Morning FAIL, already

It's after 8 am and I'm at home, waiting for EGM to get out of the shower. We were up too late last night watching Babel (so tedious!) so I just couldn't deal with a 5:30 alarm. So much for my new, early-morning way of life.

I'll be better tomorrow.

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?

Early starts

Remember how I cut back on carpooling? So I could get more hours in at work? And based on the parameters of my life, how I would consider joining a religion if it included a traffic god?

Well, I started out thinking I would continue to go to work at my normal carpool time, which is 7:00 am, and stay past rush hour instead of leaving before it really heats up like we we do when we carpool. That plan failed. The first few days I tried it, the traffic was uncharacteristically shitty on the way home even when I left work at 7 pm. Blow. After a few days in a row of that, I decided to try a different strategy.

For the past week or more, I've been leaving between 6:10 and 6:40 am and it's going well. I am decidedly a morning person. I'm not a morning person in the sense that I just pop awake and feel great -- waking up to the alarm sucks and I sleep late on weekends -- but I'm more alert, focused, and energetic early in the day. I've found that I can be productive when I'm tired early in the day, but it's all over once I get tired in the evening. So if I get to work by 7 am, I can work >8 hours and still leave before the worst of rush hour starts. Super.

Since I'd rather sleep as late as possible, it takes some effort for me to pull this off. I have to pack my lunch the night before, program the coffee maker, make sure my go-cup is clean, and possibly even lay out my clothes. But if I do all that, it works.

I know lots of you parents and other types of super busy people get up at the crack of dawn every day and it's nothing special. I know I'm not a special snowflake, but I think this is important for me to share because it's a change I've been wanting to make for a while. There are a bunch of things in my life that I think I'd prefer a different way, or things that I feel like I'm putting on hold while I'm in school/living the transient life/underpaid/whatever. This was a relatively easy change to make (but who knows how long I'll keep it up!). Maybe I'll work on some others soon.

RBOC

So I've been out of the blogging loop lately. I was away for a few days, but I've been back for over a week. I guess I've just been doing other stuff in the evenings. Anyway, to get back in the swing of things, I give you bullets:

• Today I finally finished manuscript revisions for reviews I got in MARCH. I was so slow with this! I sent them to the advisors; hopefully they will like what I've done so I can resubmit soon.
• I got rejected for a post doc fellowship that I really, really wanted. Bummer.
• I've been going to a book club. I really enjoy it, although all the other women are good friends, except me. They are nice, however, and I'm hoping to get some new friends out of it. Last time we discussed The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which I totally didn't get when I read it. It just seemed filled with strange choices for the plot. Fortunately, the others in the book club are humanities types who informed me that the book was a take on Hamlet. Knowing that, it made a LOT more sense.
• I had a great time with my friends in Florida last weekend.
• Since I cut back on the carpooling, EGM and I have been going in super early. Today we left at 6:10 am. Loving it so far, but it takes some organization. There will probably be a full post on this later.
• I am so ready for the Lost finale tomorrow, although I am not ready for a six-month break in the show. We have leftovers in the fridge, so we can have dinner ready for the early start time.
  

Make it happen

Why does something that seems relatively simple on the surface always take so long to do? There is one instrument I occasionally use at the university. Since I don't use it all that often, I need help each time. Even if someone takes me through everything step-by-step, I don't repeat the process enough to commit it all to memory or to learn how to do even basic trouble shooting. Plus, by the time I use the instrument the next time, the protocol has usually changed.

This thing is a complicated piece of equipment, but it's not rocket science. There aren't that many steps to running it. Yet, it always seems to take up the whole f'ing day! I love getting the data, but using this instrument drives me crazy!

Revisions

I've spent about 75% of my work time in April on paper revisions. They really aren't all that bad, but I've had to do some literature searches, read papers, and dig out some old data to beef up the results and that all takes time. I also got log-jammed on one difficult section, but I'm think I'm over it now. I'm striving to have most of it done before Friday, when I go to Florida for a long weekend with BFF and another friend.

I've been feeling a little frustrated by working on these revisions. Of course I see this as a priority; I want to get the paper turned around as fast as possible so it gets published as soon as possible. Since I have no publications yet, I'm desperate to get this one out. But. The annoying part is that this manuscript is already dissertation quality. The changes I'm making will certainly make it much better, but it is already good enough for my diss. So instead of spending my time on the other chapters that are not yet written, I'm spending more time on this chapter to get it ready to resubmit.

I'm obviously not going to set aside the revisions in order to work on another chapter, but it is frustrating to sink yet more time into this one that could be considered done.

Are they that cool these days?

Is the photographer on ANTM wearing a t-shirt with a microarray?