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It's the little things that (I hope) count

Sky's post made a little inspiration kick me in the head: "Hey, how about you collect some tips and ideas on approaching research/work in a sensible way and actually apply them to your own life?". This is also partly driven by a rather conscious effort on my part to diminish my stress levels.

So - bring put your good ideas, of any sort.

My 'new' idea (one that is perhaps rather obvious to most people) is in fact a pledge: I will not work (at least on the computer) after 10pm. The reason for this change is that I've typically not worked much during the day, relying instead on late night adrenaline-fuelled work sessions - and it's rather hard to get a sensible sleeping pattern going when one has been typing/googling at 2am. So my time limit is supposed to fix my rhythm as much as anything else.

I also have a 'treat' book - something entirely unrelated to my research, but a book I keep at uni. I can read a chapter or two as a reward for achieving something, or simply when I really need to refocus and relax.

 Ok, your turn!

Published Wednesday, September 05, 2007 4:43 PM by Sanna

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Wednesday, September 05, 2007 5:03 PM by Karen.Hall

# re: It's the little things that (I hope) count

This is a tip from someone else: when you come up against a problem (no matter how big or small) write down the problem and what you did to solve it (a notebook can be used). Then if you run into the same problem down the track you can see what you've done in the past to deal with it.

Something that is working for me at the moment is starting each writing session (so for me, that's every evening) by freewriting for 5 minutes on how I feel about writing. It helps me to dump all my emotional crap and to start thinking in sentences.

I'm also trying to stop working when I'm scheduled to stop working. We'll see how that goes...

Wednesday, September 05, 2007 11:39 PM by david.glance

# re: It's the little things that (I hope) count

Computer programmers have tried to do exactly that using "design patterns" where you describe the problem, the context and a few other things and then the solution. The idea is that the solutions embody a best-practice approach to the problem. This is great in principle but the trick is to be able to match the problem you are facing with a catalogue of patterns describing problems in different ways. Of course, this was before social networking and the idea of tags and also blogs doing exactly what you have described which give you a much better chance of finding your problem and the correct solution.

Thursday, September 06, 2007 6:44 PM by sky

# re: It's the little things that (I hope) count

One thing I did for a while when I was feeling particularly snowed under was keep a 'things I've done' list as well as a 'things to do' list.

Writing down everything I managed to complete (preferable broken down into tiny, tiny, chunks) made me feel that I was actually making some progress.

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