Procrastination

Well, so much for my New Year’s resolution to be more productive. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m traveling in a country with spectacular natural scenery and lots of interesting things to do?

Scientists often do sabbaticals and fieldwork in locations far from home where many more (and new) distractions exist than at home. How do you manage the work you are supposed to be doing and the opportunity to experience a new and interesting place?

Such a situation is problematic for the procrastinator and even for people like me who rarely put off important tasks:  “I’ll just take a quick hike to this overlook–shouldn’t take more than an hour round-trip–then I’ll feel invigorated enough to finish formatting that paper.” Hours later, after reaching the summit, which was considerably more challenging than it looked on the map, I’ve had to stop and rest and have something to eat before starting back down. By the time I get back, it’s time to start dinner. By 9 pm, I’ve finished cleaning up the kitchen but can’t keep my eyes open. Well, tomorrow is soon enough to tackle that formatting….”

At home, the above scenario would never happen to me. I’m good at ignoring distractions and prioritizing tasks. However, when I am traveling and encountering unique and never-before-seen places, sights that I may never see again in my lifetime, the decision to postpone working on a paper that only a handful of people will likely read becomes more reasonable. If you have only one or two days in a particular location before moving on and there are interesting things to see and do there, then you have to make a choice.

In the long-run, it makes more sense to take the time for new experiences….as long as you don’t avoid work altogether or miss important deadlines. 

Actually, I’ve been quite good at combining travel with work. Check and answer email and write or analyze data for a few hours in the morning. In the afternoon, go for a drive to check out an interesting local attraction. Come back and do some more work and answer any new emails.

Although my current procrastination is situation-specific, many people have a more generalized procrastination problem. That is, they routinely put off important tasks and never meet deadlines because they find a multitude of other, minor tasks (without deadlines) to do instead.

Some people are what are known as “productive procrastinators”, a term coined by Piers Steel, a professor who has published a book called, “The Procrastination Equation”. Some of the techniques he says he uses to productively procrastinate sound very familiar. For example, when I have multiple projects, I can procrastinate on one by working on another. Or when writing, I might put off penning the introduction by writing the methods or formatting the literature cited. When I’m working on a paper and find myself pondering whether it’s time to clean my desk, I will switch to another part of the paper, e.g., prepare a figure or table, and then go back later to the narrative after the impulse to procrastinate passes. Psychologically, this works because we naturally will work on something boring and repetitive if it allows us to avoid something even more distasteful or daunting.

Much earlier, Robert Benchley revealed his secret to accomplishing a lot of work through productive procrastination: “anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” I’ve used this principle for years. I might spend a few hours during the workday cleaning up my desktop, perusing a scientific catalogue, or just thinking about new project, but in the evening or on the weekend will write or analyze data or proofread a manuscript. In other words, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing during normal work hours but doing them instead when I’m off the clock. This strategy is a psychological “trick” that allows you to work on whatever you feel like tackling at a particular time but which leads to an overall net production.

Let me hasten to add that the total time I spend actually working on stuff I’m supposed to be working on (research, data analysis, writing) has traditionally exceeded 40 hours per week. And over my career, I’ve been reasonably productive, publishing more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. If you are goofing off most of the time, surfing the internet, reading blogs like this one, and only spending a fraction of the day actually producing something substantive, then you are going to have a problem. 

If you want to find out where you rank relative to others, you can take the procrastination test. 

Changes

If you are a regular reader, you may have noticed that I have changed the title of this blog from "Women in Wetlands" to "The Singular Scientist".  After much thought, I decided to make this change because much of the blog content is not focused on either wetlands or women, although I have discussed many gender-related issues.  I originally established this blog to be a forum for a society section I wanted to support, but it soon grew into more than that.  Also, that group has created a more open-forum blog, which serves a different purpose (sharing society/section news and information). 

My intent with this blog has always been to encourage science practitioners to excel in their work and in life, whatever their field or gender.  With the change in title and emphasis, however, I think the blog will better reflect my overall intent.  I'm not changing the URL as yet, partly because I'm unsure how to do this without screwing everything up on Blogger.  Maybe I will do this in the future, but for now, I'll leave it alone.  I plan to continue talking about the challenges that women face in STEM fields, but want to ensure that the blog content does not appear to be restricted to that topic or of interest only to female readers. 

