Distractions, distractions

Why people think that we could be MORE productive in a pandemic is beyond me. I can barely get myself out of bed most mornings when there ISN’T a pandemic killing ~1200 people a day. I mean how high does that number need to be before you too are less productive my fellow compassionate human?

It’s that time of the year again. Grant writing season! I bet you didn’t know there was a season, I sure didn’t when I started. I found that most things in academica are seasonal. For example twice a year, once in the spring and once in the summer we have conference season. Of course, that may be different depending on your field and * gestures wildy at 2020 * the state of the world. Most conferences were canceled this year (at least the in person bit), which was good and needed.

Because of the pandemic my research plans got pushed back. Way, way back, so now I’m either very behind schedule or early for next year depending on how you look at it (hint, I’m actually very behind). Thankfully in some cases we don’t need a lot of evidence to apply for funding, pilot funds are available for example and depending on how daring we want to be so are a lot of other types of funds. It’s just a matter of explaining that our data isn’t as strong as it could be due to the pandemic.

This brings me around to the title of today’s post. There is so much going on it’s hard to focus on the stuff I need to do. My car is breaking (or maybe not… it’s complicated), experiments are slowed, school is … going, and oh did I mention we have a tiny (see: giant and uncontrolled) pandemic going on? Yeah, it’s not an environment conducive to getting work done for sure, at least for me.

Today I’m planning on getting some of that car work done I just mentioned, it maybe fixed? It’s tough to say, but there are still some things I need to do to finish the job, so that’s on the agenda for the day and that’s basically all I’m doing. Yes, the whole point of the post is to justify doing exactly one thing on my list of stuff to do today. If I’m going to do any other work, I need to clear out some of the other distractions and I’m definitely not able to fix the pandemic, so my car will have to do… for now.