seminar for me to realize that in essence, it’s the same thing.

When I plan to work on the weekend, I really want to get work done. I’m super excited about my research and I really want a PhD. So when I can’t make myself stay focused to do my work, I feel like I don’t have the same love other people have. When I batted around post doc ideas with my colleagues, I always think, “yeah, that lab won’t want me once they find out how little I work”. Deep down, I think I’m actually worried about failing.

I always feel like I must not really be interested enough in my science since I put off reading papers. I think the real reason is that I’m afraid I won’t understand them or won’t be able to retain the information. Same with writing – it’s hard to stay on task. I’m not so worried about what people will think about my writing itself, but I’m afraid they’ll think I don’t know the literature well enough or that I haven’t synthesized literature and my data into interesting new ideas.

All this was hiding in “I’m not passionate enough” thoughts. That felt really bad because I am really excited about my science and I’m not sure what else I could do to be more passionate about it. I know I don’t want to be monomaniacal about it and I don’t think I could be even if I wanted to. But now I realize that those valid desires for work-life balance are also tangled up with my personal brand of imposter syndrome. Now I have to figure out how to work with that.

Getting writing done

Yesterday, I wrote about how I heard a dissertation coach (DC) boil all our procrastination problems down to imposter syndrome. Today I want to share her advice for actually getting writing done.

One of DC’s big points was, don’t write like your committee is in the room. People get paralyzed by thinking that the first draft should be perfect. You can’t have a second draft until you have a first draft, so just get your thoughts down to start with. You can always edit later. In fact, she suggested defining crappy first drafts as such so you can give yourself the freedom to write. She said that people who claim to work best with a deadline really just need a way to lose the inhibitions of feeling like their writing has to be perfect. Nobody really works best under pressure, it’s just that we finally actually let ourselves work at all at that point.

Her other big message was break it down, down, down. Big tasks are impossible to penetrate. There’s no entry point into something like “write introduction” or “work on methods”. Create a timeline with milestones set for specific dates. Then break the work necessary to reach those milestones into weekly goals. Then break the weekly goals into tasks for each day you plan to work. Good daily goals are things like, “read and take notes on papers A, B, and C”. Or, “write a shitty draft of section two of discussion.” “Revise section four of introduction.” The timeline is a guide that shouldn’t be rigid -- it should be updated frequently as you progress. DC also suggested scheduling time for things like exercise and hanging out with friends. She reminded us that we are living our lives now and we need to make time for all the things we want to do. We shouldn’t put off our living for after grad school.

DC offers life and dissertation coaching. She didn’t give us the hard sell during her seminar, but she did allude to her services. Apparently, the main thing she does is help clients create a timeline and then meet with them once a week (in person or on the phone) to discuss progress and provide accountability. Not a bad idea.

Passengers on your bus

Reading Arlenna’s nice post about procrastination reminded me to write about a terrific seminar I recently attended. It was delivered by a dissertation coach* (I’ll call her DC) who was a really funny, charismatic speaker. I think that helped her morph some messages that might otherwise have been kind of tired or cheesy into something profound. She hooked me when she said, “isn’t it annoying when people tell you to just sit down and write? That’s like telling someone who wants to lose weight that they should just move more and eat less”. I need to pass that gem along to my mom.

Much of DC’s message was about dealing with imposter syndrome. She claimed that those nasty voices telling you that you aren’t smart enough are the source of your procrastination. So when you obsessively check your email when you should be writing or you spend your “work all weekend” weekend watching Beauty and the Geek marathons, it’s really imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head.

DC had a somewhat odd but very effective demonstration to convey this idea. She had someone from the audience volunteer to describe her dissertation research. She asked the volunteer to say the values that led her to this work. The woman was researching nursing, so she said things like helping people, improving quality of care, etc. Then DC compared writing a dissertation to driving a bus. A bus driver has a goal (the end of the route) and has passengers getting on and off the bus all day. The driver can’t control who gets on, even if they smell bad or are rude. She just has to continue driving toward the end of the route. DC asked other people from the audience to act like the volunteer’s imposter syndrome. She had the volunteer pretend to drive toward her goals/values while the others stood behind her, shouting all of the negative things one might think, like “you should have never been accepted to grad school” and “they’re going to think your paper is terrible”. The volunteer laughed, of course, but also didn’t make much progress toward the end of her route. She kept turning around to look at them. Which brought DC to her point: negative emotions are like passengers on the bus; you can’t get rid of them and if you keep trying to deal with them, you’ll stop making progress toward your real goals. She advised us to expect those emotions to come and then to plug along anyway. When you start to feel tempted to check your email for no reason, remind yourself that it’s the passengers on your bus distracting you.

