the final push is underway

Not too long back I received an offer on a post-doctoral position in Europe. Before receiving that offer, I thought that I had already reduced my life to pretty much nothing but working on my thesis and basic “take care of myself” tasks like food, exercise, sleep, and checking in with my mother so that she knows I’m still alive. Since receiving that offer I’ve discovered that there is nothing like a solid job offer with a specific deadline when it comes to being a motivator. I did, in fact, have other places on my daily schedule that could be converted to time for “uni work”, and progress proceeds apace. Assuming that all goes well with my achieving my deadlines for submission, and with the paperwork for visas and everything else involved in such a move, July should see me in a new country, starting a new job, but there are a number of tasks yet to be completed to achieve that goal.

One word of advice for anyone else coming down to the end of a major project with a hard deadline: any time you need to take a break, be it to sleep for the night, or just to go grab a quick bite to eat, be certain you know what specific task you will be doing when you return. I find that is ever so much easier to procrastinate if I am thinking in vague terms of “lots to do”, and that it is ever so much easier to start working if I’m thinking in terms of “one specific, reasonably easy to accomplish” task to undertake next.