My last week at UT
It is very strange to me that this is my last full week of employment at the University of Texas at Austin. My last day is technically next Tuesday, but since Monday is a University holiday, in my opinion one day does not a week make. So here I am … my last week.
I started graduate school in September of 2001. I am leaving UT in May of 2011. Almost 10 years as a UT employee. When I was filling out my time card today I saw on the bottom: “Months of State Service: 117.” Woah.
Now, I know lots of people have worked many places a lot longer than 10 years. But I mean, I’m only 33. Almost a third of my life has been spent being paid by the state of Texas and going to campus. It is just a weird feeling now that that time is coming to an end.
This also is the twilight of my academic and true research career. For somebody who spent the last 10 years talking about how they really wanted to go into academia, I feel sort of weird prepared to leave it. But in all honesty, it wasn’t really just my choice. Academia had the much larger say in the matter.
There is a large part of me that is very excited about leaving research and going to go build stuff. Focus on getting stuff done, getting projects finished, and getting products shipped. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t going to miss doing stuff, “just because.” Spending time on a project because nobody knows an answer, and that is the main reason.
Change is at times uncomfortable, many people spend their entire lives fighting change at every possible point. But often change is good, and I honestly believe that this change will be good. There is a lot of change occurring. We are getting a house built, I am starting a new job, and I’m looking forward with an open mind.
This next 8 days will be be nostalgic, sad, exciting, and a relief. But I am an optimist, and June 1st I start the next part of my life… and I am looking forward to it!
In Perpetual Search of Continual Productivity
This is an issue I have had for a while. While I feel over the long term I am productive, I always feel like I could be more productive in the short term. Or more accurately, I could have more guilt-free time if I could consistently be productive ever day. I am always looking for ways to basically force myself into this. Will power is overrated, as Jillian Michaels once said on The Biggest Loser, and I know that this is the case. Every so often, you are going to cave, unfortunately.
So I stumbled upon an interesting article on being a productive academic. I’ve read articles on this topic before, and I often find them preachy and written by people who seem to have no problem running on full gas all the time and who can just work work work. That’s not me. I am easily distracted, and well, at times lazy.
However, very quickly in the article he points out that he 1) has lots of things going on outside of his academic life and 2) is lazy. I was starting to like this article already.
The key thesis is to reduce the barriers to being productive so that is the steady state. And make things that get in the way of productivity have higher cost. Effectively, make being productive the laziest thing you can do at any given point in time.
He talks about many of the issues that plague me, but one in particular gets me: the dreaded web browsing loop. Keep checking sites over and over. I find myself doing it without realizing sometimes. My laptop now has an edited /etc/hosts file. Again, willpower is overrated, I need something to break the cycle. You feel real silly when you go to facebook (sorry Harry) and see a 404 message staring you in the face.
There are other tips in the article, and I plan on using many of them. Some of them don’t quite fit my/our life, but many of them do. Right now things are pretty easy to manage work-wise, but I hope to be a professor some day, and I know the number of things to juggle will increase dramatically. However, I don’t feel the solution is throw every waking hour at work. That can’t be the solution. Not all the time, not 365. I need to be more efficient, more productive on a regular basis.
I figure if I can give up cheese and lose almost 40 pounds, I can get more work done, right?