I've also worried about giving the wrong impression that women in science need "special help" to succeed. That is certainly not the case, but it is invariably the reaction I get from some people.  There's a lot more to be said on this topic, but I'll leave it for another post.

After some thought, I came up with the title, The Singular Scientist.  The term, singular, means extraordinary, exceptional, remarkable, one of a kind.  The new name refers not to me, but to you, the reader.  Too often, we settle for less than this, especially when being exceptional in your work is discouraged by peer pressure.  I know this pressure all too well and continue to experience it, even as a senior scientist.  During the almost four years of writing for this blog, I've become painfully aware of the difficulties that many students, postdocs, and early-career scientists face, which eat away at their confidence and desire to persevere in their chosen fields.  Female scientists and students working in male-dominated fields are particularly susceptible, but anyone can find themselves in a similar situation at any stage of their career. 

You may wonder why anyone would shun the opportunity to be outstanding.  For some, the desire to be accepted overrides the desire to achieve one's potential.  For others, there is simply a lack of basic confidence in one's ability to excel, which may be rooted in early experiences and/or inherent personality traits.  Even for highly successful people, there will be instances when we are faced with new challenges that appear to exceed our capabilities (such people are possibly most vulnerable, not having had much experience dealing with failure). In other words, we all need help and encouragement from time to time. 

I've worked through a number of challenges that I faced in my career by writing about them in this blog, which helped me to see solutions and/or to gain some perspective on the problem.  By simultaneously sharing these thoughts with readers, I have possibly helped others who might be experiencing similar challenges.  I also wanted to contribute to the growing online documentation of the experiences of scientists and especially those of female scientists.

Anyway, those are the main reasons I've changed the title.  I don't anticipate changing the content of posts, but hope to write a bit more frequently than I have in recent months.

Memory Overload

The other day, while working in my office, I had an experience that we all have from time to time.

I usually have my laptop open to a manuscript I'm writing and also have my desktop computer turned on to check email or to use the internet to search for information.  As I was writing a sentence on my laptop, I realized that I needed to do a quick fact check.  I turned and scooted my chair over to my desktop computer to search for the information I needed. As I moved to do this task, I glanced at my watch to gauge how much time I had until lunch...and had a few other random thoughts. This all happened in a span of 1 or 2 seconds. By the time I touched the mouse connected to my desktop computer, I had forgotten why I was switching from laptop to desktop. Annoyed, I turned back to my laptop and looked at the last sentence I had written...and this, of course, jogged my memory, and I quickly performed the necessary search.

When these things happen, I put them down to a "senior moment".  People often experience this when they are doing some activity in one room and decide to take a moment to do something else in another room.  By the time you reach the other room, you've forgotten why you went there in the first place. How often have you opened the refrigerator to get something and end up standing there staring, trying to remember what it was you wanted? 

These events happened to me when I was younger, but not frequently.  It still doesn't happen frequently, but when it does, it is scarier now.  From reading about the brain and cognition, however, I know that what is happening has to do with short-term memory and that it is not uncommon to fail to incorporate certain information into short-term memory---hence these memory lapses.  We are told not to worry if you forget where you put your keys; only if you forget what your keys are for is there likely a serious problem.

Some think that these little lapses increase as our memory system becomes overloaded with information.  With the vast amounts of information coming into our brains via digital communication systems and electronic toys, we are perhaps suffering from cognitive overload.  At least I hope that's the explanation. It certainly makes sense. I often feel that to learn some new fact....really learn it and retain it, get it into long-term memory...I need to make room for it by eliminating some other bit of information.  I don't remember feeling this way when I was a student, despite the fact that I was learning and memorizing lots of things.  There seemed to be lots of capacity in my brain.  But during my student years, the information overload we are now experiencing was still years away....

I've also noticed that older people sometimes have difficulty performing a task (e.g., driving) and talking about a complex topic. Their attention is split between two fairly complex operations, and they have trouble performing one or both well.  The term multi-tasking is often invoked as a positive process, i.e., the ability to multi-task is seen as being advantageous.  I doubt that it is. In fact, I would suggest that your short-term memory is being overloaded while multi-tasking so that whatever you are doing, especially if it depends on learning something new, is being negatively affected by the other distractions. It may not feel this way to you because the effect may be subtle, e.g., taking you ten percent longer to complete the primary task than if you had no other distractions.

