304 days to go: passed upgrade meeting, cool results, and paper submission in sight. Also work routine.

I’d had a very varying working flow since I last wrote. Some days of working until late late late, some days of literally doing nill, and some days of real “aha!” experience. Overall, I’m pretty happy with what the work that’s been done, but my routine has been in shambles which means that happiness and healthiness has taken a hit.
Ideally, my work routine is something like:

• Get up early-ish, meditate, and eat breakfast (without reading/internetting).
• Have some coffee and spend 10-20 minute freewriting<ref!> On the ipad about work-related thoughts and do a todo list.
• Sit down with the computer, go through my work-related Buddhist contemplations, and start working with a pomodoro timer in 25-50 mins intervals without checking email or using Internet.
• When I’m having lunch, go away from the desk, eat and read something interesting, check email, and take a half-hour walk outside to counter the post-lunch coma.
• Have an evening free of work, and get to bed at a reasonable hour.
  

When I manage to keep on this track, I tend to have a great day, happiness wise and productivity wise. But if I sleep in and start the day faffing about on the net, it’s much more tempting to procrastrinate, compensate by working late, and sleep in the next day. I might get a decent amount done, but the happiness factor is low, and the guilt factor is high. And that’s been the predominately pattern the last few weeks, with some exceptions (like today).

Nevertheless, I have gotten stuff done. I had an upgrade meeting with external examiners two weeks ago, for which I had to write a few pages on my thesis introduction, and make a plan for the rest of my time up ‘til hand-in. (See the fancy GANTT chart above). The meeting went surprisingly well - it’s a rare pleasure to hear other people enthusiastic about your research!

My eternal first paper seems to have an end in sight; I managed to make this interesting simulated example using the uk 2007 Bluetongue outbreak.  What it shows is that if  the outbreak had beens  spreading for two months before being discovered,  then one could have tested a bunch of animals and gotten a pretty good idea of the trend despite not having observed it at the time!
 With this and another example in place, we’ve decided to submit the paper by the end of June to Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology (gulp…). So overall, things are definitely moving forward - there's hope yet.


Current status of the thesis:
Summary: 774 words, rough sketch.
Introduction: 861 words, rough draft.
Chapter 1: 837 words, rough structure draft.
Chapter 2:5451 words, revised yet again since last time.
Chapter 3:300 words, outline in place, research timeline now set up.
Chapter 4: 0 words.
Chapter 5: 0 words.
Bibliography:0 words.
Appendix: 0 words.

Total: 8223/50000 words. 878 more since last blog.

Average words per day needed until 01/04/2014: 137.