Refi

We refinanced our house today, converting a 30 year loan into a shorter term note. While we were at it, we got a better deal on home insurance AND auto insurance, so we came out of the day in much better financial shape, only having to pay a little more a month in our house payment, and quite a bit less in insurance, while cutting years off the loan. Not only that, but I got some writing done.

Money, like time, can play some nasty tricks with your head. For some reason, both are hard to perceive accurately. What I mean is that it is very difficult to estimate costs or time frames accurately. We overestimate the time something will take, making an hour's work seem like twenty, but also let time slip away through inaction. Those two impulses might seem contradictory, but they are really part and parcel of the same dynamic, since we procrastinate when that one hour of work looms larger in the imagination than it should.

If I gave out money management tricks, they would be very similar to my time management ones. In both cases, it is all about how to perceive these quantities accurately. With money, as with time, I like to do things ahead of time, paying bills as quickly as I can, minimizing debts. I have to be quite adept at it, because I am paid only 9 months of the year and have to allocate extra funds for the summer. I spend a lot of time just transferring funds from one account to another in order to maximize my savings through a fairly complex system. As with my work time, I am always tweaking my finances for optimal results.

What Do You Do The Rest Of The Time?

Now that I've turned grades in, the rest of the summer I only really have to do about 1-3 hours of work a day on my articles and book project. Once I get the two articles done I will take weekends off and only do that amount of work on 5 days a week. On a few trips I am going to take, I won't do any work at all.

The rest of the time I will work on my scholarly base by reading other things outside my field, relax, and listen to music.

I can afford this very relaxed schedule because I am a full professor and have paid my dues, so to speak. My current project is going well so I don't feel i am behind at all on that. But here's the thing. That's what I've always tried to do. Work a brief period every day on scholarly projects. To the extent that I did not do so in the past, I suffered from it, whether I procrastinated or tried to work around the clock to meet a deadline. In other words, I would have been even more productive before if I had taken the "luxury" to do what I'm doing now, and I would have been much happier doing it. Unfortunately, I didn't have an older version of myself on hand to give me this advice.

Letting the Ideas Settle Down

If you are always working on something, every day, then the ideas have no time to "settle." That's why I recommend writing in 3-4 self-contained writing sessions (each around 2-3 hours) over the week, and thinking as little as you can about the project between those sessions.

The time off really helps, even if you feel you should be working all the time. The reason for this is threefold: your mind continues to work sub-consciously even when you are not working. When you return to your project you'll find you have developed ideas that you didn't even know you had. Secondly, you gain distance from your writing; you can see what it is on the page, not what it is in your mind. Thirdly, you don't wear yourself out. Writing is quite exhausting.

I didn't do this when I was working on Apocryphal Lorca. I worked seven days a week for almost a year. The ideas only settled during the 21-23 hours I wasn't working on it. That still worked out fine, but for most people, and even for me now, I find the settling process needs a little more time.

Another Thing to Know About Yourself

You should know how long it takes you to write an article, how many writing sessions of 1-3 hours, and you should also know how many times a week you can schedule a writing session. For me, when I'm teaching, this is usually 3 or 4 times a week. The ideal is usually somewhere between 2 and 5. One is not quite enough for continuity, 6 or 7 don't allow you much room for the ideas to "settle down."

So let's work with this numbers a bit.

1 week at 3, 400 word sessions = 1,200 words. (five weeks for 6,000 words.)
1 week at 4, 500 word session = 2,000 words. (three weeks for the same.)
So working with those two parameters you can write an article in about four weeks or a month.

Now this is extremely hard work, writing 2-3 hours 3 to 4 times a week and actually producing decent quality scholarship. Very few people write this much, this consistently. You'll always need extra time if things don't quite go right (they never do). It helps to know, however, how many writing sections you can typically fit into one week.

