Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Four Posts...
...and another four draft posts.
Guess what I have been doing today? Yes, thesis work.
For some strange, but apparently common, reason when I am "working on my thesis" my productiviy in all other aspects of my life increases dramatically. Especially the aspects that could be considered procrastination. Like blogging and surfing the interweb.
I don't know why I think that checking the popular del.icio.us links or writing odes to the city will help me figure out why the button-down callback is not working, but it does work. Maybe it's a subconscious thing. Maybe distracting my brain is a good way to figure out programming problems. Or maybe I am fooling myself.
The difference between thesis programming and work programming is that with thesis programming no one has done the exact same thing before. That is kind of the whole point. It makes problem solving slightly more difficult though. I am frequently "stuck." And when I am "stuck" this is an example of what often happens:
Guess what I have been doing today? Yes, thesis work.
For some strange, but apparently common, reason when I am "working on my thesis" my productiviy in all other aspects of my life increases dramatically. Especially the aspects that could be considered procrastination. Like blogging and surfing the interweb.
I don't know why I think that checking the popular del.icio.us links or writing odes to the city will help me figure out why the button-down callback is not working, but it does work. Maybe it's a subconscious thing. Maybe distracting my brain is a good way to figure out programming problems. Or maybe I am fooling myself.
The difference between thesis programming and work programming is that with thesis programming no one has done the exact same thing before. That is kind of the whole point. It makes problem solving slightly more difficult though. I am frequently "stuck." And when I am "stuck" this is an example of what often happens:
- check the documentation no solution
- check the user groups no solution
- coffee
- try to solve the problem myself but give up fairly quickly cause it's too difficult
- double check the documentation nope still no solution
- more coffee
- search the web torn between hoping that someone else has done the exact same thing and hoping that no one else has done the exact same thing.
- get distracted by various web things totally unrelated to thesis
- blog about the interesting distractions
- browse my bloglines subscriptions while drinking more coffee
- feel inspired to blog about more interesting distractions
- realise that I have spent more time being distracted than solving the problem
- feel guilty so make a token effort to solve the problem with no expectations of making progress
- have a eureka moment almost straight away
- problem solved!
// posted by suze @ 5:51 PM 
