Recently I have been getting to watch a few more Plymouth Argyle away games and so I decided it would be nice to keep a list of when and where I have been to watch professional football matches and to watch the number of grounds gradually creep upwards. To this end I have added an ‘Around the Grounds’ page to his blog – the link appears at the top of the site alongside my other lists of books read, movies watched and races run.
Deep Work
I recently finished reading Cal Newport‘s latest book ‘Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World’. I had come across Newport’s work previously via various podcasts that I listen to and had read some of his blog posts covering the same content but I found the book to be a much more satisfying and useful experience.
Cal Newport is a professor in Computer Science at Georgetown University and so, in theory, his work should share many characteristics with mine. However, he is clearly driven to pursue his research much more than I have ever been and I guess this is why he has worked so much more fiercely to develop approaches to working that build and protect time for Deep Work (which he defines as ‘professional activities performed in a state of distraction-fee concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate’).
A central tenet of Newport’s book is that just at the time when Deep Work is becoming so necessary (and valuable) it is become increasingly rare and so those who practical the skill of Deep Work are in a fantastic position to leverage their skill to reap great rewards. Amongst the things that Newport suggests are deliberately build in time to practice Deep Work, to learn to become comfortable with boredom (and so not seek distraction so readily), to quit social media (perhaps the key source of distraction in the modern world) and to ruthlessly eliminate Shallow Work.
For me, one of the most valuable aspects of reading Newport’s book was that re-energised a desire to produce the kind of outputs that would likely come from Deep Work (not necessarily research papers but anything that requires a significant amount of creation in its generation). I think I had lost that to some extent.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been trying out some practices inspired by the book. I have been blocking out sizeable (multi-hour) chunks of time to work on the tougher kind of problems that tend to get pushed back and in these time periods I have been stealing myself against distractions as much as I can. I have generally been trying not to fill small empty spaces of time with a circuit of website or email checking. I have culled the people and accounts that I follow on Facebook and Twitter, almost to vanishing point. I have set aside regular time each day to ruthlessly attack smaller tasks, and because of this I have felt more secure at other times thatchings are not being forgotten. So far, the results have been excellent. Not only do I feel I have worked more productively and made good progress on deeper tasks, but I have also found that I have enjoyed working this way.
There are a lot of books about ‘productivity’ out there and I have read a fair few, but I sense that Newport’s Deep Work is one that will likely make a lasting impact in my life.
Stumblings #2
Here are five more random things I thought I would write about:
1) ‘Follow Your Curiosity’
There’s a slightly odd website that I browse fairly regularly called ‘The Art of Manliness‘ which describes itself as ‘a blog about growing up well, aimed at men and their unique challenges and interests’. Some of the blog posts are interesting and fun – about fitness, personal effectiveness etc. – and some are just downright odd – like one on how to survive falling through the ice (such as might happen if you are out ice fishing on a frozen lake somewhere – as you do…). I’ve started listening to the AoM podcast and in one recent episode (AoM podcast #95 ‘Follow Your Curiosity’ with Brian Koppelman) I was struck by two particular things. First, I liked the idea that in life you should not seek to follow your passion, but, rather, you should follow your curiosity. Secondly, I liked a comment that was expressed along the line of ‘Don’t be bound by the assumptions you made yesterday. You can change them’.
2) Frank Chimero and his new newsletter
I keep track of the internet writings of a few particular creative types. In each case, at some point, I have stumbled upon something they wrote that struck a chord in my head and, as a result, added them to my list of people to keep an eye on for more snippets of interest, wisdom and inspiration. On this list is a designer called Frank Chimero. I don’t remember now what it was that he wrote to catch my eye, but since then he’s posted more material that I have enjoyed and so I have continue to follow him. Somehow I have managed to get to sign up for his new weekly email newsletter ‘Frank’s Findings’ – oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a link to this on his website but you can get to see it at tinyletter.com. It has only been running for three weeks but already there has been a great mix of quirky content that I have enjoyed browsing (and if I am honest, it helped to inspire me to start these Stumblings posts on this blog).
3) Am I a scientist?