This mindset can be applied to almost any long term goals, like saving money or losing weight. Keeping you values in mind can help you get past the little negative voices that get you off track.

Tomorrow, practical advice for actually writing your dissertation.


*DC has a nice, content-rich website that I’m happy to share with anyone who’s interested in learning more. I know my location is sort of an open secret, but since her website would make my location really obvious, I think it might be going too far to link to it here. Email me if you want the address.

Can I just prepare an awesome talk?

If things go to plan, tomorrow I will have the last of the data I need for my talk at Big Meeting in two weeks. Having two weeks to work with the data is actually pretty good for me. As much as I swear I won't do it again, for whatever reason I always end up scrambling to get the last results with just a few days to spare. This time, I have worked with the preliminary data pretty extensively (I gave a poster on it last year) so I at least have some idea what to expect.

Despite that, my anxiety about preparing for conference presentations seems to increase as I gain experience. I have been to pretty many conferences (1 to 3 each year since 2001) and I have grown less anxious about the meeting itself since I am familiar with the routine and I now know enough people that I can usually find someone to have lunch with even when none of my labmates are there. But the stakes feel higher for my presentations. I used to feel like I was just a young student, so people would know not to expect too much from me. On top of that, I could relax with the idea that they wouldn't remember me anyway, so if I said something stupid, it would vanish into the black hole of the unremembered and I would start with a clean slate next year. But now people do remember me (for which I am grateful, of course!). And I want to impress them. I want them to have in mind that I gave a nice talk when I let them know I'll be graduating and looking for post docs soon.

While diligently working in the lab to get the last of my data, I've been carrying around 8-10 papers that are highly relevant to the talk I plan to give. Yet I haven't read them. Since I only have two weeks to do all the data analysis, interpret the results, make pretty graphs, and write the talk, you'd think I would try to be efficient by doing any necessary literature review before I get the data. But no. Instead I'm all paralyzed by worry about the scientific quality of my presentation. Can I just get over it?

I like to think of myself as a junior colleague. The scientists at these meetings are not the "grown-ups", they are my more senior colleagues (by now, some of them are even junior colleagues to me!). I want them to respect me and my work as I come up the ranks. So can I please not make a boring talk during which I say something ridiculous?

Travel anxiety and procrastination

I'm going on a trip tomorrow. I have to attend a workshop for my fellowship program during which I will give a 30-45 min talk (nice that they were so clear with the time expectations, eh?). The talk isn't finished yet, but it shouldn't take me too long to polish it off. Too bad I'm blogging instead.

I always get a lot of anxiety before I travel, especially when it's for work. I get nervous about making my flight, how I'm going to get to the airport, how I'm going to find the hotel, etc. I mentally list what I'm going to wear so I don't end up short a shirt or something. I also worry about my talk/poster. I'll have visions of forgetting the poster tube or bringing the wrong memory stick. I'm usually fine with actually giving the presentation, but I get anxious about everything up until the session starts.

I best get back to work on the talk so I can go to bed early tonight and enjoy the afternoon in conference city tomorrow with some of the fellows with whom I have become friends at past workshops. Also, I'm not sure if I'll be blogging while I'm away, but with the infrequency of my posts lately, that should be nothing new.

March NYR review

I’m overdue for a New Year’s Resolution update post. I’m sure these are boring, but they really do provide some accountability for me, so here goes.

• I’m doing fine on the money and cooking resolutions.
• Lab work is slowly but steadily progressing. I met a small milestone for Chapter 2 work this week. Chapter 3 work is not going as fast, but not entirely stalled.
• The paper is not going well. Well, it’s not going badly but this is April already and it’s still not done. I have no one to blame but myself. No excuses. I just haven’t done it. Progress has been creeping along, but I need to get my A into G and do it. Actually, that’s not really fair. I did do a fair bit of work on it in March. However, I can feel myself fake working during my writing time and that’s bad. Also, I put everything else first and that’s also bad.
• I still have the same old problem of being really effective in the lab and not so much at my desk. One of the resolutions I have let slide was to make tomorrow’s to-do list at the end of each day. I think I should try that again. Also, I think the goals should be more specific. Currently, I’ll say I’m going to “write” for 2 hours or whatever, but I think I need to say “I’ll work on paragraph X” or “I’ll find the appropriate references for these 3 arguments”. There’s currently some good advice about goal making and list writing at the Aphasic Grads Writing Group.

Sorry I complain about the same crap over and over, but it’s what I struggle with.

