It’s just 12 hours. (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
When I told a colleague that I was planning to stay at work until midnight in order to work on an abstract, her eyes bugged out.
“I didn’t come into work until noon today,” I said, “so I’ll only spend 12 hours in the office.”
Her look of pity was very touching.
I submitted that abstract at 17 minutes after midnight, after spending 20 minutes on a new title that I thought I could live with.
Now I’m going home to bed.
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Update: The abstract that I submitted didn't make it into the journal special issue for which it was initially intended, but the editors are putting together a book proposal, and they've asked to use the abstract in that.
Even if nothing came of this particular submission, I was glad to have spent some time outlining a new research direction, since I'm starting to wrap up a project that has taken much of my research efforts over the past few years.
Lately, I have alternated between sleeping about 9 hours because I fall asleep on the floor of my son's room after reading him his goodnight story, and between getting 3 or 4 hours (either because I stay up late fueled by adrenaline, or I get up after early in the morning, which of course leaves me tired enough to fall asleep on the floor of my son's room, which leaves me refreshed enough to work on less sleep. I seem to get more done than if I tried to get by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep each night, and at least every other day I wake up very refreshed.
Dennis, Joel and I always wondered how you manufactured time. Unlike Joel, I cannot function on four hours of sleep per night, but my own time management skills are currently maxed out and I seriously have no life anymore. Do shares of Manufactured Time, Inc. come with PhDs?
Well, during those 12 hours I also prepared for and taught my Lit Crit class (which I think is going swimmingly), held office hours, and dealt with a minor Setonian crisis, caught a few minutes of the African step-dancing show, visited with my family (who had come to the show), and (while eating my dinner) visted the SuperTrain website.
I probably spent an hour on the first draft, 40 minutes talking with three colleagues who were kind enough to review it, and then another hour on the revision.
I didn't mean to suggest that I was planning to spend all 12 hours on the abstract!
Empathy.
Wow, and that's just the abstract -- the summary of what's still, I imagine, left to write!
Whenever things like this happen to me, I keep telling myself: LESS IS MORE.
Keep hacking down that to-do list. It doesn't take 12 hours a page. It takes focused concentration for 1/2 hour chunks. You can do this easily. You write blog entries and paper assignments and committee handouts in far less time, and still manage to keep your professionalism and clarity.