Knowing How Much You Can Write

A good thing to know is approximately how much you can write in an hour or two. If you have no idea, then you have no conception of how long it would take you to write a 20-page article, for example. How many 1-3 hour sessions do you need to produce the 6,000 words necessary?

(For me, for example, it takes me 12 to 15 sessions (at 400 to 500 words each) to reach this goal. It might take me another 4-8 days to revise the article into its penultimate form.)

If you don't know this about yourself, you will delay work, either because you think it will take you four times more than it really will, or because you think you can do it right before the deadline in a few days. Knowing how long tasks will take is a major defense against procrastination.

Busy-ness or Accomplishments?

How do you want to be judged, by how busy you appear to be or by how much you get done?

One way of judging how hard you are working is by how much of your time is occupied. The other way of judging is by looking at how much you accomplished in a given week / month / year / career.

So do you say "I worked 70 hours last week!" or do you say "Last week I finished an article!" Note the difference.

Now maybe you worked 70 hours and finished something too; that's great, but only the accomplishment really counts, in a way. The rest is what you had to do to get it done. You wouldn't judge how much you wrote by how many bottles of fountain pen ink you went through either, or your success in sales by how much gas or shoe-leather you consumed.

Plan for the Best, Plan for the Worst

What I mean by this maxim is that you should make an optimistic plan for completing work on your current project. For example, I could probably finish by December of 2011 if everything works out. That optimistic plan is highly motivating.

But if I have unforeseen difficulties and don't meet that deadline, I have still planned for the worst case scenario, which is that is will take me longer. Working steadily but inefficiently, I will still get something done; I will still meet external deadlines (just not my own). Planning for the worst outcome in the first place is counterproductive, however. If my best case date for finishing were 2012, then I might not finish until 2013. My goal now is to see how much gets done by December of 11, but if I don't meet that I will still be in good shape.

***

You can string together enough "bad" weeks, where you are less productive than you might have been, and still make substantial progress. A bad week, maybe you only had 1-3 days where you made substantial progress, as opposed to 4-7. It doesn't matter. A totally uninspired day of writing still makes its contribution. In fact, I think those bad days are even more significant than the very few days where the muse or duende actually descends upon you.

2 hours / 400 words

If I work about two hours on a document, the word count will increase by 400 words. That means that I can write 50 words, or about two sentences, in about 15 minutes, while at the same time fixing other, previously written sentences. Sometimes I throw away whole sentences, so this 400 words takes that into account also. (Rough notes might be faster--but rougher.)

An article is about 6,000 words, so it could be written in 15 writing sessions @2 hours. Let's say that's three weeks of work, at a pretty hard pace. Two hours of writing is a lot; it is mentally taxing. To do that 5 days a week is hard work.

Since I like to take into account the fact that I might be faster than average, let's double that to six weeks. You want to be realistic about how long something is going to take. At the same time, being realistic means not just giving yourself enough time, but also avoiding the trap of giving yourself infinite time. I like giving myself 2 months for something that might take 3-4 weeks. Then I feel great about how much I get done. Or I get it done in two months and still meet my internal deadline.

You can be an extremely slow writer and still get enough written, since steadiness and regularity are much more important than speed. Endurance itself creates speed, in the sense that the manuscript will grow faster with more regular work.

Writer's Block and Creativity

You don't really have to experience writer's block. The days where you don't get quite as much written just get averaged into your total level of production, just like the days when you do a bit more that usual. The "typical" day will either be below average or above average. In fact, I can just about guarantee that about half your days will be below average! On a day when you are blocked, you can edit other parts of your project, or take very rough notes on an inchoate part of it. Work at either extreme, fixing almost polished prose or just getting words down by hook or crook. The next day you can just try to make complete sentences out of those notes. Once you have complete sentences, no matter how badly written, you can convert them into better prose.

