It’s been two weeks since my last update, so, what happened? Work, again. Lots and lots and lots of writing.
People often think that being a scientist is spending some time in a laboratory and then giving talks and speaking on TV, maybe writing a paper or two.
“Feh!” says I.
I spend probably 15% of my time writing grant proposals. 20% of my time analyzing and writing results up in papers. 60% of my time doing the most boring, repetitive work you can imagine to gather data. 5% actually presenting my work. And, so far, no TV appearances for me. Not bitter ‘r anything. As some like to say, I have a face for radio and voice for print, so, whatever.
Anyway, with grant proposal season over, I have been working ~70-hour weeks trying to get some papers out. I have had over a half dozen languishing for months, five languishing for more than two years, just waiting to be finished so I can move on. In addition to that, my work’s “Intellectual Year” runs June 01 – May 31, and they count submitted papers towards our job performance evaluations. Last year, I was at the top of my office (~50 scientists) with 5 papers submitted as first-author. But, I identified another 10 papers that I wanted to get out the door this year, and so far, I’ve submitted zero.
Well, until last week. 1 submitted, which had been languishing since mid-2019. Another should be submitted this week which has been languishing since October 2019 (just in concept, I only just started this work 3 weeks ago). Another the week after, languishing since Summer 2018. I have another 4 or 5 after that that should only require maybe 1–2 weeks’ work each, so I’m really hopeful I can get most of this backlog done.
Okay, what does that have to do with fitness? Well, you see that whole, “work-life balance” tag? Yeah, that’s what.
Food: I’ve again been doing fairly well again with not snacking beyond what’s been planned, or building in a large enough buffer for the day that when I do snack, I can count it and not go over. I’d say I count 95% of what I put in my mouth, which isn’t perfect, isn’t as good as I was 8 months ago, but it’s pretty good.
Weight: Stagnant. I’m still not really dropping, but then I saw the image for this post on Instagram and it really made a big impact on me. I might be stagnant on weight for the last several weeks, but maintaining and not increasing is still progress.
Bodyfat Percentage: Slightly decreasing, still. Likely due to doing weights.
Weight Lifting / Strength Training: I took a week off because I was pulling 15-hr days with these papers. That was foolish. I did weights again last Wednesday, and I was so sore and hurting from DOMS that I haven’t been able to do them again, though I suspect I can tomorrow (I probably could’ve today, but I was exhausted after a walk).
Core Training: *cough* Right, so, last week I counted doing the rowing machine twice as core exercises instead of cardio.
Cardio: It was >60° here today, and it will be again tomorrow and Tuesday before dipping back down to the 40s. The bf and I drove down to the mailboxes and did 5 km in 50 minutes. My VO2 max is slightly up, if 30.7 vs 30.5 can be believed, so that was a very slightly nice pick-me-up. Also, doing that in the morning and then weighing myself was a 1.5 lb drop from yesterday, which was also nice.
Sleep: Reasonably well. Last week was hit-or-miss with 8 hrs/night, but the average was 8.3 hrs/night, and I never went below 7 hrs/night.
Resolutions: Even though I’m against making New Years’ Resolutions, I did make a few fun ones that were 2021-themed that I said should be “easy” to do just by hitting my other goals. Let’s see how I’m doing …
- 0/2021 minutes core exercises. [I’m not counting the rowing machine in this]
- 6/21 allowed days to exceed 2021 calories/day.
- ≥42.4k steps/week. [succeeded 0/9 week].
- 686.1/2021 minutes per 4 months spent strength training. [8 weeks left in this 4-month period]
- 226.4/2021 km walked this year. [projected: ≈60% of goal will be reached]
So, not doing so great, but we’ll see what happens as the year progresses.
I’ve also tried to put some new systems in place to help. I’m always looking for new things for efficiency, or to keep me on track, etc., with somewhat little actual success there. One is to really try to get some sort of exercise in in the morning. I feel a lot better having that accomplishment in my back pocket and not dreading loosing time later in the day to get it done. To help with that, when I get up in the morning, I put on my exercise clothes as a reminder. And, I’ve a new rule: No news. None until I’ve exercised that day. That means I either exercise, or I’ve saved 2 hours and so should have time for exercise, regardless!
The other system is getting back to one I tried mid-January, which is to make a list of what I want or need to accomplish for a day, and assign it two different priorities: One priority for “Importance,” and one for “Urgency.” So, weight lifting has the highest level of importance, but compared with other stuff, it has a minimal level of urgency. A proposal deadline today would mean that grant proposal has the highest level of importance and highest level of urgency. Doing mandatory training at work that I was delinquent on had the highest level of urgency but lowest level of importance (yeah, you can see how I feel about annual mandatory fire training).
I’ve found that when I use it and put realistic expectations on what I can get done in a day, this is actually useful. Of course, that “realistic expectations” is a really big thing that I’m still working on. Another column in this system is how long I estimate the task will take. I put 15 minutes for this blog, it’s taken an hour (though I took quick breaks when something shiny went by). But then I estimated 1 hour of work on a paper on Thursday of last week and it took six hours, so the rest of the tasks I didn’t get to.
So … let the journey continue …
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