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Monday, August 01, 2005
The Academic Life: Logged and Blogged for the Benefit of All
At the behest of a reader laboring under the mistaken impression that I’m anything more than a favor, last Thursday I kept a log of what I was up to the entire day. Sure, I left some information out, but who wants to read:
1:24 Concede to cat’s demand for attention.
1:25 Apologize to cat for inadequacy of attention.
And so on and so on ad infinitum. (We have four cats. No matter how many times we inform them that the cat-to-arm ratio is a healthy 1:1, they insist that we are horrible, horrible people.)
Here’s the rub: the unintended consequence of spending a day paying attention to my work habits has produced the four most intense days of dissertating I’ve had in months. In a row. On the one hand, I want to share this experience with others, and recommend you follow my lead. On the other, now I’m interested in how other people spend their days. Can I become even more productive than this exercise has already made me? I’d like to. So consider this a meme, of sorts. If you feel inclined to log on your blog a typical day in your life as an academic, send us a trackback. (I would request that particular people respond to this meme, but since it is time-consuming, I’ll leave it to the principle of self-selection.)
Comments
but who wants to read:
1:24 Concede to cat’s demand for attention.
1:25 Apologize to cat for inadequacy of attention.
And so on and so on ad infinitum
well, I’d read that. I wouldn’t mind. I’ve only got one cat though (follow the link to see how I spend a typical day in my life as an academic)
I’m sitting here at the raw end of my typical academic day which involves commuting by plane to my uni’s regional campus, teaching 2x2hour tutorials, then flying home again. Australia is a big country with a small population.
I have a contribution to make at http://mthollywood.blogspot.com/2005/08/cell-phone-blogging-and-its.html
I’d read that. I wouldn’t mind.
At the frequency with which it would be written, you’d mind. Believe me, you’d mind.
And your day, to be frank, scares me. You have to fly to work? On a regular basis? Then again, I suppose you could work on the plane, which is more than most people can do driving…
Oh, look . . . it’s John Bruce again. I’d forgotten all about him - the Valve’s own Statler and Waldorf.
More intellectual dishonesty from John Bruce? Get out!
I shouldn’t expect any better of him, but that’s a really really short post. Even he should have stamina enough to reach the point, you know, where I talk about how logging your work habits leads to increased productivity.
Well, I’ll agree that logging your activity may increase productivity, if you simply don’t have any handle on how you spend your time. But how can blogging your activity increase productivity? Those are two different things.
Logging? I thought they did that over at Crooked Timber. Ho ho ho ho ho!
What is the nature of your complaint? That I posted, on my personal blog, a doctored version of the log I actually kept last Thursday? Everyone else who read that post understood that I wrote it with an audience in mind. Did you read it? If so, do you actually believe I spent three minutes concussing myself?
As to your second question: I believe observing and discussing the work habits of others--be it in person or on a blog--is one way to increase productivity. Why does my interest in the work habits of my fellow academics bother you?
That said, you hit one nail on the head: U.S. taxpayers really shouldn’t directly or indirectly underwrite Laura’s career. That is shameful.
Scott, I’m commenting on your post at The Valve, which I assume—rightly or wrongly—is meant to be a sort of showcase for the kind of mental activity that justifies English departments. Or something like that. And which, to informed members of the general audience toward which the site is addressed, doesn’t always measure up to that standard. What you post on your own site is up to you. What you post on a group site that is trying to achieve a different effect from a purely personzal and semi-anonymous site is, or ought to be, different. Which is one reason some have suggested The Valve needs an editor, and your own post here would support that, to my mind. In other words, cute little posts about cats wanting attention aren’t necessarily what would impress those in some doubt about the intellectual makeup of your typical English department, and a real editor might have some concern in this direction.
I take it you didn’t read any of the posts about Theory’s Empire. Some serious intellectual stuff showcased there.
I also take it you didn’t read the very post you comment on, as it is not a “cute little post about cats wanting attention.” The cats are mentioned as precisely the sort of information I didn’t include in my log. Other information I excluded:
7:38 Yawn.
9:31 Sneeze.
And so on ad infinitum. Your complaint, therefore, is with my example of the material best excluded from your log, should you choose to keep one to increase your own (and, over the course of a conversation, possibly other’s) productivity? You do realize that any example of irrelevent information will be, well, irrelevent?
Let me see if I have this straight. You redacted material that you didn’t feel was appropriate to include in your own, personal, pseudonymous blog, because it would be boring and irrelevant. So you decided to include the outtakes in the more formal blog that is, at least in part, a semi-professional outlet for some of the participants. In other words, I don’t scribble graffiti in my own living room, but I see no reason I shouldn’t go down to the public library and put a mustache on Dante. Seems to me like that’s the thought process at work here. And you think that’s cute. Did you see the post on Drezner a while back about the search committee chair who was distinctly unimpressed by candidates’ blogs?
the unintended consequence of spending a day paying attention to my work habits has produced the four most intense days of dissertating I’ve had in months.... [I] recommend you follow my lead. Can I become even more productive than this exercise has already made me?
Maybe I’m missing something. Are you saying that your log made you realize that you don’t use your time well? And that “made [you]” “be[come]” more productive?
Oh, come off it, John. This is a blog, which means that it’s going to contain a combination of scholarly debate and more informal stuff. If you’re going to evaluate it, then you need to actually scroll down the page and read the full range of material on offer here. Personally, though, I’d much rather read about Scott’s cats than your typical illogical rants about “literary jock-strap sniffers” and “close-readings” of books you haven’t read.
Zehou, you’re not missing anything at all. That’s almost exactly what I’m saying: it’s not that I used my time poorly before, only that I use it more efficiently now. Other people could benefit from doing the same, and everyone could benefit from a general conversation about what they’ve learned from their logs.
I would love to have that conversation, but instead I’m stuck in yet another predictably dull conversation with John Bruce. Instead of a discussion about the particular aspects of their work habits the log brought to light, I have to explain to John Bruce what an example is. Instead of a productive back-and-forth with people whose habits differ from mine but are equally successful, I have to listen to John Bruce suggest that a search committee chair could find me unqualified for a position after he learns that I have cats and am not only interested in becoming a more efficient and productive scholar myself, but also in helping other academics become more efficient and productive scholars. Why? Because I use the fact that I have cats as an example.
And then, of course, there’s the irony that I would’ve been more productive today had I listened to my instincts scream and not responded to John Bruce in the first place. (There had been, and is again, an official S.E.K. moratorium on reading or responding to John Bruce’s drivel.)
John Bruce, I vaguely remember thinking that people were being too defensive about some of your past criticism, but I think that this one is both dreary and petty. Come on—talking about how the taxpayers are paying for SEK’s blogging? Saying that his mention of cats is going to hurt his job prospects? Those are attempted petty sadistic gestures, not criticism.
I read a bit of your blog while I was there and saw the following from the beginning of your NACSA series:
“These were people utterly without talent or skills of any sort, save for self-promotion. If pressed, they could turn on a sort of reluctant, threadbare charm, though it was nothing that would gain them favor with any normal person.”
I don’t know, maybe you’re retired, or not blogging under your real name. But those two sentences are so categorically bitter and dull that I would never hire you, having read them. They aren’t written about characters (although characters that uninterestingly flat would be an artistic sin in themselves) but purportedly about real people who you’ve known and worked with. And you claim that you know every facet of these people’s lives? And that you are the arbiter of what is normal?
Jolt yourself out of your rut, do something, because as a writer you’re losing it.
Don’t feed the troll.
blah is wise.
^What blah said.