The thesis of my article on “procrastination” that it is not about time management or lack of interest — or at least, it isn’t always. One problem can be what you have transferred onto it, in which case you will not make headway until you recognize that and transfer it off.
The other problem is that if you want to do a deep project, deeper than a mega grant proposal or anything bureaucratic (and some academic “research” writing is bureaucratic, and the more of it you can look at bureaucratically, the better, some days), you have to have access to self. You also need some degree of self respect and confidence.
In Reeducation I did not want to look at that self because it had been represented to me, or had perhaps become scary, distorted, ugly. I had learned to hate or perhaps just to abuse and mistrust that writing self. For all these reasons that self would not come to the table. I was also afraid to call it because it was in such turmoil.
Finally, I was afraid to call it because it would say it was time to take strong action and listen to my instincts, which both my academic advisors and my Reeducators had told me were wrong by definition. Given all of these double, triple and quadruple binds I was of course disabled.
I think these kinds of problems need to be raised in discussions of that matter. No work ethic is sufficient if you are not in a position to be the director of your own project.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
See my (other) recent blog entry. Humanity is destined for suffering so long as it doesn’t have the right spiritual leaders — the ones who really have the goods, and are not just intent upon deceiving and promising pie in the sky when ppl die.
So people may not wish you to assert your power (they’re stuck on the pie in the sky notion), but you owe it to them, and to yourself, to restore the right order to things — that is, by expressing your abilities to the full. Although ppl will initially resist your efforts, and it will be painful for them, they are destined to come around to see it your way — since it is the natural order of things that you are restoring.
And strong action is actually safer than prevaricating action. It’s a martial arts principle. If you commit to hit, then hit. Don’t be indecisive. Don’t waiver.
Here’s the blog entry.
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2009/07/so-parmenides-was-materialist-who.html
I didn’t say it in this version of the post, but I also think you should get to have authority in all areas of your life. I don’t mean be a leader or heavy mover and shaker in all of them. But if you’ve internalized mistreatment in one area, it affects the others.
Yes– very good post!
You need to go with the strong voice, no matter how unconventional it sounds, otherwise you will suffer from “soul loss” and open yourself to abuse.
My strong voice, for instance, is telling me not to immediately get a job in academia after completing my PhD, but to go to Africa and try to start the women’s self defence programme there.
My logical and rational voices are saying: “You’ve come this far, so better conform to others’ expectations or else.”
But these logical voices are asking me to do something that I don’t have a heart for. If I obey them, I’ll become a ghost, and everything I do will end up badly.
I have been struggling to secure “access to self” again after I lost easy access to it when I started my permanent job. I am figuring out how to get back there more and more but it has been a struggle— and what an unpleasant surprise to lose my way to something I used to be able to find fairly easily. It is instructive that it is eminently losable.
“lose my WAY” sorry
Fixed it!
Jennifer — the self defense program is definitely what you want to do the most! I think you can publish from there & stuff, and get involved in some really fascinating intellectual and activist type life.
Mark – yes. In my first job one was supposed to have a personality and desires that aren’t mine. It was very weird because they seemed to want allegiance from all of your cells, not just your work. In the next one people were a lot more normal (or what I would call normal) but it was very much in the Academic Industrial Complex of the conservative wing and it felt as though my research wasn’t really mine, it was something to feed to the Man. The whole transition is really strange because you have to be a super strong grownup in a system that infantilizes.
I think so too PZ. I could get some real good stories. 😉
J – yes.
PZ – “It’s what you transfer on” is so, so important.
YES. This is so difficult even when one doesn’t have Reeducators in one’s way. Not only because confidence is hard to come by (I’ve earned mine hard, such as it is), but because intellectual selfhood is so nebulous and weird and half-institutionalized and half pure gut and just hard to effing dis-cover and then build. And Self also comes through work, which is easy to put off without Self. A bind. THE bind, maybe. The one I have made it my principle goal to keep at the front of my mind, to deliberately disentangle bit by bit.
Gragh: “principal.”
“And Self also comes through work, which is easy to put off without Self. A bind. THE bind, maybe. The one I have made it my principal goal to keep at the front of my mind, to deliberately disentangle bit by bit.”
That is really key. Except that the just do it solution doesn’t work (this is what I keep having to remember, so I don’t get frustrated). Thinking of it as a BIND is really a great idea. I’ll have to steal it.
Interesting to come back to this five or so months later. (I wrote above.) I am happy to report that writing is (relatively) easier again. But I am trying to be alert so this relative ease is not taken away again by this machine in which I work and which at the same time wants me to write. I am also alert to unhappy colleagues who inadvertently (for the most part) will act in ways that can sabotage me.
Yes — I am the same.
Drudgery and depression = teaching courses I’m not that interested in, according to formulae not chosen by me and that I wouldn’t choose.
Antidote = research
How to get to antidote = make sure your research *is* something you like; also be sure not to internalize the weirdness of others generally
My original problem with research and writing was that people kept telling me I shouldn’t do research, just write. So my dissertation wasn’t researched, and research makes me nervous / I feel guilty / if I do it I will not get tenure, because I should just write / etc.
It has taken me all this time to realize that the exhortation to write and not “procrastinate” wasn’t meant for me.
Also: it still took me 9 months after my proposal exam to figure out how to write my dissertation without conducting research. I would rather have spent that time doing the actual research.
When I say write, I generally have in mind research and writing. Others don’t see it that way, as I think you are saying. Indeed, the (non-academic) bureaucrats who come up with formulae and goals for us writers surely don’t understand the need for reflection and peace for anything good to come. I think the distinction you make is important and it clarifies how important both are. Also, we must be f%78ers about our time and, crucially, our head-space. The guarding of the head-space is so important.
Yes — I think people assumed, at least in my case, that one would over research. It is so strange because I’ve always known exactly what to do re anything academic.
Guarding of head space is SO important.
*
If I had time right now I’d make a post on where my head space went — to:
a) being projected into because I was a girl: I’d spend too much time researching and preparing class, and never write / publish
b) being required, at the same time, to do the above because I was a girl: I probably wasn’t competent so I had to turn in more lesson plans and research notes, be held to higher standards and so on
c) being resented because I had expertise, and trying to understand what was going on / why it was bad to have expertise / trying to mutilate my mind so I would have less expertise, since less seemed to be desired / etc.
And I’d do another on Reeducation, saying nothing new about it but emphasizing how it insisted one question oneself and how it insisted one dwell in any non helpful emotions one might find.
And saying these things, I realize, my God, I’ve dealt with some c***.
*
Guarding head space is so important. Good for you.