The Life Changing Magic of 25

I haven't written here in a while because I've been working on some other things:

> an article on the rhetoric of the ecomodernists, which I presented at a conference in San Diego a few weeks ago and and am working on with a student.  We have a very shitty first draft and he's found me a bunch of literature to read.  So I'm pretty excited to get back to it.

> an article on how nonprofit conservation organizations in the Boise area use science to make claims about what we should do with/how we should manage our gorgeous but highly polluted Boise River.  I worked with some students last year to interview a bunch of people from these organizations and we're finally to the writing stage.

Yep, it really is this beautiful.  I bike across it everyday on my way to work.

I'm just kind of advising on the piece, actually, because a super talented PhD student is driving the boat.  I took the research group down the wrong rabbit hole with a concept I thought would work, and didn't, but we reconvened this week and I think we're back on the right track.  Realizing you went down the wrong rabbit hole is sort of terrifying, but it also makes getting back on track really satisfying.  I'll be excited to see what she does with this work, and to contribute as a co-author.  Much easier to work on something that's already in place that sit down and write from scratch.

> and today, I finally got going on a piece that I think is going to be a chapter in my next book, if I'm lucky, and that I was able to really make some headway on today.  This one is about how universities use the rhetoric of innovation to bring in a lot of money from private industry, which can be really positive, but then also use that rhetoric to mask problems that arise when industries try to suppress research they don't like.

Anyway, when I was in San Diego at that conference I mentioned, I participated on a panel with some friends of mine that was about writing groups and writing practices.  It was so fun to nerd out about writing and writing strategies.  My writing group and I have been pretty productive, so we were excited to share our process with other people.

My crew.

But I also heard about this idea that I really liked and was excited to try when I got back.  One woman on the panel talked about the pomodoro method, which I hadn't heard of before.  As I look it up now, I see there are lots of ways to make it more complicated if you want, but she basically just described it as tackling tasks in 25-minute chunks and then moving on to something else, or taking a break before tackling another 25-minute chunk of time.

I love, love, love this idea.  It reminds me of Gretchen Rubin's power hour, but even more achievable.  The reason I love it is because, while I love writing, 1) I often don't have huge chunks of time to devote to it, and so I sometimes figure why bother and don't even start, 2) it is sometimes super hard to start writing, even though I love it once I do start, and 3) 25 minutes seems like a long enough time to get something meaningful done without feeling overwhelming.  Plus, it jives with my favorite method of working, which is to pair a work task with something pleasant (e.g., grade 3 papers, read a chapter of a good book).

So I got home from San Diego, and while I don't have a pomodoro app on my phone, I do have a timer.  And I've been using it for everything.

I particularly like using it for email.  I'm a big fan of trying to hit inbox zero--if something is in my inbox, it requires action.  But I also can't spend all my time on email or else I won't get other things done.  So I set the timer for 25 minutes, work on email until it goes off, and then I check my to do list and see if there's something else I can work on for a while.  Awesome.

It also works great for tasks I don't really want to do but need to do.  Writing letters of recommendation, reading articles, assigning journal articles for review.  Anything where I'd rather procrastinate or it feels like I could get sucked in for a really long time so I'm putting it off.

I think you could probably use this for chores or other blah tasks, too.

Most importantly, though, it is awesome for writing.  I did, in fact, have this entire day blocked out for working on the rhetoric of innovation chapter.  But I was also feeling really freaked out and nervous about it.  I need to have a draft done by next week for another conference I'm going to, and while I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about it, all I had written on it was a very half-assed piece from a year ago.  So I needed to figure out whether I was going to use anything from that old material, what to do with some feedback friends had given me on it, what to do with all my new sources, and how to bite off a reasonable chunk that I could finish by next week.

Cue panic.

But I just set my timer and decided that all I would try to accomplish for the first 25 minute chunk would be to read my friends' feedback.  Weirdly enough, that's all it took to get started.  I wrote for 7 25-minute chunks over the course of the day, stopping to put laundry in, shower, go for a run, eat lunch, whatever.  But I have half a draft to show for it, and it's not bad.

I will say the one trick for writing that makes this possible is to stop when the timer goes off and then decide precisely where you will pick back up next time you sit down for another 25-minute sprint.  If you stop at a good place and don't make that decision, you run the risk of reading everything you've already written and nit-picking it to death while not creating any new text.  This is its own form of procrastination. So stop mid-sentence, if you have to, because it will force you to pick up where you left off.

That's it.  25 minutes of magic, my friends.  Try it out.