Working through weekends is not a good idea.
You are probably think "Duh, of course not, silly! Why would you do that!?" And that's what I'm wondering. I had a reason to work through this and last weekend because of a paper deadline tomorrow, which I'm now not going to make anyway. But when I think back to the months before my trip, I was working through pretty much every weekend for about 10 weeks before I left. And I didn't have or didn't try to make any deadlines. There really wasn't anything stressing me. Of course, it also doesn't actually mean that I'm more productive during these times. When I say "working" that doesn't only doing stuff directly related to my PhD. It includes all the other things I need to do on my computer and that often need to get out of the way first. Some of it is procrastination, some of it is semi PhD-related like things to do with this SIG that I'm on the board of, uni admin stuff, teaching (actually, that was about 90% of what I did last semester) etc.
So what are the real reasons?
I think the first one is not a real problem: when you're doing a PhD there is always more to do. You can always try out something else, read a bit more, think about a new domain/experiment/data set/technique... (not that I do that bit much ;). That's the same for everyone and I know how easily I can stop thinking about all these things when something more fun comes along.
The second reason is more to the point: I'm a lame crowd animal - in case you haven't noticed. I just do what the people around me do and wait for something to happen (i.e. someone to call up and suggest doing something). Lately, in Sydney the people around me were Smithy. No-one else has been calling up (my fault for never calling anyone myself I guess) and Smithy's been busy 24/7 writing his thesis and with building the suspension of the solar car that he's designed in his thesis. So, it's been way too easy to simply pretend to be superbusy too and do nothing fun on the weekend because hey, I had to do work.
Can you believe this?? I'm sitting at my laptop for a whole weekend because it seems easier than organising to go climbing or camping or walking or at least have a coffee with a friend! I'm using "I'm such a diligent stressed-out little working bee" as a cover-up for "I'm such a sad boring lonely lazy bum".
So, it's 12 noon on Sunday now and I'm going to call everyone I can think of until I find someone to hang out with right now. Stuff the paper I'm not going to write anyway, stuff the conference reviews I have to have finished before Thursday, and stuff my stupid laptop for an afternoon! I'm sure it can keep itself amused.
If you catch me online, you have official permission to call me pathetic!
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5 comments:
just finished my algorithms test. I will now define an algorithm for making use of your free time:
1. let T be the amount of free time you have per time unit u.
2. let C be the closeness you feel towards a friend
3. we define a function F(c) that given the closeness to a friend computes the frequency in a week you need to meet with him
4. let L be the amount of time you allow yourself to be lazy per time unit u.
then the amount of time you are allowed to work during your free time per time unit u is easily computed as:
FT(T,C,L, u) = T*u - (sigma{c of Friends} F(c)) - L*u.
Correctness of the algorithm is of course trivial.
Jette - I hope this solves your problem
Gotta love it! This is genius! :D
Hope you passed your test. Seems like you perfectly internalised everything so that you are now not only able to reproduce the theory, but actually put it into practice... well done!
spoken like a true comp sci geek! (sorry jonathan, couldn't help it :))
and what about us, the non CL gangsters?... i need a tutorial on this function stuff!...
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