***

The one thing I don't know how teach is how to get that spark of originality, how to generate really good ideas in the first place. For me, the ideas just arise out of my normal reading habits, out my intellectual involvement with the subject matter. Everything I read just suggests interesting ideas to me, though of course I only use a small fraction of those in my research. Students are supposed to learn this by observing other people doing it, by discussing their own ideas in class, but this process does not "take" with every student. The good news is that people can have successful scholarly careers with no real spark. That is good news for them, but bad news for scholarship, which ideally should be imbued with the creative spirit.

I have no faith in creativity as the next educational buzzword. Once you decide you want creativity, you will devise rubrics to measure it. I will let you in on my secret, though. Ask the tough questions. (Find out tomorrow what the tough questions are.)

Planning to Complete the Paper

Suppose you want to get a chapter or article written in the next two or three months--that's the situation I'm in. You can think about that in terms of hours at the computer it will take you to write it, or in terms of months. It might only take your 30 hours to complete it, so two months seems like an absurdly long time. 30 hours in 60 days! What could be easier? That's an average of half an hour per day. Yet most scholars take much longer to produce their work. Part of the problem is that there is too much time. In other words, it is hard to figure out where those 30 hours are going to come from, simply because they might come anywhere. 12 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Wed. Sat. and Sun., every other week, and 1-5 p.m. every Sat? That might get it done, as long as you realize the weekend you lose to house guests... The key is finitude.

That's why I've been keeping track of my work during each week. Months are too long for this kind of planning, but if every week you make significant progress, then there shouldn't be a chapter that takes more than a month or two.

The Best Time to Start the Next Chapter

is right after you finish the previous one. The same day if possible. Take advantage of that momentum. My daughter's music teacher said that right after an audition is a good time to do a lot of practicing. Why? Because you have peaked for that audition, so the practice will be in that higher zone and thus be more effective. With writing, you can take advantage of the fact that you were just now writing very well, in finished prose rather than in rough notes, in order to complete the last thing you wrote. Mentally, you will be riding that wave of elation rather than experiencing let-down.

I recently finished an article and two chapters, so I am beginning with chapter that has intimidated me in the past and that I have to conclude by February. If I finish this, I will be 5/8 done with the book, more or less.

***

If you want to take a short break of a day or two, then, don't do it between chapters, but in the middle of one of them.

Breaking It Up

I'm about three weeks ahead in writing these posts. I wish I could find a place to hide out from my ideas for a while. They keep coming at me. I have more than I know what to do with. I'm talking about ideas for posts here as well as ideas for my actual scholarly writing.

***

A large task can be broken up into several smaller ones. When I'm close to done with a piece I make a list of discrete tasks that have to be done. On the other hand, having too many small tasks can be overwhelming to, so in that case, I cluster them together and they seem easier that way. You can shift your perspective back and forth and make things a lot easier on yourself.

Finishing the article means doing tasks 1-10. Each is easy in itself, so you could do one very easy thing a day and finish the whole thing in 10 days! Rewrite the footnotes one day, tweak the concluding paragraph another, complete a short section on X another day. Once you start doing this, you can do 2 or 3 easy things a day.

But if your list is writing 10 emails, then group those into one task. "Answer email." Do those all at once.

Who Cares How Many Hours I Work?

According to the general public, a college professor works about 15 hours a week. Maybe 6 hours in the classroom and another nine preparing class and grading. Summers off, ample time between semesters...

According to the academic, the work-load is 50-60 hours a week. Research, committee work and other departmental obligations, peer review of articles...

I think both of those are wrong ways of looking at the problem.

Who cares how many hours an academic works?

40% of my effort is supposed to go to research. (Time, or effort? I'd say effort.) A good research year for someone in my field would be 2 articles and some measurable progress toward a larger project (book.) Or one article and even more progress. So a few Sundays ago, Oct. 3, I spent about an hour finishing the conclusion and introduction to a chapter. It shouldn't really matter whether I spend 1 or 6 hours on research on a given day. What matters is the task, not the time. If I am more efficient, so be it.

