It’s the multitasking, stupid
In an effort to make good on my promise in the last post to spend more time discussing the stuff that’s going on here at the end of graduate school, I thought I’d write a bit about “what makes the end so hard”. I think the central issue is one of time management/multitasking. To give you a sense of what I’ve got going on, here is a rough breakdown (off the top of my head) of my current priority tree:
- Short-term (daily work)
- Wet lab experiments. Obtain data for committee meeting in 9 days
- Computational experiments. Obtain data for committee meeting in 9 days
- Work on presentation for aforementioned meeting
- Unpack/settle in at new apartment
- Clean out old house. Yard sale to get rid of things we aren’t taking
- Medium term
- Read papers from potential postdoc labs. Think about contacting them
- Look for independent funding sources for postdocs, to improve chances of getting a position in a lab of my choosing
- Think about/plan for Mrs. PA’s move to Vancouver
- Think about what papers need to be written before I defend
- Write my thesis
Individually, or even in small groups, these tasks aren’t that bad. The struggle comes when you have to deal with all of them at once. It’s easy to slip into a form of immobility, where your mind just focuses on the mountain of things to do rather than productive cogitation which actually leads to doing them. It’s also a bit tough to prioritize, because every item on that list is IMPORTANT, and it’s not going to work to let any one of them slide a bit.
It doesn’t help that there is this constant lurking fear, a sort of waiting for the crisis to hit. Any one of these items could run into a major roadblock suddenly, and that would upend the cart as it were. It feels a bit like running along juggling priceless vases while also trying to keep an eye out for overhangs that you might toss one of them into. A bit on the side of nerve-wracking.
It doesn’t help that I’ve never been terribly brilliant at serious multitasking. I find that dividing my attention on important matters on a timescale shorter than a day tends to have a detrimental effect on productivity. The deep insights and “eureka” moments tend to come when I can really dive into something, rather than work on it for a few hours and then put it aside for another task.
In a way, however, I feel that this is the best sort of preparation for moving onward in science. My guess is that in order to be a decent research professor, a keen multitasking ability is key. One has to handle teaching responsibilities, laboratory management (both personnel and research issues), grant writing, and service, all in addition to anything going on in your personal life. It’s no surprise to me that the cliche of the “absent minded professor” is so pervasive. Who wouldn’t be a bit forgetful in such a situation?
