those times in your life when you just found a groove. In 2001 I had the
wonderful opportunity to write a book chapter for a cognitive science
professor. I set aside 4 months to do almost nothing but research, think,
and write it. But I had a terrible time with it. I was isolated, my time
had no structure, I was too timid to ask for enough help from the project
head, and as far as research went, I had no idea what the fuck I was
doing. It was ok when I was gathering materials and reading for it, but
when I had to admit I had collected as much information as I could use and
it was time to start writing, I stalled out. That blank screen would stare
me down. I had many many days where I did nothing for it, unless you count
worrying.
Finally, by accident, I hit on a fairly extreme regime that nevertheless,
over about a 3 week period, got my draft written. Every single day, I
would do practically no work on it during the day. I would chat with
friends, relax, go for a bike ride, maybe read a littlet for the or do a
couple mindless chores for it. Then every evening - and this seemed key -
I would order the #7 at the Golden Mango in Waterloo (that's shredded pork
on vermicelli with spring roll, yum). Then I would go for a long long walk
by myself, often travelling way out into the agricultural areas, walking
along the roadside or on biketrails in the dusk. Then at 9 o'clock every
day I would get to my little tiny office (actually a storage closet with a
computer in it) and get 2-3 hours of very solid writing done. I'd reread
what I did the day before, fix it up, and power onwards. It wasn't even
hard.
I'd completely forgot about this till just today, but now that it's in
my mind I want to ask, why was this so effective? What can I take from it
for my current life as a graduate student?
* I worked on it every single day. That meant it was always somewhere in
my mind, meaning I was actually doing some work during those unstructured
times.
* I had those unstructured times, when I wasn't trying to force myself to
think about it but had no other real demands on my intellect either. The
daytime, and especially those long walks were good for that.
* I had a workspace with no distractions (surely it had internet - I must
just not have been such an addict back then. See the Privoxy entry for one
approach to combat that)
* I had good food in my belly. There's a famous quote about how
stimulating and encouraging that can be to the cognitive faculties, but
I'm too lazy to hunt it up.
* I was getting some regular exercise.
So this was no doubt a tremendously inefficient routine (not to mention
impractical for most people; and what if you don't like vietnamese food?)
but there's lots I can take from it to add to what I know about how I work
- that is the very hardest parts of what I do, which are writing and
trying to come up with creative research ideas. I want to get back to the
feeling that I had, if only for a little while, then: that I was in
excellent mental and creative shape, with my powers in hand, running with
a long stride and easily jumping obstacles that came along.
Somewhat coincidentally, the point about needing unstructured time to
think was one of the major conclusions of mypaper, which was about
creativity in computer science: creative people need long blocks of time
to let their mind wander. Many of the computer scientists in a survey I
relied heavily on said that the times when they had their best ideas were
on their daily commute, just before or after bed, or in the bath or
shower. In fact Alan Kaye, one of the most creative of them all, had a
special shower installed in the Xerox PARC building just for that purpose,
to help him think! If you were there at 4 in the morning - when he got in
- you might hear him showering merrily away. So one way to be more
creative: take more baths.
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