" title="Notes from an Accidental Scholar"> Notes from an Accidental Scholar

Dis­claimer: Apolo­gies to those of you who are not Doc­tor Who fans. If you have love for British sci­ence fic­tion that runs the gamut of cheesy to OMG!AWESOME! you should check out the lat­est reboot(s) of Doc­tor Who. It’s on Net­flix and at your local pub­lic library.

So my increas­ingly opin­ion­ated, stub­born, and won­der­ful 2.5 year old daugh­ter is sleep­ing errat­i­cally. Some days she takes her reg­u­larly sched­uled “epic nap” of 3.5 hours, and other days she doesn’t nap at all. This, my friends, is a big prob­lem. I do ALL OF MY WORK when she sleeps. Her naps equal time. No time means no work. No work means I don’t fin­ish my dis­ser­ta­tion. Not fin­ish­ing means I wasted the past 7.5 years on a caf­feine– and whiskey-filled dante-esque descent into mad­ness with­out pay­off. So it’s time to shake up my rou­tine and squeeze more time out of my day, which is not easy when writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion, tak­ing care of a tod­dler, and man­ag­ing my brain so I can keep an even keel through all of it.

The only real rem­edy to this new time cri­sis — besides get­ting my own TARDIS — is to chip some time out of the rest of my day. For many of us, this can seem impos­si­ble. So I’ve devel­oped a strat­egy. I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out, but I have to do some­thing and if you have any fur­ther advice, please share.

Here’s my strat­egy so far:

1. I work one week­end day. My work­week, prior to Nap Break­down 2012, was pretty reg­u­lar. Up by 7, at the gym by 9:30, work for a few hours, then spend time with fam­ily. My evenings and week­ends were free from dis­ser­ta­tion work and I felt like I had a pretty good bal­ance. Now that my work time dur­ing the week is out of whack, I feel like I’m cheat­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion when I’m doing other stuff. This is not good. It makes me anx­ious and irri­ta­ble when I’m not work­ing and hur­ried and dis­ap­pointed when I do finally get to work. So the week is now my col­lect­ing time for my week­end day. I write when I can, read when I can, and col­lect enough stuff so my Sat­ur­day or Sun­day has all of the ingre­di­ents for a pro­duc­tive writ­ing day.

2. YMCA Child­watch. I’ve men­tioned the YMCA before, but let me just extol it’s virtues here again. I was a mem­ber of the Brook­lyn Y and their Child­watch pro­gram was fan­tas­tic. They gave you two hours of free babysit­ting while you worked out, or, like I did some­days, read qui­etly in a cor­ner. The Down­town Berke­ley YMCA unfor­tu­nately charges for their child watch, but it’s still SO worth it! The staff are highly trained, incred­i­bly nice, and there are plenty of them. My kid has a blast every time she goes. Three days a week, I work­out, two days a week, I sit on the sofa in the lobby to work. That’s an extra four hours of work in my week, and if the kid actu­ally naps that day, I’m way ahead of the game.

3. Get­ting up ear­lier. This is the cra­zi­est habit I’m try­ing to form. Wak­ing up two hours early. That’s right, I’ve been wak­ing up at 5am all week. Now there are a few of you who do this and I used to think you had a meta­bolic imbal­ance or you were witches or some­thing. Need­less to say: I get it now. Wak­ing up before the world is the best Cheat Code out there. The only prob­lem? Actu­ally get­ting your ass out of bed. My “Just go back to sleep voice” — who I sus­pect is my lit­tle hater in dis­guise, is a per­sis­tent bas­tard. “You don’t have to do this,” it says, “You’re so tired. Just sleep a lit­tle longer.” So my con­scious voice has to scream, “SIT UP! WASH YOUR FACE! HAVE SOME COFFEE!” and it’s worked so far. I feel accom­plished before the day starts giv­ing me free­dom to not think about my dis­ser­ta­tion when doing all of life’s other stuff.

So how do you squeeze more time out of your day?

This is a oldie, but oh-so-relevant goodie. Jay Smooth — one of my favorite video blog­gers and founder of WBAI’s Under­ground Rail­road, the longest run­ning hip hop show in New York — breaks down the Lit­tle Hater.

The Lit­tle Hater is the voice of doubt in your head and there’s some­thing about his pars­ing the logic of the Lit­tle Hater that weak­ens it for me and gives me an out from the hater spiral.

Since I moved to Cal­i­for­nia, I haven’t blogged at all and my work on my dis­ser­ta­tion has fallen off a bit. Need­less to say, my Lit­tle Hater was in over­drive. Here it is in a nutshell:

• It tells me that my ideas aren’t worth anything.
• That all praise received in the past was a prod­uct of trick­ing said prais­ers into think­ing I was more tal­ented than I am. (Never mind that pulling off that kind of trick­ery would make me a witch in pos­ses­sion of mag­i­cal pow­ers that should enable me to fin­ish my dis­ser­ta­tion. #AccioDis­ser­ta­tion!)
• And lastly, My Lit­tle Hater is a revi­sion­ist mofo. It goes back to sparks of insight and tells me “that was a dumb idea, what were you think­ing?” I lit­er­ally have to write notes to myself that say, “This is still a good idea, stick with it” just to shut my Lit­tle Hater up.

So I’m tak­ing a stand with my Lit­tle Hater and say­ing, “Not today.” How about you? What’s your lit­tle hater like?

Note: If you like this video, Jay Smooth started post­ing Ill Doc­trine again with reg­u­lar­ity for AnimalNewYork.com.

See Also: The Bal­lad of the Lit­tle Hater