motivation, 1000 a day, and winter holidays

A year and a half ago I was finishing up my PhD thesis, working really, really long hours and totally focused on the one goal: finish up before boarding that plane on my way to my first post-doc position. Many of my friends commented at how motivated I was, and I replied that plane tickets are a huge motivator.

Jump ahead to the present and I once again have plane tickets waiting for me at the end of the month, but this time they are taking me to visit friends in Scandinavia and enjoy some real winter weather while I keep applying for jobs. Since my friends will have jobs to go to during the days the prospect of not being quite finished with my current research isn't as worrisome as the prospect of not completing that thesis before boarding the plane to head to a job—I know that it will be possible to keep working, even once funding ends. As a result I have not been putting fort the same sort of concentrated effort I did a year and a half ago, but am instead permitting myself some distractions.

One of the biggest distractions, of course, is the need to continue to apply for all of those positions which sound interesting and related to any of the research I've done to date. Each of these applications takes time, and each has a deadline by which if I have not yet applied they will not consider me for the position. One of the other distractions has been my social life. I flew to Scandinavia on the last weekend of November, and to the UK on the first weekend of December. Both trips were to attend events focused on Medieval Dancing. I very much enjoyed both trips and got to renew some old friendships and make some new friends.

Prior to the first of those trips I had been wondering what to do about my 1000 a day—I had chosen to fly carry-on only, and wouldn't be bringing my computer—this means that I'd need to actually print out a pdf or bring a text book so that I'd have something with me to read from the geologic literature. Sadly, a couple of days before my trip I forgot to read my 1000, thus ending a streak of 321 days in a row. My record, by far, and I am pleased to have achieved it. But oh, wouldn't it have been nice to manage an entire year in a row of reading 1000 or more words from the geological literature?

I know how it happened that I forgot, too. Much the same way as the last time I broke a record-breaking streak. Step one: get into the habit of reading your 1000 right before bed for many weeks running. Step two, switch to reading during lunch for a week or three. Step three: encounter a particularly busy day, with no time to read your 1000 during lunch. Think about it a couple of times during the day that it still needs doing, but only while actively in the middle of another, important task. Finish up everything else for the day, do yoga, brush teeth, crawl into bed, and pick up some fiction. Read till you sleep, and don’t remember that the 1000 hadn't been done till you wake.

Having forgotten I then made a decision to take a hiatus from reading my 1000. I will start back up after the first of the year, but I am taking December off (I wound up taking off much of last December, too, as I traveled and visited friends and family after attending AGU). It is strangely freeing to have one fewer "must do" on my list each day. However, I strongly suspect that I will be very happy to start that task back up again with the New Year.

re-finding motivation

How much I accomplish on any given day depends upon a lot of factors. With the heat that has plagued southern Europe recently my motivation levels have been at a very low ebb. The longer the heat lasted, the less motivated I was to do anything near the computer (which generates its own heat, making matters worse). Eventually, in hopes of getting out of the cycle of thinking “I should be working, I’m too hot/miserable to work” I booked tickets to go visit a friend in Scotland for a week, thinking I could bring my computer and get more done while here than I’d been accomplishing at home, even with the distractions of a friend to visit.

Much to my delight, it is, in fact, much cooler here. This morning I enjoyed my first hot shower in weeks (it has been so hot that only very cold showers feel good at home). However, I then had to face a related challenge. One I am aware of, yet still get caught up in now and again. The dreaded “must work/can’t work” mentality often, for me, leads to “work” becoming a vague, nebulous, undefined thing that I “should” be doing, but am not. My first full day in Scotland I spent visiting friends, helping my friend get settled into his new flat, and baking bread and cookies. All with the vague sensation in the back of my mind that I “should” be working, but without any specific thoughts about what “work” means. I find it difficult to actually sit down to “work” when I don’t have a specific task in mind to accomplish.

Fortunately, late last night I took the time to actually open my files, see the list of tasks I have accomplished recently, and what more still needs doing, and I found a specific, identifiable task that needs to be done next. At that point I was much too sleepy to do it, but that is a good thing—this morning, when I woke up, I woke up thinking, for the first time in weeks, about work. About the specific things that need to be done next, so that I may compare the data I’ve been generating with the data that has been published in the literature. In short, I have re-found my motivation. So, with that I leave you and depart to my spreadsheets for an afternoon of fun with data…

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.

Because I like it

Thanks to modern social networking web pages I have recently gotten back into contact with old friends from high school with whom I’d lost touch due to frequent moves in a pre-internet era. During our obligatory “what have you been up to for the past couple of decades” exchange of notes I’d described myself as “enjoying life as a PhD student”. This caused one of them to enquire if I had been under the influence when I wrote that, because by the time she’d reached the final write-up for her PhD she was so sick of the project that she was considering something more pleasant, like tearing out her eyes. This exchange brought to mind the advice I’ve heard often for people considering doing a PhD “pick something you love, because you are going to hate it by the end of the project”.

