I still haven’t finished my literature review, but I’m almost done. Another 20% to write, then editing, then submission. It didn’t help that I went too far and reviewed too many papers (i.e. 43 papers). It didn’t help that I kept adding another paper to my list with every two papers that I read. It didn’t help that I wrote a section of the paper and realized that I needed better structuring and restarted the entire process. It didn’t help that I have 13,000 words worth of notes.
But that’s my fault. I have a problem of not being able to say “no”, and not being able to ask for help when I need to. And because of that, I’m busy all the time. Since my last tournament as a competitive athlete in August, I have been averaging 70 hour weeks. I know because I take data on it and I monitor what I do. I have no weekends or holidays. Maybe I’m a workaholic. No, maybe it’s because I feel like I’m so behind with the rest of the world because I spent so much time competing that I need to catch up. Yes, I’m still behind and I need to learn more.
And here I am. I’m still behind.
Looking back at the Powering Podiums presentation I went to last month where they discussed how to keep coaches happy and healthy, perhaps I should have made a better attempt to apply some of those lessons. However, I’m very practical. I’m happy because I’m not dead. These problems I have may be luxuries compared to other people in the world. I am definitely not complaining. I also recall asking about motivation, because my procrastination is often based on trying to find ways to motivate myself to do something, like finishing my paper.
However this situation has been very educational. I should have started my work earlier. Wait, why does that sound so familiar? It’s almost like it’s not the first time I’ve done this before…
I often wonder if this is the curse of a taste of expertise? Everything needs to be done better. Although there are similarities to being a perfectionist, I think it is worse. It’s a desire to learn more so that it can be even better the next time. I feel a perfectionist is focused on execution, whereas the drive I speak about is to do something even better than before. It probably doesn’t help that I am doing a literature review on deliberate practice.
But let’s stop for now. I haven’t acquired the motivation that I needed to continue my paper, but I will use a different solution: action first, then motivation will come.
I will report back in Part 2 after I finish.
Toby,
Sorry to say but your post gave me a sense of relief as I’m sure misery loves company. Your comment to me of pushing me on makes more sense now that I see where you were writing from.
Although you were behind at the writing of this blog, i’m sure you will be ahead with what you have learned on the topic and understanding the process of a literature review. Also, being a high performance athlete and a masters student with a challenging load is no easy task. For me it is family/work life that provides my time challenges but I am learning to have better balance but unfortunately for my masters projects it is the ball that I seem to be dropping. Getting up early, coaching many hours, adding to other work commitments and then getting home and trying to not be grumpy so I am a good husband and father leaves me without the proper head space to get any academic work in during the evenings… I’m learning, but maybe my story is a bit of comfort as I said before, misery loves company. But success loves company more so and I wish you all the best in all areas of your life!
If time allows sometime I’d love to buy you a coffee to chat in person. Keep going Toby!
Andy
Thanks for the comments Andy! I like how you pointed out that success loves company as well, because I have forgotten about that. However, despite being busy, I think we are doing our best to be productive, although it is a bit of a struggle at times…
… almost a bit like deliberate practice. Haha maybe I’ve actually gone crazy now. Oh well! It would be great to follow up with you at some point, but until then I also wish you the best on the path to finding that perfect balance of everything!
Toby, thanks for the perspective on your ongoing journey. Failing to achieve your goals and timelines is okay as long as you are working on learning from those failures. I had a bit of a chuckle about your first paragraph and your lead in..”It didn’t help that”. Since the powering podiums I have made a commitment that if I cannot read the books I want to read, I will listen to them. By the way, thanks for Ericsson’s Peak, that was an easy read and I devoured it in no time. I started off with Matthew Syed’s Bounce, then moved to Kahneman’s Thinking fast and slow and now I am exploring Carol Dweck’s Mindset. So it seems that your mindset in the first paragraph is a failure of time. You did not get your lit review in on time because…it didn’t help that… Of course the other perspective might be.. I really learned a lot more than I expected, and it really helped that I… and because of that it took me longer than I thought. Hence, the perception can easily be turned into a growth as you allude to in the rest of the post.