Teaching (teaching, preparing, grading), takes the time that it does. Service tasks take the time they do and I get them done very efficiently. What if I worked a ten hour week on a particular occasion (in the middle of the summer) and made a major breakthrough in my scholarship? Was I lazy that week? If someone asked you what you accomplished in a particular day, would you respond with a number of hours or with a list of things accomplished? Are you more impressed with someone with a long list of accomplishments or with a time-sheet showing a lot of hours put in at the office? If someone had an impressive list, you could pretty much ignore her time-sheet, right?

Academic life is increasingly cluttered. Academics take on huge commitments that aren't either teaching or research. Some of these activities are extremely valuable, so I'm not knocking those, especially if they contribute directly to these primary missions.

***

Of course, some people think scholarship in the Humanities is not worthwhile in the first place, but my contract says I am to do it and I intend to keep on with it.

***

Maintaining the scholarly base is itself a full-time job.

Work Done: Oct 1-7

I liked how it worked to keep track of tasks accomplished during the final part of Sept. Remember my theory that you could get a lot done by doing just one thing a day, if you actually have enough days of doing that?

Remember: "Writing is hard, but the hardest part of writing is the easiest part, which is sitting down to do it." Since most of my work is writing some way or the other, if I sit down to do something often enough then tasks will get done.

If you write every day, then you will write every year too. See how that works?

Fri. Oct. 1. Worked on "Verse Paragraph," Chapter 8 of my book. Wrote a solid first paragraph of the conclusion, and half of a second.

Oct. 2. Continued to work on this; conclusion and introduction done except for final paragraphs of each. Jiménez section done except for some missing references. I'm "smelling" the end of this chapter in a few weeks.

Oct. 3. Finished intro and conclusion to aforementioned chapter. That's the bread of the sandwich.

Oct. 4. Nothing much. Teaching and blogging, but I can't say I got one significant thing done.

Oct. 5. Wrote a confidential document of 250 words; did substantial work on "Verse Paragraph": finished footnotes, bibliography. I can really smell the end now.

Oct. 6. Finished "Verse Paragraph"! On a teaching day at that.

Oct. 7. Nothing! I did get some comments on my chapter finished the day before, though. That was wonderful. Thanks, Carlos! I gave a short talk in my dept. on Stupid Motivation and attended a dept. meeting.

So in seven days, I had 4 days with 1 thing accomplished, 1 day when I listed 2 tasks, and 2 days with nothing much done. In the bigger picture, I finished a chapter and wrote a short confidential personnel document.

See also this post.

Work Done: Sept. 19-30

To attempt to put myself on the line and keep myself in line, I kept track of the work I completed during the last days of Sept. My theory was that if I got one significant thing done each day, I would be in good shape. I'm not including the teaching or preparation of classes, grading of short quizzes, answering emails, attending meetings, or blogging. Only definable tasks of some significance.

Sun. Sept 19. Completed reader's report for [name of journal redacted]
Mon. Sept. 20. Completed 500 word statement about [redacted for confidentiality]
Tues. Sept. 21. Graded complete set of papers for Spanish 453. (17 5-page papers.)
Wed. Sept. 22. Made serious progress on "receptivity" article. / Wrote course description for Spring Grad course (340 words). / applied for job at [redacted]
Thur. Sept. 23. Nothing!
Friday. Sept. 24. Course description for undergraduate course. / Completed bibliography for "receptivity" article. / Made progress on this article.
Sat. Sept. 25. More substantial progress. The thing is done except for a few bibliographical references that I have to go back to Kansas to get.
Sun. Sept. 26. Nothing!
Mon., Sept. 27. Turned in article!
Tues. Sept. 28. Nothing! Hangover from having turned in article.
Wed. Sept. 29. Wrote the text of a 'brown bag" presentation for Oct. 7.
Thurs. Sept. 30. Had a productive planning session, deciding what to do in coming months. Figured out how to finish the entire book by Aug. '11 if I really want to.