Although I work as an academic and am, nominally, some kind of marine scientist, it is fair to say that for much of my career I have focussed almost entirely on teaching, management, student recruitment and course leadership. This has meant that the extent to which I have been involved in scientific research in my field of expertise has been pretty limited at times. Sometimes this doesn’t really bother me, but at other times it leaves me with a feeling that I am not a proper academic and don’t have any very strong link to my subject area. Things have improved a bit recently, thanks largely to prompting and support from a particular colleague. A short while back I kind of sat up one day and asked myself the question ‘Am I a scientist?’. The answer was a sort of yes and a sort of no. I ought to be and, nominally, I am, but the thought struck me that if I am actually a scientist then some days I need to go to work and just be a scientist and not try to be a scientist at the same time as being all the other things my job demands me to be. The result was the idea that I would try to have ‘science days’ when I can go to work and ignore all of the other demands on me (like emails from students, requests for help from colleagues) and just be a scientist. I tried it once and it worked brilliantly. I tried it a second time and something really urgent cropped up that wrecked my plan. I suppose the jury is out on whether this little piece of sleight of mind works or not, but I suspect it might and I am going to try to keep hold of the idea.
4) Boyhood
I went to see the film Boyhood in the summer with my younger daughter and it totally blew me away. It is the best film I have ever seen and I came out of the cinema thinking I could (and wanted to) watch it again and again. I am not going to go into detail here. I just want to report that I loved this film; I loved the message, the acting, some of the music, the idea behind it, the fact that the writer/director Richard Linklatter thinks the way he does. I loved everything about it. I mention it here because it has just come out on DVD and I watched it again. It’s still brilliant. I still love everything about it. If you haven’t seen it, get hold of a copy and watch it. If, after watching it, you say something like ‘oh but nothing happened’ (as one person I know did) then all I can say is …, well, actually I don’t think I can put what I would say to you on a public forum!
5) Kurt Wallander/Henning Mankell
I like reading crime fiction but it is quite a while since I read one of Swedish author Henning Mankell’s Wallander novels. I started reading ‘The Man Who Smiled’ recently (I think this is the fourth Wallander novel) and it’s simply great. It’s so nice to slip straight back into a character and get completely hooked by a story.
Stumblings #1
This is the first of what may, or may not, become a series of posts in which I write about five things I stumbled upon in the last week or so. These ‘things’ might be anything: a book I read, a film I watched, something I created, a piece of insight gained. I have no idea whether I will be able to sustain this, what it will become in the future or whether anyone will find it interesting, but if nothing else, I intend to enjoy recognising the five things I stumble upon each week and recording them in this way. Here goes:
1) Accidental Creative Podcasts
I came across the Accidental Creative website a while back and read the first book by it’s author, Todd Henry, towards the back end of last year. Accidental Creative is aimed at ‘creatives’, taking a wide definition of this word along the lines of ‘someone whose work entails them creating value on a regular basis’. I really enjoyed the book and found a lot within it that resonated with my struggles to remain productive and creative. More recently, I started listening to the Accidental Creative Podcast and my decision to include this entry in my Stumblings is specifically inspired by a podcast on ‘Procrastinating on Purpose’ that I listened to on the way home from work one day last week. The basic idea of PoPing is that you should decide what to do at any point based not simply on whether tasks are urgent or important (classic time management approach) but also whether they are significant. Like most ideas of this type, it’s all just common sense really, in this case that it is a really good idea to deliberately spend time doing things that enable you to be more productive in the future (such as developing skills, laying foundations, scoping a project) and that to do this you have to deliberately put off until later other tasks that you could do now but don’t have to. The danger is that you simply do the tasks you can do now, create an illusion that you have been productive but then not enable yourself to work ‘better’ in the future. Anyway, I include the AC Podcasts here not for that specific episode but just as something that I think is generally seeming to have some value for me.
2) Tchaikovsky Symphonies
I grew up to classical music and always had a particular liking for Tchaikovsky. But in recent years (actually more like the last 30 years) I haven’t found time for myself to listen to classical music so much. A couple of weeks ago I went to see the film Birdman with my younger daughter and Tchaikovsky’s music features quite heavily in the soundtrack (a great choice for the film because, for me at least, T’s music is laced with strain, yearning and a feeling of desperation). Subsequently, I decided to listen to T’s later symphonies (surely his best works) and this reminded me how much I liked them and how great they are. As a child I was always most taken by the 5th Symphony, but I have to say that from this recent re-listening, the 4th Symphony is the one that did it for me this time. The music in the first movement seemed to reach right inside me, rip out my heart and then wink mockingly at me. Not everyone’s cup of tea I suppose!
