Back to the mundane

I've had to rethink my eating habits over the last year, because I decided I wanted to do whatever it takes so that, if I have a later life, it will be a healthy one. My diet is now built around vegetables and lean protein. I'm healthier, I've lost well over three stone and I'm not obsessing about food (usually...).  I eat anything I want, while keeping in mind both my ultimate goal and my desire for current pleasure.

It strikes me that I need to carry over some of those principles to how I approach research.

Vegetables and lean protein are the mundane building blocks of a health diet. Usually there's nothing exciting about them. But I've grown to love them. I have yet to grow to love the mundane building blocks of healthy research.

For me, research is a lovely mix of high excitement, intellectually stimulating conversations, incredibly hard work, Expressos by the bucket and the mundane. At the moment, my pleasure in research are found in the first three, occasionally fuelled by the fourth.

After a few days of the first three, it's back to the mundane today (suitably fuelled by a triple Expresso for breakfast). And I'm already resenting it and how it is interrupting "the real work" - as evidenced by avoiding the admin in order to write another blog entry.

So, is there a positive spin on the mundane?

Learning to love the mundane

Mundane doesn't mean boring. Mundane doesn't mean unimportant - although I do have to keep reminding myself of that when timesheets get in the way of immersing myself in a creative phase...

• Mundane is a chance to let the back parts of my brain freewheel and process all the excitement, conversations and literature that I've shoved in so far this week.
• Mundane gives a bit of order, a bit of structure particularly when the research process is going through a scatter-gun, creative thinking phase. That's because the mundane means focusing on timesheets (yep, European funding comes with timesheets even if you are a student), budget planning, future time planning, dotting i's and crossing t's for the protocol and paperwork for the ethics committee. It focuses my thinking, forces me to be clear.

In giving the back parts of my brain a chance to freewheel and quietly process new ideas, the mundane makes me less likely to get intellectual indigestion or fry my brain.

In doing my timesheets, budget plans, proof reading, the mundane makes it more likely that I will keep my eyes on the final goal and not get sucked down the rabbit hole or disappear in all directions as I enjoy the excitement of interacting with stimulating people and thoughts.

I guess it took me time to learn to love, plan my meals round and look forward to my vegetables. I stuck with it until I learned to love them by focusing on what kind of later life I want.

Maybe I need to keep that focus with my research. I need to stick with the mundane until I learn to love it (can't imagine that day coming - but then I couldn't imagine the day a plate of steamed kale would fill me with pleasure). I need to remember how the mundane will help me achieve my ultimate goal and be willing to sacrifice a bit of immediate pleasure for that ultimate goal.

And on that note, I'd better get off this blog and start proof reading again.