Monday, August 7
Monday, August 07, 2006 | 
Posted by
Anonymous
Why did it take me several weeks to follow the exciting (and secret!) invitation to join this blog? Because I'm a professional procrastinator, of course. I don't think that this is a big secret in academia, but I have to confess that I make considerable efforts on a daily basis to hide my true nature from the vultures circulating over my head, the most voracious of all being my bad conscience (this is where faking your own death doesn't come in handy, dear Scarlet, since you'll always know your own whereabouts...so if anyone has an idea on how to hide from oneself without the use of psychotropics, please share it with me!). The vultures are always particularly aggressive on Mondays. I hate Mondays! Every time a Monday comes around, I feel like some evil troll is holding a mirror up to me, asking me in a gnarly voice: "So, are you proud of yourself now, Wisteria?" The arrival of any given Monday is a proof of my failure to fight procrastination. Here's a recent (er, ongoing) example:
- Nice flattering letter from big name journal on June 3: "Dear Dr. Wisteria, we're asking for your expert opinion" etc. etc. "To allow for a speedy turnaround, please submit the review by July 20."
- Thinks Wisteria: Piece of cake! That's, what, 3 or 4 months from now. I have plenty of time to squeeze that in. Forgotten is my past experience in which I started suffering from cold sweats, pulsing headache, mild to severe nausea according to the degree of menace in the tone of the once sympathetic editor the further the due date disappeared in the past (but, unfortunately, never went away). So merrily I reply with an enthusiastic "Yeah sure!"
- On July 13 I find a polite reminder email in my inbox. There still is plenty of time. However, I can now start using the pending review as an excuse for other tasks to be queued. As in: "I'm awfully sorry, but I can't do xyz because I'm working on this review".
- On July 20 I find a polite reminder email in my inbox. That's right, the review. I understand, I understand. Don't rub it in my face: "The review is now due". But today is Thursday, and that's almost Friday, right? And Friday is the beginning of the weekend. What editor in their right mind would make a fuss over a tiny little weekend extension? Monday's as good as ever. So I grant myself a tiny little weekend extension. This means that I have ALL WEEKEND to read the paper and write the stupid review.
- On July 24 something terrible happens: It's Monday. I haven't started reading the paper, and the week tumbles upon me with a million distractions.
11 comments:
I'm not sure what it says about me that I empathize greatly with this message, only my big problem is with Saturdays.
Love the choice of Wisteria, btw. It was well worth the procrastinating-from-work time to add you immediately to the sidebar.
Hah! You're only a few weeks behind, dear Wisteria. I've been battling with something of this sort for several months now! MONTHS! Now what in the world is so difficult about reading a few papers? (I have more than one to go, but still.)
I mean, seriously, how can I let things slide for so long? It is painful. I am so with you. Unfortunately, I don't just feel it on Mondays. I feel it every day, including the weekends.
You'd think, just the reward of having my weekends back would be enough incentive to get this stuff done. But no. I suck. The situation sucks. I don't want to think that I suck. But how is this not totally sucky behavior?
Well, I'm clearly not much help here, but obviously I sympathize.
(And now I'll go look up whether Clear or I is/am/are in the right in our use of empathy vs sympathy.)
I think in English both sympathy and empathy work in this situation.
In several other languages a derivation of sympathetic is a really useful term with a very different meaning. "Sympathique" in French refers to someone who is a neat nice person that you feel an affinity to.. or some such thing. It's really really hard to translate. It's a word that would be really helpful to have in English.
In any case, Wisteria, I like the name as well, very fun, very appropriate! I'm sorry that you're feeling wiserable in all this. It's fascinating (although I guess not shocking) how often the theme of procrastination comes up on this blog.
Thank you for posting this! I feel slightly better about my failure to do anything at all about the email I got (also at the beginning of June) telling me I needed to schedule a thesis committee meeting immediately.
I just got out of a meeting to begin a research project that my advisor got a small grant for. It's a small grant, a relatively small project, should only take a few months, and doesn't require any superhuman abilities. But I'm already totally terrified that I'll procrastinate on it and fall behind and then dread it.
arg arg arg.
I remember talking about my todo list, back when we were talking about Turquoise's list. Right now, I cheifly want to light it on fire.
Monday, any day, really, I feel a bit overwhelmed by how much I have to do. Oh the joy. And then, when you do get to work on something (when I do, anyway) half the time it takes forever -- I finally got to something yesterday that I'd been putting off for weeks. Should have been trivial (why do I ever even try to use that word?), and it's still not working and it's like a nest of vipers.
I hate Monday, too!
Oh, and welcome, Wisteria!
I wonder if it is a little bit self-selecting, in that the people likely to participate in this sort of blog are more likely to put off other things. I certainly do more blogging/ blog reading when I'm procrastinating.
Chartreuse, I think it's definitely a selection bias to some extent, absolutely! That said, there are enough of us here that it's obviously an issue that's not unique to just one or two people. Moreover, it sounds like at least some of the folks here are doing pretty well (or maybe I'm just assuming too much) so it's not as though the entire population of this blog is 10th year graduate students. So if there are successful people here who still have this problem then one possible issue is this: some academics put way too much pressure on themselves about productivity.. coupled with the idea that academia puts way too much pressure (and work) on people in the field.
Frankly, whatever the reason, I just want it to stop, even if only for a few days on occasion.
Welcome, Pumpkin!
Yup, Turq. I think you've got ahold of something -- clearly we're mananging to avoid it sometimes, somehow. I tend to think that sometimes it I just happen to be sufficiently productive -- and then I wonder how amazing I might be if I were getting more done, rather than "scraping by." Hmmm.
Pumpkin: I'm an optimistic procrastinator, and as such I've added you to the sidebar just now in anticipation of your posting sometime.
Post a Comment