“When do you feel most productive?”
There’s a few different pockets of time for this one. While the answer is in short ‘it varies’, I can think of at least three major times/situations I feel at my most productive: 11am on lots of good nights of sleep, with strong black coffee and a sense of space to breathe; 5:30pm, with a lot of tasks ploughed through at work and time now to focus in on my writing in an empty office; 9pm when I have the wind at my sails and the promise of an early night if I can keep up the writing momentum. Notice, some common themes: I rarely ‘feel’ productive at work, that’s more autopilot; that’s not a mark against work, I like my job because it involves those kind of tasks. Another common factor is work itself, as two of those three, the first two, are office-specific. I don’t get that feeling at home. And the third, which is a problem, is none of them involve uni, or happen at uni. And well, there’s a reason I’m still finishing off this damn essay due last Thursday…
Granted, that aforementioned reason has a lot more to do with me getting ill after the holiday than procrastination, but there’s no point pretending the latter hasn’t encroached. I think the problem comes from the fact I do a lot of my readings in the immediate day before the sessions, which means its all fresh in my mind for discussions, but has fostered a last-minute approach I need to nix somehow. But it’s also that I haven’t found my ‘space’ at Sussex yet. I still feel like an outsider, an alumni visiting rather than an active student. And I need to change that or I am going to have a lonely few years of this, maybe even a lonely decade. I don’t want that.
Sorry for the melancholic post. I swear, I am still enjoying uni. I just, need to figure out how to ‘be’ at uni mentally more than I am.
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