Perfectionism

I followed this link I saw at Rising To the Occasion and thought it was interesting enough for a post. It's a booklet from the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center titled "Perfectionism: A double-edged sword". Some excerpts:

Those who strive for excellence in a healthy way take genuine pleasure in trying to meet high standards. Perfectionists on the other hand are full of self-doubts and fears of disapproval, ridicule and rejection. The healthy striver has drive, while the perfectionist is driven.

MYTH: Perfectionists get things done and they do things right.
REALITY: Perfectionists often have problems with procrastination, missed deadlines, and low productivity.

Psychologists find that perfectionists tend to be "all-or-nothing" thinkers. They see events and experiences as either good or bad, perfect or imperfect, with nothing in between. Such thinking often leads to procrastination, because a requirement of flawless perfection, in even the smallest of tasks, can become fearfully overwhelming. The perfectionist believes that the flawless product or superb performance must be produced every time. Perfectionists believe if it can't be done perfectly, it's not worth doing.
Such beliefs often lead to undesired results. A perfectionist student may turn in a paper weeks late (or not at all), rather than turn it in on time with less-than-perfect sentences. A perfectionist worker may spend so much time agonizing over some non-critical detail that a critical project misses its deadline.

MYTH: Perfectionists are determined to overcome all obstacles to success.
REALITY: Although perfectionists follow an "I'll-keep-trying-until-it's-perfect" credo, they are especially vulnerable to potentially serious difficulties such as depression, writer's block, and performance and social anxiety.

The good news is that there is a list of coping strategies. The first is

1. Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of trying to be perfect. When you make your own list of costs and benefits, you may find that the costs are too great. You may discover that problems with relationships, excessive workaholism, eating and substance abuse problems, and other compulsive behaviors (plus the accompanying anxiety, nervousness, feelings of inadequacy, self-criticism, and so on) actually outweigh whatever advantages perfectionism holds for you.

All this smacks of imposter syndrome to me, while explaining a lot of the procrastination I witness (both mine and others'). And it sounds like so many people I know. Does it sound like you?

Bonus

So far, Project Efficiency, my catch-all New Year's Resolution all about not procrastinating and getting more done, is going pretty well. For example, I paid for my car license plate renewal the day the notice came, which is the sort of thing I'd usually put off and then scramble to do before the deadline, accompianed by much anxiety. More notably, I haven't been blogging at work at all. Although twice I quickly checked my blog related email to look up specific information. And, I admit that when I worked last Saturday, I did read some blogs over lunch, but I figure it's okay if I'm there on a weekend.

Anyway, an unexpected side effect of less procrastination is a tidier home. We're not super messy, but we're not neat freaks either. Since I'm no longer putting off things like sorting the mail or doing the dishes, we are maintaining a cleaner environment. How nice.

Let's talk about procrastination

I'm positive that there are lots of books out there all about procrastination, why we engage in it, and how to beat it. I haven't read them. I bet that many people in this corner of the blogosphere have read some of these books, or thought extensively on the subject, or definitively blogged about it. Since this is a record of my personal journey, I will now blog about my own recent thoughts on procrastination. But I'd love links to your insightful posts or recommendations for helpful but not boring books.

Procrastination doesn't get you ahead. It puts you in the hole. It causes oppressive anxiety. And it creates more work for you to put off.

Think about when you get an email with an attached form you have to fill out. It’s probably tedious and has a distant deadline, so you ignore it for later. But then the deadline approaches and then passes and you get several reminder emails to return the completed form. So you do it, but now you’ve had to think about the stupid thing all those extra times, search for the buried email, and feel guilty. In a sense, you’ve had to do the work more than once. Or think about when you blow something off and then have to do it again because it’s ruined, or it takes extra paperwork to get an extension, or there’s a late fee. Why do we do this to ourselves? Usually, the thing I do instead is not worth the heartache of dealing with the consequences of procrastination. So much guilt and anxiety for what? A Seinfeld rerun? The headlines on MSN?

This recent realization of how much I suffer at the devious hand of procrastination is why one of my NYRs was to reduce it and is what I will try to keep in my thoughts so as to avoid it. It feels so good to get things done when they need to be done and then not think about them again. And to know that no one can bitch at you for not doing your bit.

I recently read in a magazine something like “you never say ‘gee, I wish I hadn’t done that’ after you exercise.” I think the same is true for doing things on your list. You never regret being productive. Productive, here, means not only getting work done, but doing the fun activities that we want to do. I noticed that an awful lot of bloggers wrote how they don’t want to waste time mindlessly surfing the Internet or watching tv this year. Me too.