Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Archive for the ‘studying’ tag
Content to be decided
"Write a contents page," they say. I haven’t written any content yet, though, so how do I know what to put in the contents page?
A to-do list
This is for today, tomorrow and Thursday. On Friday, I will be going to Surrey.
- Hang the washing up to dry.
- Put the flour in its plastic tub.
- Skim read B&B’s paper.
- Add summary of above paper to paper for proceedings.
- Reply to proceedings email.
- Revise abstract.
- Send abstract.
- Send draft paper.
What have I missed?
Reading academic papers
Pandammonium: career [reading academic papers]
Just thought I’d bring this to your attention.
Writing
I have to admit that the writing-1000-words-a-day thing didn’t work out for me as well as I’d hoped it would. It just didn’t seem meaningful to stop writing at some random place, and I never seemed to have scheduled enough time to continue to a sensible stopping place.
So then I decided to complete subsections. The document I’m currently writing isn’t that big, so this seemed reasonable. However, I can’t tell how long a given section will take to write, even though it doesn’t look long from my notes, it still seems to take a while because there’s thinking and stuff to be done as well.
I’m also trying to move the deadline because I’m going to a course on how to get published on Thursday, so I’d like to not have to go to Essex twice in one week – have you seen the price of petrol these days?! Plus, it’ll be more productive if I spend less time travelling.
Deadlines
I told my supervisor I need deadlines, so he’s given me the choice of two: either next Monday or next Tuesday. This was supposed to help. So far, it’s nearly ten o’clock, I’m not ready, and I’ve played two games of the evil DTD. I have written out a timetable/things to do list for the day, but I’m behind schedule already.
I’ve also been writing 1000 words a day, although whether they mean anything together or not is a different matter. I review them the next day, and rewrite them, generally. Yesterday, I didn’t write anything because I was worried about my poor cat.
How to complete your PhD
Maybe this will work. I’ve been meaning to tell my supervisor to give me deadlines for work. There was a short time when I had to produce something weekly, and I got loads done then, but it’s all pretty wishy-washy at the moment.
Also, Parkinson’s Law is very true – I’ve known this for some time, although I never knew it had a name. And Hofstadter’s Law is true as well, even if you do take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
Link sent by The Hubster.
Update: another way to get stuff done is to not have an attention-seeking cat.
Back to normal
I’m back to the day job, now, after working at UCLES before Xmas and after New Year. I was hoping that having to get up and get to work for a certain time every day would help me establish a routine whereby I would get up in the morning, get ready, and get straight to work, but so far, it’s not working. Yesterday, I spent much of the day playing the evil Desktop Tower Defence and some time pottering around my website. Today, I’ve Facebooked, DTDed and generally Internetted.
Come on, girl. Get a move on!