Over the last couple of weeks I have been working my way through a huge (virtual) pile of marking – 161 pieces of first year coursework about the circulation of water into and out of the Mediterranean Sea, each one taking me approximately 15 minutes to mark (which equates to a little over 40 hours over a two week period during which all of the rest of my work also had to happen). It was a mammoth task and not one I want to repeat again next year so I will have to make sure that I re-design the work into a more manageable form. To make matters worse, I absolutely hate marking (I suspect everyone does) – it is repetitive, physically and mentally tiring, boring and often quite disheartening. It is a job where it is absolutely essential to be efficient and to stick on task.
As I was working through the pieces of work and struggling to keep on track and avoid being pulled off to do something else more interesting and enjoyable (i.e. anything else) I got a really strong sense that the secret to being successful against this challenge was to not allow tiny cracks in time to open up. The critical time was always just at the moment when I had completed marking one piece of work but just before I had started on the next one. I came to think of these moments as cracks in time.
At the end of each piece of work I had a strong physical sensation of a tiny crack in time appearing and even the slightest hesitation at that point would result in it opening ever so slightly wider, then wider, then wider still until I had tumbled in (to have got up to make a drink or check something on the internet or anything really). I had to be ready for these cracks; ready to outwit them by stepping over into the next piece of work before the crack could take hold and rip open. As soon as I had completed the final action of processing the piece I had just marked I had to be into the next one, opening up the file ready to start work on it. I found that it mattered much less if I paused a few seconds if I had already opened, and therefore ‘started’, the next piece of work than if I paused before doing so. To do the latter allowed the tiny crack to begin its expansion and immediately that had happened a huge amount of additional willpower was needed to get back on track. Although battling these cracks was obviously really a mental challenge, I cannot really put into words how physical the sensation felt, and I think for that reason the idea of cracks in time and my having to battle against their development has taken hold in my head in a wider context than just marking. I have come to realise that much of my battle to maintain the high level of productivity that I desire is the battle against allowing the cracks in time to open. Knowing this I am starting to train myself to be ready for them, to recognise their appearance at the earliest possible stage and to have in place strategies for leaping over them to leave them behind me before they become too wide.
Tim O'Hare 