coldhearted scientist وداد

What I notice is that you have to put more, not less time into everything. I do not mean larger blocs of time, of course, although that is fine too. What I mean is, more total time into everything that matters. That means less into what doesn’t, of course, but it does not mean starving one important thing for another.

This runs counter to all the academic advice I have ever received, which is focused on saving time, moving more quickly and “cutting corners.” I am of course not opposed to saving time by doing things like deciding you will only write so many comments on each student paper, or only spend a certain number of minutes on each exam, or deciding, for some administrative task or service project that you will do as good a job as you can in two hours, and that will be your contribution. Indeed, I once got a great deal done on a project by committing to and coming through on working on it fifteen minutes a week. I am all about efficiency so do not get me wrong.

Still, what I have realized is that I did not meet anyone who said famous procrastinating sentences like “I cannot get anything creative done unless I have very large blocs of time free for it,” or “I can only get research or writing done when classes are out,” until I was already a professor. I have voiced this question before, but I still do not understand how people got through graduate school with that attitude. I understand even less how they got through college, where one’s time and energies are even more fragmented among different types of courses in different disciplines, jobs that have nothing to do with school, and so on.

I suppose that all the advice about reducing one’s time requirements is directed towards the attitude these people — those who need very large blocs of time, or even vacation time, to do things — evince. But for the rest of us, I say counterintuitively by now, take more time.

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I learned this because I had a slight panic attack over a document I was preparing a couple of years ago and asked a friend for support. She said, “I know this is really a one hour project, or can be, but give yourself plenty of time to do it. Take three hours, for instance. A calm pace will enable you to think.” It was fantastic advice. I budgeted three hours and it took me two, so I used the third hour to go to the pool. Do you see?

Yes, you will say, and the corollary is, you must protect your time so it does not get eaten up by unimportant things and people! That is another commonly voiced adage and I do not like the image it conjures up at all, as it suggests one think of oneself as a kind of fortress under siege. I prefer to think in terms of expanding one’s time. Expand it, such that your time given to what matters to you begins to encroach on the time given to what matters less.

Do you see?

Axé.