Earlier this week something not out of the ordinary happened and then something wonderful occurred to me. Something so profound that I thought about it all the way home and into the following day. And now I am blogging about it.
If you are a student, this post could be useful to you. I'd say inspiring, but that seems quite arrogant. At the very least, if you are reading this, you are probably procrastinating. Welcome to my world. If you are not a student, all I can offer you is a story that at some point, involves dog poop. Or to just admire the pretty pictures of my chienne jolie.
(I am learning French at the moment. I throw French things in wherever and whenever I can!).
"Where is your ball?"
I asked my dog earlier this week.
"Where IS my ball?".
That was the thought that appeared to be being processed by my dog, Abby. She seemed to have a look of total confusion meets ball finding prowess etched across enthusiastic little face. She knew exactly what I was talking about. 'Find your ball', 'inside', 'go to your bed' - all things that Abby has a good comprehension of, no matter what the context. She is so clever that when I start putting runners on, she gets excited because this action nearly always precedes a walk to the park.
Abby continued to stare at me with her head cocked to one side, looking endearing but less intelligent than I know she is. She was attentive to the fact that she was supposed to find her ball, but not attentive enough to retain the goal for any period of time. Her floppy ear made her look even less competent.
This combination of passionate interest and completely puzzlement is not uncommon for my Abby. Or as I affectionately call her, thanks to a friend of mine's ex-boyfriend, Scabby.
She isn't really Scabby.
But first I need to set the scene for the aforementioned personal epiphany.
We had been walking from one side of the park to the other, when Abby decided that now was the perfect time to attend to nature. And not the good kind of attending to nature.
It was the kind that involved me trying not to be sick while I man handled three separate components of a warm poop into a small blue plastic bag.
(You can maybe see that if it is only by sheer determination to be a responsible pet owner that I can pick up a dog turd, dealing with the immeasurable amount of poo parents contend with may not be a good lifestyle fit for me?).
My dog likes to keep walking while she is taking care of business. Why? I guess she has so many things to do that she could not possibly stay still for a whole 30 seconds. She dropped her ball - and continued moving along.
"Please don't poop on your ball!".
I said it with the kind of desperation akin to trying to make it to the bathroom during a particularly bad attack of gastroenteritis. Abby had stared me dead in the eyes while she pooped, narrowly missing the ball with the poop train she was creating.
After wrestling with my gag reflex long enough to contain the abomination, I continued to the other side of the park, disposed of my little blue bag of disgusting and turned to head back where I came from. And there was Abby, looking at me, at my feet, with much the same face on as above.
"Where is your ball?" I asked her. Her ears pricked up at the recognition of the sentence and she ran off excitedly to get her ball. I tried but I couldn't see it. I followed after her.
Half way across the park she turned and started running back to me.
"You didn't get your ball. Where is your ball?" I asked again.
She looked at me as if to say 'Oh yeah! That is what I was doing. I totally got distracted when I didn't find it and I saw that butterfly and... oh yeah right, I will go get the ball!".
She took off in search of that wonderful bright round thing that brought her so much joy of an afternoon. This time I spotted the ball, about 50m away in the distance. Halfway through her journey, for whatever reason, Abby aborted her mission and promptly returned.
And again, she eagerly went in search of her toy. This time she located it and excitedly brought it to, her step springy and her tail fluffy with pride. She had finally found her elusive ball.
It became apparent to me in that moment that I have an ability to focus at no greater a level than my dog. My enthusiasm and ability also mirrored Abby. I wondered if this equivalent to how my university supervisors feel when they meet with me each week.
I sit with them and eagerly listen to their advice and answers to my questions. And then I run off, charged and motivated to accomplish this single task: I will finish my thesis! It all makes sense now.
And for the first day I work tirelessly, I don't stop for lunch, I barely move from my desk. I am solely focused on my task at hand. This continues usually into day two and sometimes three. By day 4 I have forgotten what it was that I was supposed to be trying to achieve. My eagerness to please is still there. My ability to perform the task has not diminished.
But I start chasing my tail. Even my dog doesn't chase her tail.
I've long suspected I have a problem with paying attention. At about 24 I realised that it was probably my memory and IQ that had been getting me by. I have friends who would study for hours and hours to get their grades, strict regimes of when to read and do what. This was never an option for me even if I had wanted it to be. Because I was so busy working full time while studying full time, I was able to use my hectic schedule as an excuse. And I did.
Obviously, full time work and full time study does equate to little time. But having to deal with that constraint and letting it become a way of life are two different things. For me, short bursts of intense study had become the only way to get through uni. And when you are still managing to keep a distinction average in spite of everything else going on, you really don't feel too concerned about your process. Stressed yes. But that is another discussion.
After watching my dog haphazardly fail multiple times at something she was overly motivated to do, eventually succeeding only due to continual encouragement, I took a cognitive test online to measure my cognitive abilities. Sure, it isn't very scientific, and as a psychology graduate I should know better, but I was curious.