Why? What is it about our system of “higher education” which makes people think that we should hate it? I’ve met some people whose approach to life is to choose to do only things they enjoy; others of us choose to enjoy whatever we do. To my mind, there is no better thing I could be doing with my life than learning and/or sharing knowledge. Why am I enjoying life as a PhD student? In part because my schedule is my own—there is no employer standing over my shoulder saying “you must be at work between the hours of 9 and 5”. If I happen to feel like working at midnight, I do. If I happen to feel like working at 07:00, I do. I am free to set my own schedule, and to make it as random, or as consistent as inspiration makes it. This is a wonderful feeling. I may have a lot to do, but I am the one to decide when to do it.

I am also very much enjoying the project itself. My rocks, particularly as seen through the microscope in thin section, are pretty. They are pretty because of the changes to the mineralogy as a result of their metamorphism. My project seeks to understand those changes by using the chemical composition of the minerals to determine the pressure and temperature at which they must have formed, and then to use that pressure and temperature to tell a story—what happened to that mud to bring about its current beauty?

To do this I get to play with spreadsheets and graphs. I get to run computer models which take input and convert it to data from which I can make more spreadsheets and graphs. And you know what? I like playing with spreadsheets and graphs! It is actually fun to compare sets of data in a graphical format and see how they are the same, or how they are different, and to seek out patterns. I enjoy this so much that one of my biggest distractions from my project is keeping track of my personal data. To help keep me on track with the uni work I track how many hours a day I spend on various activities, so when I’m not playing with my uni data making graphs and looking for answers to questions, I often play with personal data, making graphs and looking for answers to questions. How many hours a week do I spend exercising? Doing e-mail/blogs/social networking? Can I make the graph change in the direction I want it to by changing my activities?

Enjoying the processes and day-to-day tasks required of my project helps keep me enthused. However, as I explained to my friend, one of the biggest reasons I’m still enjoying my PhD project is that there simply hasn’t been enough time elapsed for me to be sick of it yet. Because my goal when I first enrolled in University all those years ago was “to be a student forever” an entire decade elapsed while I was an undergraduate taking classes full-time in anything and everything which sounded interesting. When I did my Master’s degree four years slipped by between enrolling in the first class and handing in the thesis. But here in Australia the university system seems to think that a PhD is a short term project. They give students 3 years in which to complete their projects (note: no classes are taken—this is three years of pure research), and if you can show good progress (and demonstrate that any delays are due to circumstances beyond your control) it is possible to apply for an extension for an additional six months. After that your funding is cut off and you are on your own. So, here I am in that final, extra, six months of my project, not sick of it yet, still enjoying the work, and content to be working away. Speaking of which, time to get back to it…

What motivates you?

Some people are motivated by financial gain; they chose their uni course based on the question “will this get me a good job when I am done?” and race through their classes with the end goal fixed ever in their thoughts. These people tend to be successful in their chosen fields, if “success” is measured in their local currency. But are they happy?

Other people are goal-oriented in all aspects of their lives, and financial considerations are only a component. One of my sisters is a good example of this sort. When she was young she struggled, as many do, to lose weight, or to keep it off once she lost it. Then she started running. These days she runs the occasional marathon. For her the goal of the upcoming marathon is what drives her daily fitness routine. She understands just what she needs to do each day to prepare her body for the upcoming event, and she does it. However, after one marathon is over, and before she schedules the next, she finds that it is easy to cut back on her fitness regime because there is not a goal towards which she is striving. Needless to say, for her, another race of some sort, even if not a full marathon, gets added to her calendar fairly often, so that she has the impetus to keep pushing herself.

I, on the other hand, am a process oriented person. To me the most important thing in life is the enjoyment of life. Rather than focusing upon end goals, I focus upon enjoying what I am doing at the moment, and choose to do things which I will enjoy. This was a large factor in my extended time as an undergraduate student. Because I wasn’t focused upon a long-term goal such as “what sort of job will this get me”, or “will this lead to fame” I focused upon “what will I enjoy learning this semester?” As a result, I didn’t complain about my homework the way some of my classmates did. They were focused on the end goal, and saw the work as an obstacle to be overcome on their race to the finish line. I saw each assignment as a tool for learning, now, and enjoyed the process of the assignment. This doesn’t mean that I always did all of my assignments. Well do I remember the semester I took calculus, physics, and structural geology in the same semester! Calculus had assignments which needed to be turned in daily, structure had assignments which needed to be turned in twice a week, and physics had “suggested homework” which would be “counted” only if our grade from the exams was “borderline”, in which case the homework could push it up if done well, or pull it down if done poorly or not at all. There being only so many hours in a day, and life holding more of interest to a student than course work, the physics homework didn’t often get done as I focused upon getting everything turned in for the other two. As I result I only managed to pull a “C+” for the physics class. However, I have often thought that it might be nice to go back and take the class again when I didn’t have so many other demands upon my time, because, actually, the story problems are kind of fun.