This must needs be a short post.
One of my fellow students and I had the following exchange:
Me: this insanely heavy workload, it's just, wearing, on me
Them: I find it sharpens me.
This person had grown up going to a Montessori school, so part of me was a little angry and wanted to be mad at them because they already had all the training to be disciplined organized and use their time well, right from the beginning, they didn't have to painfully, slowly unlearn bad habits and force themselves to learn good ones, like I had, struggling for years. against the flow. They had just gotten it and absorbed it, when it was easy to form habits.
But then I thought, being angry/jealous is dumb and hurtful, so I decided to feel happy for them and appreciate their strengths instead, feeling gratitude for my own gifts. Much better strategy if you want to be happy and successful yourself. I almost immediately then realized it was a wise perspective, and decided to apply it to myself:
Having a heavy workload is a stretch, a challenge, that is not easy for me, and the only way we can grow sometimes, especially when we hit a plateau, is to stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone. This is why many doctors (It depends the field) are not any better after 30 years of practice, than new doctors. They are not doing deliberate practice: effortful, focused work to improve specific things, that is actively measured and reflected upon.
This is my greatest nightmare as a teacher: not that I will fail some particular kid, of course I will make mistakes, but that I will fall into a rut and not get noticeably better, year by year, or the progress will be minuscule. It is a very real possibility, it happens all the time, and I refuse to be a part of it.
Within the book, "Moonwalking with Einstein" about memory training, there was a section about... ah, what's his name...Anders Ericsson, who is a leading researcher on what makes experts, experts, and how they get that way. He is the one popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" (which Anders points out is a gross over simplification and not really true. Just made for a good read. Tut-tut Gladwell) And his wisdom is perhaps of greater utility than the memory techniques. He is the one I'm getting this info about stagnating and how to keep growing, from. And he's the one I'm going to refer to, to make sure I don't stagnate, and do eventually attain expertise in my field, or even just make sure I'm not stagnating, and growing at a good rate.
Well, I've talked about, like, one of the several things I want to cover. Lets see if I can just bullet point the rest:
-addendum to habit formation: you don't have to be super duper regular forever, just long enough to set the habit (which can be a while) once that's done, it's a bit like an addiction: an alcoholic can never go back to drinking like other people do. Even after 30 years, there are still remnants of those grooves in the brain, and it's much easier to re-start the addiction than someone who's never been an alcoholic. Addictions are very closely related to habits, and habits work similarly: once you've established a habit strongly, even if you get out of it, it's easier to get back into it, even if something made you slip out for long enough that it's not an active habit any more.
-My solution for the too much work need to rush but hate rushing dilemma is: find ways to be efficient without rushing. rather than trying to do a lot quickly, try and do a manageably small amount, well. Another older friend of mind told me this story when I was bemoaning how messed up I was feeling because of all the work and rushing and rushing-rage: The busiest man he knew was a kind of monk, and when my friend was with the monk, he felt like he was the only person in the world, the monk gave him his full attention, and the monk said, when asked, that was how he dealt with all is work: "when you're in front of me, your the only thing in the world. as you as you leave, I forget all about you." I think something like that is a good approach to take. extreme focus on the one thing in front of me, and then let it go when the next thing comes up.
The key for me, I think, that I need to work on, is setting the parameters of that deep dive, before I actually begin work, because once I'm in it, it's really hard to come out partway through. I need to set the goal properly small, before-hand, rather than try and crunch a giant amount of work into a small space. Work isn't really that flexible, you don't get that much more done, by rushing, you just get a bunch of lower quality work. At least, that's my experience.
OK, done, send to the presses.
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