Caveat: I somehow selected the wrong age group, and so I was compared to people at least 11 years younger than me, so my results may be better (or counter-intuitively - worse) than below, I can't be sure.
My short term memory was exceedingly good (better than 89%). My processing speed was also above average (better than 78%), which I found a little surprising. My focus was dismal. It was still above average but it was 40%. My focus was nowhere near at the same level as my other capacities.
I wasn't really surprised.
So now that I am a full time student who does not have the full time job crutch to lean on, I have had to reassess the manner in which I go about my study. I no longer have the pressure of having no choice but to cram large amounts of work into short spaces of time. My old model meant producing exceedingly large chunks of productivity every time I sat at my laptop. This model worked for what it was, a no other choice option. But it does not work if you are to sit at your laptop for 38 hours a week. Expecting to produce work quickly and constantly for protracted lengths of time is not feasible. Or healthy.
Before I had quit my job I thought that as soon as I was a full time student, I would get even fitter and have so much more time to exercise. Imagine my horror when I put on weight in my first month as a full time student. I had increased problems with my sleeping patterns, my diet was temporarily poorer and I hardly exercised at all.
The routine I had relied on for so long was gone. I was going to have to learn a new way of approaching life, healthy & study. And it needed to be balanced. Not crammed in here and there as I am used to.
As I watched my dog run off with a solid purpose only for that energy to fizzle to aimless wandering about and casual sniffing of things, I realised that this is exactly what I do when it comes to a lot of things. Especially my thesis.
Focusing for long periods of time is a cognitively exhausting process. But watching Abby I decided that there must be techniques that I can apply or something I can do to aid myself. Sure, I may never have the same level of focus as I do memory or processing speed, but surely I can increase my productivity by being aware of my limitations?
When I completed my data analysis and I began writing up my thesis early last month, I had everything planned. Literally. I had created a spreadsheet during the month before I finished my job, which set out exactly which tasks I was going to accomplish, when it would be done, who was involved and responsible parties.
Monday - Wednesday I would write up my results. Thursday and Friday would be the method. The following week I would dedicate to the qualitative component. Each chapter would be completed, done and dusted, on a weekly basis.
Sounds great, right?
WRONG.
Don't get me wrong. Planning is a beautiful thing. I love a good plan. However, good planning requires flexibility and a thorough understanding of what it is that you are hoping to achieve at the end of the project. Rigidity is not a friend. In recent years, I have found this to be true of life and I am surprised it took until my 8th year of tertiary study to realise that this sentiment holds to academic study.
I was struck by something very important, something that had significance in regard to the way I approach each day when I sit down with my coffee and prepare to work on my project.
I am trying to focus on a task that is simply too daunting to focus on at once: a completed thesis.
Writing a thesis is an iterative process. This is something that you hear often as a research student. And yet it is only in the past few days that I come to fully appreciate the meaning of these words. It has been somewhat of a revelation for me.
As I am at the half way point of the writing up process (a process that take about 6 times longer than you estimate, even after you think you have over estimated), each time I feel like I have finished a chapter, I invariably have not. I work on my method or results and I think of another thing to add to my methodology; I work on my results and I think of another thing to add to my methodology and appendices. It just keeps going back and forth.
Up until the last couple of days, I was finding this system soul crushingly depressing. I felt like I was working so hard for a day or two only to achieve a step backwards. I would accomplish adding 500 words to my document, and as long as I am writing I feel inspired to press on. But then I would stumble on something that would trigger an awareness of something I ought consider including in my research, and this would take me two or more days to research.
Eventually my however many days of work would look like a couple of sentences. A couple of sentences was all I had to show for my many days of struggling to maintain attention to my task during my post-progress meeting days. How could I send something so inconsequential to be reviewed? What must my supervisors think of me? With this thought in mind, I grew distracted. Over those two days I would become unfocused because I felt I was achieving nothing. And I would slow down because I felt unfocused.
I felt like curling up in a ball and giving up because the time when my thesis was finished seemed to be so far off in the distance.It felt as though I was incapable of delivering consistent results. In fact I felt like what Abby looks like in this picture (note: she is never as sad as she sometimes looks).
I viewed those days of research as a waste of time. A task eating into my write-up schedule.
In reality, all the extra things I become cognisant of add to the rigour of my study. All those things that take half a day to research and amount to 150 words in the final text (approximately 0.0025% if the document), those are the things that will (hopefully) make my project an excellent piece of research with practical implications.
I never expected that a bright blue bag of dog poop could bring to me such a profound and inspiring realisation.
From now on, every time I get frustrated as I stare blankly at my notepad or laptop screen, I will remember to be kinder to myself, and to accept my new approach to my thesis.
Some days I will produce 500 words and that will be a great day. Other days I will spend hours trying to find a reference for a single statistics, or an elusive paper that supports a justification I am providing, and that will be a great day too. There will also be days when nothing is achieved at all. And that is okay.
Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither is a thesis.
In the spirit of it being Christmas time, enjoy this photo of Abby from the last festive season. We dressed her up. She allowed it.
Be kinder to yourself.
