The 10 on and 5 off experiment

This morning was one of those mornings when it seems almost impossible to make yourself do things you desperately need to do. When the brain is just not inspired and stabbing yourself in the eye (repeatedly) seems like more fun than typing one more word. The bummer is I'm not talking trivial mole whacking things being due. I talking revisions due to journals and reviews due to NSF. General Disarray was in the same boat - important things needed to be done, and we were hopeless. We were so hopeless in fact that at one point General Disarray looked at me and asked "So which one us is going to have the medical emergency?" As in, "Dear Important Person, I am terribly sorry my [insert name of important item due today] will be late. [insert professor's version of my grandmother ate my homework and died excuse here]. I promise to have your [terribly important item inserted here] to you by Monday at 5pm".

The plight of your hero and heroine looked grim. Every time we checked in with each other there was serious, serious web surfing going on. Finally, General Disarray suggested something he read over at 43 folders (I don't know why 43 folders and not 44 folders or even 100 folders, which frankly sounds more reflective of the chaos of most people's work lives). The suggestion was this: When you just can't get things done, focus on getting something done for just 10 minutes and then take 2 minutes off. I was skeptical since (I like to tell myself) I'm just too much of a free creative spirit to be constrained by that organizational/productivity crap.(As an aside, I eventually did give up on the color coding and trying not to use my inbox as a to-do list...who was I kidding anyway, I am really just not meant to live that way). But the web entries list of who this would help was like it said "River Tam, this is for you": procrastinators, the easily distracted, compulsive web-surfers, people with a long list of very short tasks (a/k/a “mosquitos”), people having trouble chipping away at very large tasks.  And I was definitely 3 out of the 4 this morning.

The problem was, I was totally not agreeing to only 2 minutes off (there was no way I could complete a round of the video game I was busy playing in 2 minutes!). I tried to negotiate with General Disarray for 10 on and 10 off - afterall even if we could get 30 minutes of good work done per hour it would be a vast improvement over what we were currently accomplishing! (Unfortunately, he knows me too well and understood I had shot for the moon in an attempt to negotiate more favorable terms). We finally settled on 10 on, 5 off . So, General Disarray set the timer and off we went. And what do you know, it actually worked!! I managed to finish writing my review this morning and General Disarray got most of a detailed response to reviewers written for a manuscript he's resubmitting.

And the 43 folders dude was totally right, it did totally save my ass.

When brains insist on vacation

So, I promised today part II of academic bullies, but it will have to wait. Normally I come into work, drink a cup of coffee, write a piece for the blog while my brain boots up, and then roll into my day. I wrote the academic bullies pieces this weekend at home and my brain was not capable this morning of doing anything outside the coming to work routine, so academic bullies is at home and I'm here. I'll try to post it this evening when I get home.

However, I feel like my morning isn't complete if I don't write something and what is on my mind right now is that my brain is being seriously rebellious. I have lots of things I need to do, but very little that my brain will agree to focus on. My brain and I have always had a delicate relationship and I have learned over the years that if I treat it like the highly-strung, delicate apparatus it is, I can get great mileage out of it, but if I ignore the weird sounds and sluggish performance, it will come to a grinding, screeching halt just when I need it the most. I've been pushing really hard this summer for a variety of reasons that I may blog about in the future. Suffice it to say, that I've been ignoring my brain's warning lights for a little too long. Yesterday, it pretty much flat-lined on me. After some attempts to jump start my brain with caffeine paddles, I managed to revive it enough to finish my presentation for next week. But the strain was too much and when my brain started to flat-line again, General Disarray insisted that my only hope for finishing out the week with any semblance of productivity was to go home and let it rest.

I know so many people who seem to have brains of steel and I envy them in some ways. I could be so much more productive if my brain didn't need to take down-time, but I have found that my brain needs its quiet time...time when it is apparently...thinking.

I know it is weird to speak of one's brain in the third person, but I do sometimes feel like I have an uneasy truce with something I do not quite control. My responsibilities involve feeding it (it loves science, languages, history, art, and video games), taking it on 'field trips' (it seems to love traveling abroad and art museums), and giving it encouragement and reassuring it that it's a good brain (well, actually, I'm very bad at that, but fortunately General Disarray takes care of that responsibility). In return, it takes problems I can't seem to solve, chews on them, and spits out innovative ways of dealing with the issue. Our strife comes when I want it to solve a problem and it thinks that I have not taken good enough care of it...that's when the battles begin and let me tell you...the brain always wins.

Right now, I'm bribing my brain....just a few more days and we'll go to Milwaukee and you'll hear about all sorts of cool science that will be new. I also tried to bribe it with a tour of the Miller Brewery, but it spit that out pretty fast...however, I hear they have a nice little art museum..."Hmmm," the brain says....Quick, while it's distracted, maybe it'll let me rewrite that paper!