This week I was the experimenter for all five sessions of the experiment that my group has planned. I read from a script that I prepared and my, it was such a chore. One group mate commented that my voice has a magnet-like quality to it. Whatever. My throat went dry pretty quickly and sometimes I slipped over some words, but overall it was a success. It was an enjoyable experience, though the same could not be said for our participants.
There are a few assignments that I have started working on. I must say, when I put my heart and soul and effort into doing them, I can make good progress. Prior experiences inform me that usually I would crash and burn after embarking on my assignments. I almost always get excited in the beginning, typing furiously away as ideas flow from my brain to my fingers. After a while it gets tiring, so I close everything and do something else to relax myself. I would then wait for the next round of adrenaline rush before I resume. Not really a productive way of doing things, and the work I churned out was of second-best quality, at most.
This time around, I plan in advance. I break my assignments down into smaller, more manageable parts and scatter them across a period of two to three weeks. Most importantly, I stick to my plan. Guess what, it works! Yesterday and the day before I managed to finish the things that I planned to do within the time frame that I set for myself. What makes me happy about this is that I have reduced some errors in my planning. In particular, I allocated enough time for myself to carry out the tasks. Not too short to be unrealistic, not too long to make me slack off. One drawback is that I can only plan for a couple of days. Or less than a week. Beyond that, I cannot set up anything workable for myself.
It'll only get busier and busier in the coming weeks. I seriously hope that I can get through all these using better methods than the ones that served me in the past. Fingers crossed.
