2009 February 15
After writing down the AAS-related information, I thought I’d give a little status update on the broadband spectra project.
I’ve started drafting a paper describing my work. The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of writing — I’ve gotten through the less-interesting parts and now am on the verge of starting to work on the meaty analysis and interpretation. This means that I’ll probably shift back into the less-writing mode as I take the time to make sure every part of the project is done correctly and convincingly.
Unfortunately I don’t have a great conception of how long it will take to cross all of those t’s and dot all of those lower-case j’s. There are few things that I know I need to do, but there will probably also be ones that come out of nowhere — you write a paragraph, allege something, and say, “Hmm, I guess I should actually justify that.”
I’ve started the practice of writing down my goals for the week on Monday morning and crossing them off as the week progresses. So far I’ve done a good job of doing everything that I want to, mainly because I make a point of being exceedingly unambitious in my goal selection. At some point in the future, maybe I’ll ramp up the goals that I set to encourage myself to work longer hours, but for now I want to feel that I have a good peg on my baseline productivity. And, to be honest, I don’t think that a weekly schedule will be a strong enough force to get me to work harder than I feel like. If I ever have a pressing deadline, though, I think it’ll be useful to work up a weekly schedule and have a good sense of where I need to cram in order to get things done. Fortunately, for the time being, deadlines aren’t my problem. I am very glad of that.