Yesterday I pointed out my difficulty in focusing without a looming deadline. Therefore this week I've decided to clearly spell out my objective for the week. Well what' new? Sounds like a system I've been using for a while now. Fair enough, but I've written out a collection of tasks that I expect to finish over the next five days; the difference is that in the past I've used my lists to tell me what to do next, not necessarily to tell me when I needed to complete a task (in this case by Saturday night!). Will it work? I don't know, but it's a fresh approach and worth a try.
I wrote my list, to spare you the boring details, I'll keep it to myself, but know there are 11 tasks. The items are specific so that it's easy to know when I can check a job off the list.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Week in review: 31 August-6 September
This week I certain got work done; including a talk at a meeting in Auckland, working with students in our lab, plenty of PGSA business and finally my own research. I never skimped on hours and I even squeeze in an extra six hours today. However, I don't feel as if I reproduced the productivity as last week. There's definitely something to working "under the gun." My big question is how can I push myself the same way external pressures get me to perform? I have a big talk in Germany next month and if that's not enough the countdown to thesis submission is ticking along. I must find a strategy to focus my work and continuously yield results.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Easy Friday
Today was definitely a mild day. I had a PGSA Executive Board meeting around noon which lead into other PGSA business in the early afternoon. I sandwiched this work with some PCB layout in the lab.
I ended the day with a lecture from a visiting scientist, Professor Y. T. Lee, the recent past President of the International Council for Science and a Nobel Laureate. He gave a thought provoking talk on the sustainable transformation of human society.
Tomorrow my wife is collecting data for one of her projects so I plan to head into school for a couple hours of work.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
The race
I don't know if folks have noticed, but when I talk about the work I do in the lab, I tend to be rather vague. I do this primarily because this blog is not meant to be a chronicle of scientific progress, but rather a glimpse at life as a PhD student. That said, I also hold back details as research scientists tend to play their cards close to their chests.
Let me preface the rest of today's post with the full disclaimer that nothing I do is Earth shattering or bound to make me a rich man. Optimistically, I hope to get a couple publications out of my current work, but that's a pretty generic goal of any researcher. So why be protective? Well imagine spending months or years of your time and grant money on a project only to have someone publish similar results as you're writing your paper. The number of groups in my area of study is pretty small, add in the required expertise and equipment to reproduce our work and you'd find only a handful of labs around the world would even be capable of reproducing our work. However, when there's a significant amount of money and time invested in your work, you tend to err on the side of caution. Hence I stay tight lipped about the details.
So why explain this? At least, why explain this tonight of all days? Well last night I picked up an email from my supervisor. In short he pointed out that another group speaking at the workshop in Germany may be working towards similar goals as we are and that perhaps we should focus on getting a publication out. The email was brief, as my supervisor is currently in the process of flying from NZ to Europe and the message was sent briefly at some airport en route. Additionally, I read the email sometime between 12 and 1am and was maybe too tired to be doing work. Well, this got me concerned, as I mentioned earlier, I have quite a bit invested in my work and to hear someone else might be about to publish the same work is pretty intense.
Jumping to the end of today, I've emailed my supervisor a number of times as I try to understand our situation and plan our next steps. I received one response to the effect of "don't worry." We have concluded that the situation isn't as dire as it may have first appeared and regardless all we can do is to continue to focus on producing quality work. Fair enough, sounds like a plan to me.
So today was a bit of a roller coaster ride. And even last night (at ~1am) I was thinking of heading into the lab to keep work moving forward. Luckily there's no need for (extreme) late nights and we will hope to have a couple publications submitted to journals in the next few months, but this process got me thinking... while I was ready to speed ahead so as to not be "scooped" by this other research group, if we published "first" wouldn't that be doing to them what I was so afraid of? What if there are PhD students on this project half a world away hoping I don't submit a manuscript before them? I know this is the way academia works, but at this point, I struggle to accept this reality. For now, I'll chalk up the lessons learned from today and move forward.
Let me preface the rest of today's post with the full disclaimer that nothing I do is Earth shattering or bound to make me a rich man. Optimistically, I hope to get a couple publications out of my current work, but that's a pretty generic goal of any researcher. So why be protective? Well imagine spending months or years of your time and grant money on a project only to have someone publish similar results as you're writing your paper. The number of groups in my area of study is pretty small, add in the required expertise and equipment to reproduce our work and you'd find only a handful of labs around the world would even be capable of reproducing our work. However, when there's a significant amount of money and time invested in your work, you tend to err on the side of caution. Hence I stay tight lipped about the details.
