Monday, November 14, 2005

Flow - Finally!

I don't know what it is, but I'm focused and productive today. I haven't felt this sort of "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) (apologies to Lemming for the citation, but I couldn't help it!) in a long time. Looks like I'll finally get the pilot study out of my hands very soon. Part of this is due to the fact this f-cker needs to be done by 10:00 AM Wednesday, before Dissertation Chair leaves town: I'm supplying her with reading material for her plane ride. There's nothing like a solid external deadline for promoting internal focus.

When I experience productivity like this, things don't seem so daunting, and the sky is no longer falling around me. How 'bout that? I gain more confidence in my writing ability. What's hard for me is dealing with so little feedback so much of the time, and that's probably where I get stalled, emotionally. So, I look to Wednesday morning as an opportunity to gain some feedback from Dissertation Chair (DC for short?) which usually inspires me to keep going.

I'm pleased to announce that today's productivity actually happened within the home Office/Prison! If I can keep up with this, than my life may become more simple. We shall see. I'm sure I'll need to get out of the house hither & yon.

Let's see how things are continuing to flow tomorrow.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My advisor (may he live forever) would point out that you forgot the parenthesis around location, publisher and date. I never seem to get mine right. Of all the details I loathe, footnote form is easily #1.

Rob said...

Actually, this is APA style, which is nutty, but correct in this example. For example: title case for book titles? Seems a bit strange, but OK, whatever they need. And then all the periods...I don't get it. But in this case I do as I'm told.

Anonymous said...

What is this APA style of which you speak?

Rob said...

Oh, it's that which is of or pertaining to the American Psychological Association. http://www.apastyle.org/ I'm probably being a bit misleading here unintentionally. The reference listing would appear on its own page at the end of the paper, not as a footnote as it appears to be in this post. Then, throughout the paper where appropriate, one uses (Author, Year) like (Lemming, 2005) where needed. Two authors on one article would look like this (Lemming & Rob, 2005). I think it makes reading the paper a little choppy with these parentheses, but that's life. I'm used to it now.

I don't know why the education field needs to borrow a style from psychology. Too bad we don't have our own.