Am I meeting my deadlines? Yes and no. I am successfully meeting my hard deadlines (conference proposals, job applications, journal submissions, etc.), but I am not meeting my other deadlines. I was doing better with this last semester when I was not teaching (SURPRISE!). But this semester I am finding it harder to stay on top of it all. I’ve been experiencing a roller coaster of productivity, where I will work for 7 days a week for 3 weeks and then inevitably crash, wasting 1-2 weeks. I would like to be able to be more consistently productive, since I obviously cannot sustain 7 day a week workweeks. I am going to also try to be more honest with other people when it comes to weekend visits. If I am going to be away for a weekend, I need to be home at my house by noon on sunday so I can make sure the next week doesn’t suffer from the weekend away.
Since I began applying for jobs progress on the dissertation has stalled. Not a huge surprise but it needs to change (and it will because I’ll be done on nov.1). I *must* have a draft of chapter 3 to my advisor by the end of the month (0ctober 31), and then by mid-november (November 14), a revised draft of chapter 1, which means adding a new section on Friedan and doing a substantial cut of what is already there. After that I am hoping to draft the intro to the whole damn thing by Nov. 21, I have then added in a buffer zone for thanksgiving and grading all my student’s work, allowing me to have a solid week of writing from dec. 11-dec. 18, which I will use to edit the whole draft. The ultimate goal is to have a good solid draft to my advisor when we start school again in January. Is this doable, I think it is, but it really requires discipline, and demands that I stop doing things like falling into self-pity mode when doing the job application stuff. The internet is a dangerous place for me to read, and I need to respect that and not allow myself to read the scary stuff.
georgiapwelch said:
Teaching and applying for jobs and finishing the dissertation is seriously a ton of things to be doing simultaneously. Hard deadlines are kind of nice, in that you are forced to meet them, and it gives you that boost of having at least really finished something. I am very relieved I am not doing the whole grant application bonanza this year, however, the lack of any hard deadlines this semester does make it feel like nothing is really happening. Don’t read anything that isn’t actually going to help you finish! The internet is your enemy!
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