So why explain this? At least, why explain this tonight of all days? Well last night I picked up an email from my supervisor. In short he pointed out that another group speaking at the workshop in Germany may be working towards similar goals as we are and that perhaps we should focus on getting a publication out. The email was brief, as my supervisor is currently in the process of flying from NZ to Europe and the message was sent briefly at some airport en route. Additionally, I read the email sometime between 12 and 1am and was maybe too tired to be doing work. Well, this got me concerned, as I mentioned earlier, I have quite a bit invested in my work and to hear someone else might be about to publish the same work is pretty intense.
Jumping to the end of today, I've emailed my supervisor a number of times as I try to understand our situation and plan our next steps. I received one response to the effect of "don't worry." We have concluded that the situation isn't as dire as it may have first appeared and regardless all we can do is to continue to focus on producing quality work. Fair enough, sounds like a plan to me.
So today was a bit of a roller coaster ride. And even last night (at ~1am) I was thinking of heading into the lab to keep work moving forward. Luckily there's no need for (extreme) late nights and we will hope to have a couple publications submitted to journals in the next few months, but this process got me thinking... while I was ready to speed ahead so as to not be "scooped" by this other research group, if we published "first" wouldn't that be doing to them what I was so afraid of? What if there are PhD students on this project half a world away hoping I don't submit a manuscript before them? I know this is the way academia works, but at this point, I struggle to accept this reality. For now, I'll chalk up the lessons learned from today and move forward.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Sidetracked
Today I spent my entire morning on PGSA emails. This was not planned, but it was necessary. To try and make up hours, I skipped lunch, which wasn't really too bad as our group met at 1 o'clock for some coffee and cake. With one student leaving NZ and another student having just completed his thesis we felt there was plenty of excuses to get together and have some dessert. After the sweets and caffeine I went to work in the lab, troubleshooting some printed circuit boards. I ended up finding the bug in my circuit just as it was time to head home.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Now what?
I went into school today knowing I had a heap of work to do in advance of this week's PGSA Executive Board meeting. Amidst numerous emails I prepared and circulated an agenda, a President's report and three short memos. Not too bad for a morning's work. In the afternoon I worked with one of our Honours students and got some electrical components ordered. By late afternoon I returned to my desk only to realise I didn't know what to do. Now that's not to say I didn't have anything to do, I just didn't know what to move onto next. Luckily it was at this time my wife asked if I was ready to head home.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Theme Meeting
I spent today in Auckland attending a theme meeting of the MacDiarmid Institute. All the research presented had to do with either biological engineering, soft matter physics, nanotechnology or some combination of these areas.
I was fortunate to give a talk and overall I was pleased with my presentation. As you could tell from my posts last week, I started to work on my slides rather late. In fact it took me a full day's work on Saturday to complete my slides. Having finished my presentation so late I have very little time to practice what I wanted to say during my talk. I ran through the slides a couple times last night; then again this morning and during the lunch break, but I would have preferred more time to let my talking points stew. It's very much like writing a paper; a first draft might get a point across and in some instances may be all the effort required for a given task, but a second draft is typically clearer and gets points across effectively. Extending this idea numerous drafts and feedback from others yields a better product.
While I am happy with the results today thinking about presentations has perked me up for my talk next month in Germany and I am keen to make sure I am thoroughly prepared.
I was fortunate to give a talk and overall I was pleased with my presentation. As you could tell from my posts last week, I started to work on my slides rather late. In fact it took me a full day's work on Saturday to complete my slides. Having finished my presentation so late I have very little time to practice what I wanted to say during my talk. I ran through the slides a couple times last night; then again this morning and during the lunch break, but I would have preferred more time to let my talking points stew. It's very much like writing a paper; a first draft might get a point across and in some instances may be all the effort required for a given task, but a second draft is typically clearer and gets points across effectively. Extending this idea numerous drafts and feedback from others yields a better product.
While I am happy with the results today thinking about presentations has perked me up for my talk next month in Germany and I am keen to make sure I am thoroughly prepared.
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