On a day I put done "nothing!" all that means that I didn't have a quantifiable and definable task of enough significance accomplished or completed, or, in the case of some weekend days, that I did absolutely nothing work-related. It's fine to have days like that. Knowing my own worst tendencies, though, I don't want to have too many days like that. A few days with 2 or 3 things done balanced out the 3 days of nothingness.

It's interesting that I conceive of work mostly as things that get written, whether it's comments on student papers (grading) or writing course descriptions. Meeting with a guy about a thing is also work, sometimes time-eating work, but I don't tend to put those things down. Interesting, too, that I don't list blogging as part of my work, even though it is writing and has a productive value.

Tasks vs. Time

Measuring work by time instead of by tasks accomplished is a major trap. It is relatively easy to see why this is so, but not so easy to correct the perception. After all, tasks do require time to be completed. More time spent productively will result in more work. The problem comes in the fact that nobody knows what an "hour's work" is supposed to look like. Is it a paragraph? A few random thoughts in one's head after having read something? A stack of papers graded? An hour-long seminar discussion? An hour's work could result in any one of these end-products. On the other hand, I do know what a paragraph looks like, an article, a book. I care about the product, not the process. Some hours are "better" than others.

If I could crack the nut of task management I wouldn't even need time management! Unless the key to task management is an especially savvy understanding of time itself?

Best Laid Plans

I found this document on my computer:

"2006 article plan

1. Valente/Beckett. Sent to Hispanic Review January 10. * 2nd choice Comparative Literature.

2. Intravenus. Finished March 22, 2006. Sent to Revista Canadiense: March 24, 2006. [email] March 25, snail mail.

3. "Apocryphal Lorca"

4. Gamoneda's poetics. Finish by April 30.

5. Heriberto Yépez and Borges. Have ready by May 30.

6. June: Clark Coolidge?

7. July. Review article? Books on Spanish poetry.

8. August. Something for Revista de Libros?

9. September. Translation theory? Our theory doesn't match our practice. Machado.

10. October. polyrhythms?

11. November. Coral Bracho?

12. December. Formalism and historicity? Cultural studies."

I had planned to write an article every month in 2006. Number 1 worked: it was rejected by Hispanic Review but accepted by Comparative Literature, which I had as my 2nd choice. My article on Intravenus was rejected by another journal. I never published it in the end. #3 mushroomed into my book Apocryphal Lorca. Not much ever happened with 4-12, because Lorca took over the rest of 2006 and 07, although #4 might have worked its way into an article that finally came out in 2010. With some of these ideas, I don't even know any more what I was thinking. I do have a clear idea about #9, but have never sat down to write it. About #12 I have no idea at all, except that maybe it was about how literary formalism is more historicist than a cultural studies that fails to pay attention to form.

Do One Thing a Day

Ok. I know what you're going to say. I can't do just one thing a day, I have twenty or thirty things to do each day.

What I mean is this: COMPLETE AT LEAST ONE SIGNIFICANT TASK each working day. Let's break this down.

"complete": finish it OR make substantial progress (it it's a long-term task)

"at least one": not half of something.

"significant": A large chunk (significant) of an article, the writing of a syllabus, a complete revision of the cv., the grading of an entire set of papers, a peer review of an article...

"each": not every other working day, not every three or four days...

"working day": a day on which you are working, a day that counts toward your total number of working days.

Now this is going to be very hard, though it seems easy. You say you need to do twenty things a day, but you aren't currently doing that many truly significant tasks, right? I thought not. You're going to concentrate on bringing something to completion or doing a definable portion of a larger task. If you do at least that then you'll be set. Imagine a 5 day work week. Suppose in that week you've made significant progress on an article, you've graded an entire set of papers, you've written a letter of recommendation, you've read your colleague's tenure file... You've had a very productive week.

I'm wondering about whether task management or time management is the key. In other words, is time a distraction, when what we really want to do is get things done? More on that later.