[25 of 100] Preparations
Tomorrow night I am heading up to NY for a two-and-a-half day writing retreat. All day long I have been thinking about how to prepare for this retreat--what to pack for clothes, food, and entertainment, what office supplies I'll need, what books. What cds to bring for the drive up and back, considering buying a book on tape for the drive up and back.
But all of that is just logistics. The real question is: what is the best way to use my time on this retreat? I have done a fair amount of work since I got back from Colorado, but all of it has been on things other than my dissertation: preparing my syllabus and course calendar, looking for new materials to fill in some holes in my teaching, searching for and applying for fellowships, etc. As usual, every task I have sat down to do has expanded to the very limits of the time I have alloted for it and then some. As usual, my sense of what I could get done with my time exceeded my actual productivity by about thirty percent.
I know that there are some things I need to read before I can move forward towards a completed draft, but I also know that I have a tendency (as most grad students I know do) to use research as a buffer between myself and the scary experience of actually sitting down to write and figure out what my own ideas are. Now I have to figure out how to split my time. I know that I can operate at 110% for a few days at a time, I've done it many times before. But I'm not sure what the next bout of 100% needs most to consist of, how I can most effectively plan these next few days, and I wish I had a clearer sense of it all.
But all of that is just logistics. The real question is: what is the best way to use my time on this retreat? I have done a fair amount of work since I got back from Colorado, but all of it has been on things other than my dissertation: preparing my syllabus and course calendar, looking for new materials to fill in some holes in my teaching, searching for and applying for fellowships, etc. As usual, every task I have sat down to do has expanded to the very limits of the time I have alloted for it and then some. As usual, my sense of what I could get done with my time exceeded my actual productivity by about thirty percent.
I know that there are some things I need to read before I can move forward towards a completed draft, but I also know that I have a tendency (as most grad students I know do) to use research as a buffer between myself and the scary experience of actually sitting down to write and figure out what my own ideas are. Now I have to figure out how to split my time. I know that I can operate at 110% for a few days at a time, I've done it many times before. But I'm not sure what the next bout of 100% needs most to consist of, how I can most effectively plan these next few days, and I wish I had a clearer sense of it all.