5 posts tagged “procrastination”

Maps, colors, control variables, buttons, politics, models, predicting the future = procrastination. 

It's survival of the fittest out there. But I don't think I'm fit, at all. How did I even make it this far? Apart from a few hours at the office the day before, I've just been trapped in my apartment. It's been four days of hiding. Today will be the fifth. There are only so many sick days you can legitimately claim. Thursday I will have to go out again, this time to the university, put on a pretty face, professional clothes, and convey assurance and presence. I wish I can defy the laws of physics.

The Buddhists say that within every second is an eternity. My God, am I missing something here? Because I really don't need to live forever.

It's funny at work because my office-mate now tip-toes a bit around me. I cut myself and he accidentally saw the scars. He made a subtle acknowledgement, but has been a gentleman about it. I know they look scary, but actually they are not deep at all. I really wanted to apologize but, go figure, he has a phd in you-know-what and I don't really want to subject myself. Now I don't know what I should do to let him know that it's still okay to tell me all his problems, that I don't mind listening to them. Then again, on the other hand, I have been a lot more productive at the office now that there is peace and quiet.

This is such a wonderful and complex world. I don't want to feel safe only when I am tucked away beneath the duvet or lying in a wooden box six feet under the ground. I've started building a little herb garden. Maybe having some soil within arm's reach will help compensate. To the person who invented down duvets and pillows, I wholeheartedly thank you.

So I finally decided to haul my ass out of academia and get a part-time job in the Real World. Still have yet to break my record of never holding a full time job, let's hope it will never have to come to that. Anyways, so I've been working an office job for a couple of weeks now, and it really has been a fascinating study into the dynamics of the rat race. Below are the most important things I have learned thus far.

Top 10 Advice for Winning the Rat Race

1. The most powerful person in the office is not the Boss. It's the Secretary. Suck up to the Secretary.
2. Keep your lunch hour 5 minutes shorter than the Secretary's lunch hour.
3. Encourage the secretary to take long lunch hours.
4. Know your boss's schedule. Maintain visibility.
   
5. Follow Parkinson's Law. Let work expand to take up all the time that is available.
6. Turn in work on the day before the office meeting, at the end of the day.
7. Only report good news. Spin bad news so they sound like good news.
8. Complement everyone and everything.
9. Don't bookmark your surfing sites on the company web browser. Use del.icio.us.
10. Be a team player, but always appear less competant than the most competant person in the office.

Any other suggestions?

Here are some awesome comics from PhD, Pile Higher and Deeper, the graduate student comic strip by Jorge Cham:

Wait, just read their graphic usage agreement.. too complicated. (I'm getting my PhD, I specialize in laziness.) So below are the links to the two awesome graphs instead of me putting them up here. (If you search for Jorge Cham or "i am screwed" in my tag pool you can see them in my photo collection. I think I can get away with that one....) I hope you are just a tad bit less lazy than me. So here are the links:

Graduate Student Weekly Output Level Analysis

Overall Motivation Level by Years of Study

I am so screwed...

When I finished doing time as a temporary paying object at the UofC, I thought I was one of the few lucky ones that was able to escape the residual effects of reinstitutionalization. I did not hold the human race in bitter contempt, I wasn't left to pick up the pieces of a shattered ego, and I didn't develop one of those arrested development style - I am an unloved genius trapped in the loony bin - complexes. No. Aside from lack of social skills and an unhealthy idealistic naiveté, I thought I was just fine.

But now as I struggle to write my dissertation, certain behaviors ritualized and internalized in those years have really come back to haunt me. I have painfully came to recognize how difficult it is to really free yourself from the imprints of your past.

What behavior am I talking about here? Chronic Binge Writing Disorder, a type of post-college bipolar traumatic stress syndrome.

Based on a series of participant-observer case studies by yours truly, Chronic Binge Writing Disorder is characterized by a cycle consisting of 5 stages, identified by the acronym DREAD:

1. Deadline - A deadline is established where a difficult task needs to be accomplished,
   
2. Readiness - Must research every single reference ever written on the subject. There is ALWAYS one more book to get before you begin,
   
3. Escape - Extensive period of procrastination & avoidance, usually accompanied by dread & self hatred,
   
4. Adrenaline - Euphoria achieved by an intense but short period of crisis management and productivity,
   
5. Depression - High wears off, sinks to a manic depressive state due to mental & physical exhaustion.
   

So basically, when suffering from Binge Writing Disorder, your life oscillates between deep depression and extreme  elation. Completely out of control. You never know what you might do to yourself when you are at your lowest, and it takes a toll not only on your self perception, but body as well.

Honestly, Binge Writing Disorder is totally manageable in certain cases. I still remember one quarter during my junior year, it was finals week and I had an important paper due for Game Theory class. Our grade was going to be based entirely on this paper. What did I do? The night before it was due, I went out partying with a bunch of my friends (couldn't miss it, it was a farewell party), came home at 3am, started writing at 4am, finished at 5pm the next day, and got an "A" in the class.

Yeah, when you are young, doing those 15-20 page papers through the process of binge writing is totally doable. But now, as I am trying to write my 300+ page dissertation, it is turning into a total, absolute, complete nightmare.

9/19: content edited