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I've been working a lot of 10 hour days, and Thursday was 11 and a half, at which point we just called the work off since it was a weekday without customers and there was no reasonable way we were going to finish any time very soon (all of us being fatigued and really starting to drag). I get one day off, twice a week, instead of two in a row because we can't afford to lump my days together, otherwise we wouldn't have the coverage we need. I appreciate the part of that where I don't ever go too long without a day off, because it's Wednesday and Sunday, but don't like how it's hard to really get ahead because I'm kind of scrambling on that one day I've got.
The work I've gotten done doesn't disappoint me, but it's coming along more slowly than I'd like because of the compounding issues of long days and physical exhaustion, and having to hurry and do stuff around the house that mounts up because of the previous. These are negative cascading effects that compromise my ability to work effectively, but you do the best you can with the time that you have available. My re-reads on a lot of my notes are finished and I should be able to update my website with my compiled notes and summary for Pattern Recognition, probably tomorrow.
It's been a long time since I've worked seriously on an essay to completion for submission, and while I think my work has actually gotten better, I've been surprised on how hard I've come to lean on my note taking process, which is something I didn't really focus on has hard before. This is probably because I go a little longer between writing and working sessions and my working sessions are shorter, so I've realized that if my notes aren't good, I'll be staring at scribbles on paper that mean almost nothing to me, and I'll have to do a lot of re-work. Now that I think about it, that is something that happened to me in the past, so this is almost certainly a process that I've come to in order to avoid loss of data between one work session and the next, which typically happens the following day.
For primary works, it's reading and taking down page numbers and rough ideas based on my subject only. Then it's compilation on a word processing document, and folding like references with like (which can happen multiple times per reference if there are multiple themes relating to the subject) and expanding the notes with my thoughts. I keep that compilation for later reference and further down on the document, I expand those notes into an ordered statement on the primary work. Secondary source materials are noted and compiled, and the statement, which is usually shorter because the works are either shorter or don't entirely pertain to the primary source, are written to be compared to the primary statement. After I'm satisfied with the notes I've got and I feel like my thoughts are sufficiently ordered, I usually put the majority of the notes onto one document with page numbers so that I can move up and down my own document without too much time passing and refer to the notes as I put my thoughts together into the actual essay. Basically, though, by that point I've already written the essay, I'm just putting it into the proper order and formally bridging one thought to another.
The work I've gotten done doesn't disappoint me, but it's coming along more slowly than I'd like because of the compounding issues of long days and physical exhaustion, and having to hurry and do stuff around the house that mounts up because of the previous. These are negative cascading effects that compromise my ability to work effectively, but you do the best you can with the time that you have available. My re-reads on a lot of my notes are finished and I should be able to update my website with my compiled notes and summary for Pattern Recognition, probably tomorrow.
It's been a long time since I've worked seriously on an essay to completion for submission, and while I think my work has actually gotten better, I've been surprised on how hard I've come to lean on my note taking process, which is something I didn't really focus on has hard before. This is probably because I go a little longer between writing and working sessions and my working sessions are shorter, so I've realized that if my notes aren't good, I'll be staring at scribbles on paper that mean almost nothing to me, and I'll have to do a lot of re-work. Now that I think about it, that is something that happened to me in the past, so this is almost certainly a process that I've come to in order to avoid loss of data between one work session and the next, which typically happens the following day.
For primary works, it's reading and taking down page numbers and rough ideas based on my subject only. Then it's compilation on a word processing document, and folding like references with like (which can happen multiple times per reference if there are multiple themes relating to the subject) and expanding the notes with my thoughts. I keep that compilation for later reference and further down on the document, I expand those notes into an ordered statement on the primary work. Secondary source materials are noted and compiled, and the statement, which is usually shorter because the works are either shorter or don't entirely pertain to the primary source, are written to be compared to the primary statement. After I'm satisfied with the notes I've got and I feel like my thoughts are sufficiently ordered, I usually put the majority of the notes onto one document with page numbers so that I can move up and down my own document without too much time passing and refer to the notes as I put my thoughts together into the actual essay. Basically, though, by that point I've already written the essay, I'm just putting it into the proper order and formally bridging one thought to another.