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recent entries "My take on Thanksgiving" "Belichick used results from dynamic programming!" "I know he's not to blame, but..." "In sickness and in health..." "Fall Beautiful"
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Jan 12, 2009 focus…as I start 2009, I thought of how much I got done in a 2 week period while I was in India(see previous blog). I thought to myself how can I recreate that same focus that I had half way around the world back in my lab so that I can finish strong on my master’s thesis? On the train I read an article that talked about the suffering economy and how you can keep your job and move forward in times like these. The article talked about one thing I found very interesting, concentration & focus. Who would have thought that concentration and focus were the primary things to help you keep your job? I thought the article was going to be about working longer hours, impressing the boss, and asking for more responsibility. But instead the article suggests : “pretend that you have one day a week to do your job, or two hours a day to do your job. List all the things you would do in that time and spend the next 100 days doing just that…” I thought to myself that sounds like a good idea, but in the case of myself and other graduate students I’d say, Pretend that you have 6 hours a day to get your work done and only 6 days in a week. A lot of us would raise our eyebrow at this idea. But think about it, if you cut down on those non-essentials, what would not be on your list if you only had six hours, i.e- check facebook, going out for lunch, uneccessary phone calls, etc. It was even suggested that we make a “stop doing lists,” like stop checking your email every hour on the hour, stop checking social networking sites during the day, stop taking long coffee/tea breaks just because you don’t feel like being in lab, stop checking your cellphone or having unnecessary conversations. Just think if you cut out 2 of the afore mentioned things, how much time could you add to that 6 hours? Productivity is easy when you ignore the truly unneccessary and efficiently use your time so that you can enjoy the free time you have. The “stop doing list” will help you organize and clear your time almost better than the “to do” list will. I used to think that I needed 30 hours in my day to get everything done, but now I realize I just need to reclaim my original 24. So what will you stop doing in order to get your 24 back?
2 Responses To This Entry:Post A Response
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…stop checking the EECS blog…
Posted by: Laura on January 13th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Seems convincing and justifiable for most. In some cases, however, we must take into account the way and direction of putting our concentration. Some times it’s better to have a break if you can’t make it with persistent and focused effort!
Posted by: Ahsan on January 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am