Communicating DND, in a nice way.
A while ago I listened to Professor Daniel J Levitin give an LSE lecture, The Organised Mind: thinking straight in the age of information overload, which I’ve recommended to a number of people since. I’ll take this chance now to generally recommend a sub. to the LSE public lecture series to anyone reading this. Among many of the topics Levitin brought up, I’d like to write briefly about focus. Here’s what I do… I’ve adopted a number of productivity measures: checking emails, pomodoro techniques, kanban, and various others- even public academic writing accountability. Some have stuck, some haven’t, some are adopted ad-hoc. Here’s what I am going to do… I came away from the lecture knowing I needed to implement a daily “chunk” of time that exceeds anything else I do- something truly indulgent. I’ve opted for a three hour (minimum) chunk where anything that creates a notification is turned off. I’ve been trying to do it for a while, but I always break the chunk so I need to improve and I believe writing this post equals something I can hold myself to. My current full time concern is finishing my post-grad. thesis (like yesterday) whilst having other pursuits (that keep me sane) so I want a way to communicate when I begin a chunk as it won’t start at the same time…
Sabbatical-Sequester
I’ve had a sabbatical from here of late. Well without checking, since August. I’ve been hard at work, sometimes. Once I did feel a little guilty when my monthly bursary came in, “What would the taxpayer think if they knew I wasn’t productive for even 50% of the past month, let alone a week?” then I realised it’s me who’s made a significant sacrifice. Saying that, I’ve definitely felt a lull in motivation over the past eight or so months, which one couldn’t combat in the real world by refusing to cogitate or even do mundane tasks in it. Whilst working towards my MPhil to PhD transfer, of course- doubting my own critical thought or even self-worth. Lets get it right, I’ve been depressed. Trouble was I didn’t realise I was depressed until I’d been depressed for a significant portion of the time spent. Despite me knowing the signs. I guess I wasn’t spending long enough with anyone (or the right people) in order for them to ask (wallflower side affect?) “What’s up?” but fortunately Christmas came around and it was only then, when taking a week off from working, or trying; that my brain farted out to myself. “You’re depressed!” Identifying a cause is simple, I’m…
It’s not a holiday!
What can I say except it was not my intention to leave the blog for so long. And that’s the last time I feel guilty for not publishing a blog post again. Guilt is a dangerous emotion and more so if one is severely critical of himself in the first place. A recent guilt trip, back in June was related to skipping chunks of a conference presentation because I was likely to run over. (That wasn’t the guilty part. The guilty part was the likelihood of presenting past my slot.) Again that is another last time, I feel guilty about running over. It’s been four months after all, I’ve not been on holiday or anything! We’ll pick off almost immediately where we left off. Essentially I bombarded myself further research into software aging and rejuvenation, petrinets, artificial neural networks, load balancing, sundry and a paper to write for my first foray into academic publishing. As I was (and still am), into my analysis stage I was making notes and brief ideas on my observations and so wanted to make a new point in the upcoming paper. Eventually I realised this was a gargantuan idea given the amount of background literature I would have…