All entries for November 2014

Get to know the working environment that is best for you!

Being able to enter that zone of uninterrupted productivity whilst writing your thesis, research paper, conference paper, upgrade reports, or any other thought provoking document, is something that every post graduate researcher and indeed every learner should strive to achieve. When ideas start flowing this needs to be continued for as long as is necessary, and this shall be different for every person and for every idea formulation process. I have spent long periods of time during the Ph.D so far and before the Ph.D writing ideas on paper as they come to me either through reading research papers and having ideas formed whilst reading, or through ideas forming whilst actually writing ideas. Ideas can produce other ideas, and when these start free flowing there is that need of time and space to write all these ideas down and really develop them as best as is possible at that particular time

Question is: where can you be at your most productive? Inside, outside, or both?

The Warwick blog post “How to create 'head space' for writing” is an excellent recent blog post, and whilst the focus is on Ph.D post graduates I believe that it applies to any level of education that involves learning methods that are beyond what occurs in the classroom. As the author of the blog post states, there are limitless places where learning can occur and therefore where post graduates and other learners can work. The trick is to find what is suitable for your own style of learning and your own personality and general way of working. I prefer peace and quiet, and at the moment the majority of my work is done at home but during the times of really intense writing or intense idea development I prefer somewhere even quieter than that such as a quiet area in a library. But sometimes, I prefer simply going out into the countryside.

Even the other day, it really mattered that I went out. Whilst I was out I came up with a strategy for tackling the literature, a strategy for managing and analysing variables that would be of most important interest to investigate in the research that then led onto uses of different software that would assist in variable management, and then I contemplated the direction of the research environment. It almost felt like all the independent ideas that I have been thinking about during the past few months had come together into a single whole and the process revealed itself to me in a way that might have taken longer if I were at home at that particular time.

So, make sure that you get to know where you can work best because there are people who try to work in an unsuitable environment and they don’t even realise which environment is best for them. Get to know yourself, and get to know the environment that works best with what you know about yourself. It is worth the effort!

Alex Darracott : 24 Nov 2014 20:41 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem