Finding motivation

This post originally appeared on medium.com/@kannarkk before I consolidated my writing here.

This quarter, I went from one extreme to another extreme. In my previous quarters, I took three courses per quarter. This quarter, I am taking zero courses that count towards my master’s degree. I am taking a teaching course and a couple of seminars for credit, but apart from those, my quarter is completely divided into research and TA for an undergraduate web analytics course. I am doing a research project with Dr. Julian McAuley — I am currently reimplementing one of his papers

It’s the fourth week into the quarter, and I am more like “Is it already? Paaaaanniiiccccc….” Nothing has gone by as I anticipated, for multiple reasons. In the last week of my previous quarter, I fell ill. I didn’t think too much of it, until I felt the fatigue carry forward to this quarter; I can still feel the last remnants of this fatigue even in this week. It crippled me, killing my willpower, and making me sleep all the time, day and night. I should have realized how bad the burnout of taking three heavy courses last quarter would be.

To exacerbate the problem, I jumped from the extreme of taking just course to taking none. To describe this in another way, my life went from the structure of jumping from one homework or project to another, to being totally unstructured.This new form of my quarter means I have to take lead and identify goals and set objectives for the week (short term and long term).

This sudden shift to an unstructured form of grad life left me totally dazed in the first two weeks, while I was still unwell. I did as much as I could, but not as much asI wished to. The days of long sleepless nights were gone. Last week was better. This week is going good. I am still slow, but it’s not primarily because of my health. I am now accustomed to this new style.

To quote from this article:

The place most of us begin is wrong. We search for epiphanies when, in fact, we should be learning to live with ambiguity. The clarity we seek is a myth.

A few other things I feel I can do better are:

1. Set doable goals with right time estimates
   I have always had problem with time allocation for my work. My estimates for the amount of time it takes to complete a task are sometimes incorrect. This is crippling especially for my research project. I need to improve this quickly.
2. Prioritizing competing tasks
   I have improved on this to an extent. However, I always see a lot of P2 tasks, and one or two P1 tasks for the day. I should know I can’t do all of them in the day. I am trying something new (rather opposite) for time management. I’ll write a post about it when I have enough data to present and how successful I was.
3. Communicate effectively with my advisor
   I feel my weekly meetings with my advisor is more of me giving him an update of what happened (and what didn’t), and less of taking advice and useful tips. Last week was good, in the sense, that I got some good alternative directions to look at if my solution did not work. I feel I should discuss more about expectations and how I am progressing and other things. I should ask more questions, but I am too shy to ask them in the concern that they may be trivial. Need to improve this definitely!

In short, I am currently in the state where I am relieved I am doing okay, but wish I could match my full potential. I am learning how to keep myself motivated. I am figuring out how distractions can kick me off-focus so easily. I am making larger focus bursts (approx 1.5–2 hours) instead of the Pomodoro standard of 25 minutes; it never worked for me. Most importantly, I am prioritizing non-work commitments really better this quarter.

Finding motivation? Aye, Aye Captain!