Efficiency

I know what you're thinking, how can efficiency be the title to a blogpost?  Well, I have completely failed in my ability to achieve both efficiency AND blogging as evidenced by several weeks without a new post.  I was going strong there, for oh, two weeks, but then reality jumped up, smacked me across the face, kicked me to the ground, spat on my hair and said "What the hell do you think you're doing???  Get back to work!"  But in this case, reality is just my own voice in my head.  So I thought it would be a delightful idea to start an "Efficiency Timer".  The plan is start the timer as soon as I begin working, and then pause it for things like coffee breaks, going to the bathroom, gchatting, blogging, and then judge myself on how many hours are being recorded on my little battery-powered Fisher Scientific Timer of Efficiency and Self-Deprecation. At first my actual working hours did not match what I imagined to be my actual working hours.  For example, I am normally "working" from 9am to 8 pm, which is 11 hours of work, and this is what I usually tell myself.  We all have the same thing playing in our brains about how we're at work for so many hours and working all of those hours.  But on that first day, at leaving time, instead of 11:00, it only showed something like 8:34.  I was incredulous!  After all this time, I've been telling myself I work 11 hours a day, but really it's only 8!

I found this somewhat distressing, and determined to prove I could actually work 11 hours, I cut out things like coffee breaks, going to the bathroom, gchatting and blogging and my timer proudly displayed 10:41 or 10:58 by the end of the long long day (I also had to actually stay at work longer to achieve these hours, don't worry I do use the bathroom for longer than two minutes a day).  And really, what do I have to show for it?  Did I achieve more in my career?  Did I produce more data?  Did I complete more experiments?  Did I go home feeling more satisfaction with my research?  The sad answer is no.  All I felt was tired, and more depressed that even with working so many hours, I still have nothing to show for it.  So the moral of the story is I'm back to blogging, at least more often than every three weeks, and hopefully I can come up with something interesting for my audience, because this is a hell of a lot more fun than gel electrophoresis.