Time management skills: Walking
As time gets ever more precious to me and I have an increasing number of scientific articles that I want to write, I have found that I have had to develop more efficiency in my writing. Naturally, as I’ve becoming more experienced, I spent less time making the same mistakes that I did before. But, I also expect more of my writing and I challenge myself to write it more clearly or create figures that are time consuming to construct (not just the default values that the computer spits out). The result is the amount of time that I spend writing has decreased, but not as much I would have hoped.
In some exceptional circumstances where I have had free time, been highly motivated by the new science I was doing, and had a good vision for the paper from the start, I was able to go from zero science to first draft in 9 days. After receiving comments from my coauthor and going through the uploading system, it was just a few weeks to produce the manuscript and get it into peer review.
To make myself more efficient, I have found myself doing more writing and planning during the time I spend walking. And, without a car here in the UK, I spend a lot of time walking: walking the dog, walking to the train station, walking from the train station, walking to the grocery. It all adds up. And, this time can be used wisely for planning.
The problem is that most of us don’t give enough time for planning. When we want to write a paper, we jump right in and start dumping text into a word processor. When we have to deliver a presentation next week, we open up PowerPoint and start composing. More time needs to be spent planning. Although squeezing an hour out of the day to sit and think about your PowerPoint may not be possible, that dead-time can be used for exactly this purpose.
As I have started using this dead-time more effectively, I find that I remember more of what I compose in my head. When I finally have time to sit down in front of the computer, it flows more easily.
(Image from www.apieceofmonologue.com
Glad to read this post. I can’t really say I’ve had difficulties in life, but I’ve made life difficult for myself – no need to elaborate. But, to try to get some clarity from my current situation I decided to keep a blog. I’d lay my thoughts down in writing and hopefully see an evolution of thinking to improvement. Its still too early, but what I did do today was clean-up a few blog posts; it was a snap. My writing had improved. I did go for a walk too on this unseasonably 75f day in January. I then returned to my writing, found a few more mistakes, and finally got them posted and off my chest. Walking is great – I never thought I’d like it (takes too long) – but I guess that science of walking is, in fact, true. Hope someone else sees this too and challenges themselves.
Here is an interesting article in slate.com about creative people who took long walks.