3) Regular Running
This year (well since 2nd January actually) I have been running every day, if only for a mile sometimes. I suspect I will write more about this in the future but, for now, I just wanted to record that there seems to be something different that happens to both your body and your mind when you run daily rather than just running a few times each week. Physically, I can start to see my body re-shaping itself which is interesting. Mentally, I find I am far more ‘level’, quicker to focus on tasks at hand and generally more positive. It’s well known that running induces chemical changes in your body but I hadn’t expected to notice such a difference in my response between running often and running daily. Of course, it might just be me feeling something because I want to feel it. We’ll see.
4) Action v Inaction
This is a simple one. I was musing about diving in and doing something versus thinking about doing something later and the following words popped into my head: “The brief moment for action is inevitably followed by a lifetime of opportunities for inaction”.
5) Whiplash
I went to see this film with my wife and younger daughter. All I want to say is that it is brilliant. I like films that are about something rather than simply a story. Whiplash is about what is and isn’t acceptable when trying to foster genius. It almost forces you to agree with some really unacceptable behaviour on the part of a teacher/mentor. Brilliant acting, brilliant filming, brilliantly playful, brilliantly thought-provoking. Watch it.
If you don’t do it now you have to do it later
I got stuck at work today. I was supposed to have a meeting lasting the whole morning but, unprecedentedly, it was all done and dusted in about an hour. Now usually a meeting finishing early would be a cause for celebration, providing a whole chunk of unexpected bonus time in which to do something useful. But alas, today I just couldn’t get started on any of the multitude of tasks that were waiting for my attention – marking projects, filling out my Performance Development Review form, revising some degree course web-pages to name the three most urgent.
I do tend to suffer from difficulty getting started at times, experiencing a complete lack of motivation despite having limited time and unlimited tasks, and it can be a real problem. I have tried to analyse why my motivation gets stuck sometimes but there is no real pattern to when things go wrong – it just appears out of nowhere. But a significant part of the problem is that the tasks awaiting me are just somewhat boring and have little direct value for me personally. They are just tedious tasks that need to be done that I don’t really want to do and so sometimes, I simply don’t.
In the end, after a period of frustration, I did get going, and partly this was because I told myself that I would have to do the tasks sometime so it might as well be now. The answers to problems of this type are invariably obvious and simple but it helps to remind yourself of them sometimes, which us why I grabbed a post-it-note, scribbled a few words on it and stuck it on my phone as a constant visible reminder for future times I feel myself getting stuck.
My Running Week 2014 #17
This was a big week for my running as on Sunday I did my first ever Half Marathon (Plymouth), something that would only have been a vague dream a year ago.
Prior to the HM I had an easy week and just did a couple of slowish short runs of 3.4 miles on Monday and Friday down into Hartley Vale, through Linketty Lane up to Widey and back through Crownhill and the Manadon roundabout to home. I spent the whole week expecting to succumb to a bad cold that was doing the rounds at home and so the only thing on my mind was to keep healthy and make sure that my legs didn’t seize up.
So, on Sunday morning I did the Plymouth Half Marathon. I had a target time of 1 hour 50 minutes and despite a somewhat congested start I was running along nicely in the opening 4 miles or so at ~8 minute mile pace, well within the pace I needed for a 1:50 time. The route then started the slow climb up Billacombe Road and it surprised me here to find myself overtaking people who were already walking – bad race planning/pacing on their part. I maintained a good pace through the next few miles and then entered the Saltram House estate and deliberately made full use of the downhill stretch it presented. At around 8-9 miles I found myself passing the 1:45 pacers and at that stage I thought maybe that time was possible but they went past me again at about 9-10 miles and I didn’t see them again on the remainder of the route. I did slow somewhat in the last 3 miles or so and the final mile of the route was tough with a nasty little hill to finish. I completed the run in 1:45:51 which surpassed my expectations and will be good enough to earn me a bronze certificate from the Plymouth Musketeers (to match my bronze for 10k earned a few weeks ago). It was a great experience, with over 4200 runners (I placed between 800th and 900th) with quite a few people I knew cheering me on along the route which was nice.
Here is a nice picture of me near the start of the race:
If University departments were football teams
At about this time of year, with issues of promotion and relegation beginning to be settled, professional football teams start to make their plans for the next season. As part of this process the manager decides which players with expiring contracts he wants to offer new contracts to, which he will release and which players with ongoing contracts he wants to push out of the door and make available for transfer or loan to other clubs. The result is a rush of ‘retained lists’ and ‘released lists’ signalling to other clubs that Player X is wanted, Player Y can leave, Player Z is available to other teams for a price. At the same time, work begins to recruit fresh talent to plug gaps in the squad, bring in fresh young talent or an experienced old head.
