The prime reason I am writing this blog is because right now, at 11:30 am, (an hour since I have reached my desk), I feel like giving up and going to sleep.
The trace of events which led to this momentous and overwhelming feeling leaves me obfuscated and with the kind of brain damage that Douglas Adams talks about (what with his brains imploding into itself to create a black hole)
I got up at 9:30 am... note that I slept at a conservative 1:30 am....
I didn't get up on my own of course, (9:30 is way too early for that); my landlord came by 15 days late to collect his rent. So the morning began with me being 550$ short. Nevertheless, I brush, rinse, clean up, wash up, and eat my breakfast. All this while I am driven by the desire and need to do original and ground breaking research at my desk. So I buck up and make the short trip to my lab listening to new millenium (dream theater). The charge in my step is electric, and at an all high energy.
Thus peppered with imaginations of a bright future with unlimited acclaim and half a dozen research papers, I sit down on my desk and play with my mouse and innumerable firefox tabs for 5 mins. As I go through my email, I have already forgotten about my dreams of academic acclaim. When I see people around me reading papers etc. I am reminded of my objective for being here. I open up my documents and start working. By this time its 10:40 am.
At 11:05 am, I look at the clock on the right bottom corner of my screen, and find myself yearning for something. With incredulity, I realize I want to sleep.
In a desperate attempt to justify a quick refuge to the lab couch, I try to recall how many hours I have worked already. After some time I realize its been about half an hour. Shit!!.
I play around with other excuses in my head. The classic one being, I must be attentive and concentrate well when I work, and thus I must give myself the rest I need to be so.
Finally, after twiddling my thumbs and my brain cells for 10 mins, I work a little more. I work till 11:30 am.
Suddenly, I am head down on my desk, justifying to myself that the act gives me a closer view of my monitor, which will somehow help me brainstorm better on my research.
11:40 and I open up Gmail and decide to write this blog, to post my concerns to the world. Is this a disease? Something seems to be wrong with me. How is it that people work 8 hours everyday when I cannot get past one?
I'm sure Ill get some insight from people on this blog, though while reading, by now, many are probably asleep
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8 comments:
Do not despair. Most of the progress in research happens by discrete insights. Every insight, like a cup of coffee, raises the levels of your wakefulness and efficiency. Without these thrusts, you'd be just as unproductive when wide awake.
That definitely motivates me for graduate study.
seems like I've been having this disease since forever :P
Whoa... the writing hasn't changed i see... hmmm
15 mins is the max i can concentrate...sujangarh ki mitti ko asar hai lage hai manne
@ the absolutist: yaysh!, I ij the still enamored by the Adams
@ savi: kain bolaan bhaiji! eeyan lage ki puro din soaan, or raat-ne to sono padshi nee?
@ Varun: these discrete moments that u speak of..... how discrete are they, like between lives??
That I cannot say, although there are some certainties: 1) They will come when you're most unsuspecting, and catch you by surprise. 2) The more of these insights you get, the more frequent they will become.
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