Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Spending my time

The weekend passed by so quickly. It was almost a blur from the start. Some time yesterday was spent editing the transcript of that last talk. That project is coming along well enough, but is taking longer than expected. Normally editing does not take this long, but the transcription on this one is mixed up enough that editing takes a few minutes of reconstruction and grammarian focus per section. Outside of that effort I did spend some time thinking about my research trajectory. That was an adventure. My research interests are not squarely focused on any one thing at the moment. Things need to shift that direction and my focus needs to zero in on something that deserves my time. One thing that does not deserve my time is all the effort required to come up with unique titles for all these weblog posts. Using just the date as the title never really seems right, but coming up with words is not an efficient use of my time. Some time ago now I took a picture each day that I felt lined up with the content of the weblog post and that was even harder. I’m really not sure that photographic effort added any value to the content being presented or if it was just an unnecessary topping. 

Strangely enough my office already needs to be cleaned again. Boxes are strewn all over the floor. Maybe later today I’ll spend some time working to get that picked up. Sometimes the simple act of picking up and putting things in place is enough to kickstart an idea about something. Maybe it will be that something that grabs my attention and helps me focus my research on an idea that relentlessly grabs my whole attention. Finding that thing that is so compelling that it quickly eats up the totality of your focus is always a special thing. Finding that spark is the harder part it seems. My thoughts wondered a little bit. I started thinking about the last time that I was completely focused on tackling a problem. It has been awhile since that has happened. Very few things end up requiring my complete focus. That probably means I’m tackling the wrong problems and spending my time in ways that could be optimized on higher value intellectual targets.


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