The thought struck me earlier that it would be interesting if a University department operated in the same manner. At the end of the year the Head of Department, or Subject Group Head, would look at the performance of the academics in the subject area, review student feedback, look at research output, look at teaching requirements for the next year etc. and make decisions on who would stay and who had to go. They might decide that the subject area needed to bring in an experienced, already productive research professor, or perhaps several energetic and eager new faces. They might take the chance to cut away the dead wood or offer reduced or improved terms to existing group members.
In such an environment, it would be incredibly different to work in a university. Gone would be any notion of stability. Faces would have to fit, measured productivity would be paramount. Academics would become itinerant mercenaries, loyalty would fly out of the window and priorities might shift at the whim of the management team (actually that bit happens). In my opinion, in such a regime, Higher Education would be completely unattractive place to work for most people. But it would be very, very interesting to see who would end up on the retained list and who would be released and whether, in the end, quality could be improved by a much more ruthless approach to hiring and firing personnel.
A Puppy is for Life…
Today at work, completely out of the blue, I received an email from a former student requesting some help on a small piece of oceanography work he is completing for an Open University course. It was something I hadn’t given any thought to for at least 20 years and so I wasn’t immediately able to help. However, being the kind of person that I am, I dug out some textbooks, looked at my old MSc Physical Oceanography notes and, when these avenues failed to provide any quick insights, I had a root around online. All of this searching led me to conclude that the question being asked didn’t have a particularly straightforward (aka ‘one-line’) answer, but I was able to respond with some general guidance and a link to a comprehensive set of US university course notes that were relevant.
This particular former student was (how can I best put this?) one who I had to give a lot of support and guidance to while he was on the course so I found it a little amusing that I was still his ‘go-to’ person for help some three or so years after he had left. I happened to mention today’s contact to a colleague and his response was ‘A puppy is for life…’. I think some people might find such contacts a little on the irritating side but I generally go about life helping people as much as I can when they ask me for help and so I suppose it is no surprise that for some students this ‘service’ continues long after they have left. On reflection, I don’t think I would want it any other way really.
My Running Week 2014 #16
I managed three runs this week – one longer slower run and two short fast ones.
The first run was on Monday morning when I set out to do 10-11 miles at a steady pace as my last long run before tackling the Plymouth Half Marathon. I tried a new route from home, down through Hartley Vale, under the A38 via Linketty Lane then up to Plymouth Garden Centre, along Transit Way, across to Kings Tamerton, through Ham, over Central Park, around the park and home. It turned out to be a pretty tough run with some decent hills (much hillier than the Half Marathon route) and I completed the 10.7 miles in just under 1 hour 35 minutes or 8:51 minute/mile pace. Given the route I was happy enough.
Then, on Thursday, I did the 5k ‘Timed Run’ with the Plymouth Musketeers. This is a regular run in which everyone runs the same 5k loop down into Ernesettle and then back up Biggin Hill to the start. It was my second time on this run and I achieved a time of 24:47 which was about 2 minutes quicker than my last attempt several months ago. Coincidentally, on both occasions I finished 13th overall!
On Saturday morning I did the Plym Valley Parkrun for the 18th time and set out to achieve a Personal Best on the back of my new 5k PB achieved at the Worcester Woods Parkrun the previous week. I did achieve a PB for the route (23:12) but missed out on a 5k PB by just 4 seconds. I have a couple of 5k targets within close reach now – an overall 5k PB and a sub-23 minute time, both of which I hope to achieve in the near future.
A bits and pieces day
Today I had what I would describe as a ‘bits and pieces day’. Looking back on the last 8 hours or so there is not one particular task that I have done that I would identify as a highlight but there are a lot of smaller tasks that have quite neatly rounded a few things off and left me with an overall feeling of useful achievement to take home ahead of the long Easter weekend.
In short, I have had a discussion with a senior colleague about actions we can take to connect better with potential students, photocopied a sample of marked coursework for two modules, advised a student who wants to repeat a year of his course, made a list of the Final Stage projects for next year, collated materials for an in-class test I am running next week and caught up with my entries on this blog.
It would be nice to be able to point to one significant more creative triumph from today but actually I am quite content, because sometimes a bits and pieces day is exactly what you need.
Tim O'Hare 