Anyway, I've decided that I need to minimize the cognitive overload by focusing on one task at a time, paying attention to what I'm doing at that moment, and not mentally running in multiple directions.

Writing Strategies for the Long-Run

In the previous posts, I've covered a lot of ways to improve writing productivity and to avoid writing problems.  Some of the suggested strategies are useful to get people started writing regularly (e.g., contingency management), to write unselfconsciously (e.g., spontaneous writing), and to deal with specific problems (e.g., perfectionism, procrastination).  Eventually, however, writers must develop a strategy for the long-term.

The long-term strategy will incorporate some of the short-term techniques, such as writing when fresh (early morning) or having a conducive writing space.  But what are the most important factors determining whether a writer becomes highly productive?  Based on my own experience and discussions with colleagues, the most successful, highly productive writers have three characteristics:

1. They make writing the priority in their daily work schedule.
2. They enjoy writing.
3. They continually work to improve their writing.

I certainly did not start out with these characteristics--far from it.  Initially, I put other things before writing, which was delayed until I had a block of time to write.  I found writing to be a chore, a struggle, and definitely not my idea of fun.

Writing is easy to put off when it's not a priority and is not enjoyable.  We have labwork, fieldwork, meetings, administrative tasks and email that demand our immediate attention.  We finish a research project and think, "Well, I guess I'd better start thinking about writing something up."  There follows a long period of dithering around, staring at the data, hoping that the words will magically jump from our brains onto the page, and when that does not happen we begin wishing that we could just go on collecting more data and not have to worry about authoring a brilliant exposition.  Time passes and no real writing progress occurs.  Or if it does, the result is pedestrian, unimaginative, and disjointed.

Sound familiar?

If you've been reading the previous posts, you'll know that writing should be done on a regular, daily basis.  Binge writing, particularly starting from scratch is the least efficient way of proceeding.  Better to write in small increments and to start writing early--not at the end of the study.  By developing the habit of daily writing--even for short periods, a scientist can become much more productive than one who only writes in jags.

As I progressed through my career, I went from avoiding writing to writing in binges--essentially waiting until I had all data in hand to begin writing.  It was easy to procrastinate because there was always something else that needed my attention.  Now, however, I put writing tasks at the top of my list.  What this means is that every day I'm in the office, my goal is to write.  Everything else is an interruption to the writing.  If I have to stop and go over something with a staff member or deal with an administrative issue, it is only an interlude in the writing.  As soon as I finish the other task, I go back immediately to the writing.  Writing is my default position.

Of course, some days I only manage 30 minutes or an hour of writing.  I always have several writing projects underway, and I try to keep them all moving forward.  When I only have brief snatches of time, I try to get a few paragraphs or a page done on the newer writing projects.  Days that I have longer blocks of time are devoted to the papers that are closer to completion.  Once I have a rough draft of all main segments (Introduction through Discussion), I focus completely on that paper until it's finished and submitted.  If a paper is accepted, I drop everything to do the revision (a bird in the hand...).   That is what I did today--revised an accepted manuscript with minor revision. 

The second factor--to enjoy, even love writing--is a bit more difficult to accomplish.  For most people, this comes with time and experience, but only if writing problems are consciously avoided.  I tend to think about writing experts as being similar to skillful musicians or dancers.  The people who are at the top of their field are so good that they make it look easy.  But the key to loving what you do--playing music, dancing, or writing--is to reach that stage where you can relax and have fun with it.  Some estimates suggest that to become an expert at something, you have to spend about 20,000 hours practicing.  That's about ten years--the same amount of time one spends in graduate and post-doctoral work.  So if one focuses on writing skills early, beginning in graduate school (or earlier), it's possible to be an expert by the time that first job comes along.

The third factor is that excellent writers constantly work to improve their skills.  They never rest on their laurels and think, "Now that I'm an expert, I have nothing else to learn." I read about writing, study other writers' work, try new writing approaches, and think a lot about writing.  This may be too much of a good thing for some people, but people who love to write pay a lot of attention to improvement.  And this effort pays off.

In coming posts, I'll try to talk about some specific techniques to improve technical (science) writing.