I wrote in my last post that I still had high motivation. I’d like to think I do, really. The problem right now is severe grant-writing season. I had one due on Friday that I was just a co-Investigator on, but I was doing a lot of work for a pilot study for it that took all my free time in October. I have a proposal that I’m leading as Principal Investigator that’s due November 20, and I’m doing another huge amount of pilot work for it. My estimate as of 11:45 pm tonight was over 200 hours. To do over the next three weeks.
Why? Because NASA grants have gotten so competitive that you have to. Think of it this way: I want to study volcanoes in Hawai’i. I’m going to propose to go to the islands, bring back rocks, and study them in the lab to do XYZ science. Great! But in my proposal, I just say I wanna do that. Okay … someone else, in their proposal, actually went to Hawai’i on vacation, and they brought back a rock. They did the analyses they are proposing to do in the proposal (but with a lot more rocks). They have now shown the review panel that they know how to do it because, gosh! they already did it for one sample.
Most NASA proposals these days have that sort of feasibility study in there, and if they don’t, then the review panels almost always list that as a weakness: “The proposal did not sufficiently demonstrate that the work could be accomplished.” Something like that.
For this proposal in particular, I’m proposing to do a lot of work. And I have to figure out how much is reasonable, how long it’s going to take. And, if I shrink the work, will the analyses I want to do still be valid? Or, not? Based on some stuff I did this past week, I’ve already shrunk the scope because the work was going to take over 7,000 hours (note: 1 year is about 2080 work hours). So, I think I’ve settled on the correct scope at this point, but I haven’t demonstrated the analyses in the test region that I want to do. Meaning I still have to gather the data and do it.
That’s on top of my normal work. I am basically failing right now at the work-life-balance, but it’s kinda because that’s the work/life I’ve chosen for my particular job. I’m not necessarily happy about it, but I like what I do, I like my job. For the most part. As long as ██████ doesn’t send me another nastygram about getting my f—-ing timesheet in on time again.
What does that have to do with fitness? Yeah … nothing. Literally. Because I can’t do this work and work out.
So, this past week, despite best intentions, I did zero exercise. However, my weight finally went down. And I mostly got the sleep I needed. Why on the weight? Because I’ve improved significantly on not cheating with food, so sticking to 1570 calories actually does something for weight loss at my height/weight/age/gender combination. Imagine that?! Bodyfat also ticked down very slightly, but I have basically been stagnant on that for about two months.
My Fitness Blog 